The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (32 page)

“Father, my heart has lost the will to sing.”

“But I venture you still dress like a dandy clown. You know when I started going blind? T’was that first year when you began sporting circus tents in lieu of nobler trappings.” The old man tilted his head back on a laugh.

Lord Thornton smiled gently. “It is much worse now. You should count yourself lucky you no longer have to view me.”

“A waste.” The old man felt around the table and found a gear—spindled like a miniature wagon wheel. His fingers tapped each tooth, as if forming a mental picture before sandwiching it atop the watch’s base on a screw-shaped piece. “We’ve so little money to spare. For you to buy unnecessary things.”

“The clothes were necessary for me to honor mother’s heritage. Besides, we’ve plenty of money, Father. Everything is fine now.”

“Yet instead of using our newfound wealth to get me out of here, you buy more doctors. Bring them to my room to poke and prod.” The old fellow turned in his seat toward me, staring blindly through Hawk with filmy, white eyes. He had sensed my presence all along. “Sorry doctor. You’re wasting your time. Nothing ails me that a good roll with a whore won’t fix.”

Lord Thornton paled and threw an apologetic glance my way. He turned the old man around in his chair. “Please, Father … there are no doctors. I brought a lady. A special lady. You must be civil. Make her feel welcome.”

“Ah. Should’ve known your bout with celibacy wouldn’t last.” He fitted a solid gear then several other pieces in place, using his sense of touch to guide him.

Flushed, Lord Thornton held out his palm to coax me over. Hawk looked over his shoulder, waiting.

I rose and smoothed my dress. Senseless really, since the old man had no chance of seeing it. Then I took the viscount’s hand.

“Father,”—my host ensured I could see his lips—“I should like to introduce you to Miss Juliet Emerline. Miss Emerline, meet Lord Merril Thornton.”

The viscount secured my hand within his father’s cool and wrinkled counterpart.

Before I could say a word, Merril squashed my palm to his nose, snorting hot moistness over my flesh like a horse seeking out a snack. “Hmmm, this one’s soft … smells of gardenias and fresh snow. Found you a young innocent, aye? Take care not to spoil her. Don’t make her like your mother. That woman reeks of gin and myrrh. Don’t you find it so?”

“Of course Father.” Lord Thornton patted the old man’s shoulder, pity curving his lips downward.

“Gypsy whore.” The old man dropped my hand and scrounged around the table once more. “Leave me with one son when I have two. Have you found him yet? Poor baby child. You must find him so I can raise him proper.”

Lord Thornton closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. “He is my age, Father.”

As if not hearing him, Merril snatched a feather and dusted off his developing watch. “I wish to hold him snuggled in a blanket. To tell him stories … as I did you. Find him, Son.”

Lord Thornton raised his broad shoulders on a sigh. “I shall try.” When he opened his eyes again, he looked like a man drowning.

I eased two steps back, out of respect for the intimacy of the conversation. I used my deafness to restore Lord Thornton’s dignity. He did not need to know I could hear every word between them via Hawk’s voice.

“Bring him to me.” Merril turned the gears of his creation with a fingertip, testing his progress. “Your mother will follow. We shall be reunited as a family. Then I’ll kill that Romani king. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. Kill him. Dead.” Agitated, the old man slapped both hands on the table and trifled through the remaining metal forms, desperate in his search for something specific.

Lord Thornton caught his father’s wrists, his features sharp with annoyance, and I wondered if was about to witness his temper firsthand once more. “Father. You mustn’t let the nurses hear you say such things. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll cut yourself. Then they’ll take away your materials. If they perceive you dangerous to yourself or anyone else, they won’t allow you to make your watches.” He released the elderly viscount.

Lips pursed, Merrill nudged a square-shaped base with his thumb. It reminded me of Hawk’s geometric watch and the giant clock in the star tower. Too similar and unique to be coincidences. Had Hawk’s father made the watch in the tower, and the one for him that said Rat King? This same man that thought Hawk was still a baby? It was all so confusing.

Reading my thoughts, Hawk swung the watch at the waist of his trousers, every bit as puzzled as I.

The viscount knelt down to gaze up into his father’s face. He shielded his mouth from my view with Merril’s head, thinking me blind to their discussion. “As I’ve told you. Tobar has already been dealt with. Be at peace with it.”

“I cannot be at peace! Not until I find the blasted click spring!” His hands went wild over the table.

Lord Thornton rose to pick through gears and bits of misshapen metal. His brow crimped as he searched for the key to the clock’s inner workings and his father’s tranquility.

In a clumsy sweep, Merril’s thrashing hands tipped the vial of oil. Inky liquid drizzled from the table’s edge onto Lord Thornton’s elegant leather boots, saturating the tassels.

Irritation tightened the younger viscount’s jaw. He drew out a handkerchief and crouched to dab at the floor and his boots.

His father—oblivious to what he’d done—continued seeking the spring. Without a word to me, Hawk inched forward and stretched out his hand. Chin tight with intense concentration, he moved a tiny wire, shaped like a shepherd’s crook, within his father’s reach.

Merril held it up, beaming. “There it is! Ah yes. There it is.” His milky, white eyes tilted in Hawk’s direction. “Thank you, Sir.”

My chin dropped and Hawk mirrored my surprise.

Lord Thornton looked up from his ministrations, puzzled as he noted my distance from the old man. “To whom are you speaking, Father?”

“The other guest you brought. The one I mistook for a doctor. The gentleman that moves like mist. He found my spring for me.”

The nurse returned just in time to hear Merril’s answer. She exchanged a worried glance with Lord Thornton.

“He knows I’m here …” Hawk’s statement startled me from my shocked stasis. “My father senses me. He bloody-well senses me.”

My breath stalled.
No. It is impossible
.

Hawk smiled, his hope impermeable. “My father knows I’m here. He feels it, the way the animals do.”

How can it be? The old man is as blind as I am deaf
.

“Your point being?” Hawk’s voice resonated within my dysfunctional ears, more of an awakening than if he’d slapped my face with a cold fish.

Back at the Manor that evening, I couldn’t relax for all of the questions rattling in my brain. As soon as Enya helped me into my bed gown and retired to her own room, I curled up in the chair by the glass French doors with Hawk sitting on the arm next to me, both of us anxious to examine the pages I’d earlier stolen from the viscount’s window seat.

Using nothing more than moonlight and Hawk’s glow, I matched the torn edges to the journal’s spine and found them the perfect fit. They were indeed the missing entries. My ghost deciphered the date and we realized it was the account of my fall into the mines—through Chaine’s eyes. That explained why his brother had it in his possession. Chaine …
Hawk
… must’ve offered it as explanation to why he searched for me. This also proved that the viscount knew all along, even before buying the mines and reading Larson’s accident files, of my existence. Now I knew why he came seeking me, and why he offered to buy my parent’s estate, yet let me stay.

He was carrying out his brother’s wishes.

This knowledge touched me deeply, and instilled a change in Hawk as we settled in to read, his words tender toward his brother now. Accepting and grateful.

“Today,”
Hawk deciphered the foreign script,
“I hid up in a tree while Father spoke to young Master Larson about the arsenic supply. I always thought it a stroke of bad fortune Tobar had been given the task as rat catcher on the estate. Never did I realize the two men had arranged it as part of a pact.”

Hawk’s chin stiffened as he leaned closer to the page. The writing took a messy turn, as if Chaine pressed too hard with the quill.
“Larson has known all along about the monster and his practices. Larson has condoned my father and his sickness. He kept the monster’s secret in exchange that as gypsy king, Father would arrange for the cheap labor of my people, and the promise of our return each spring and summer to work these mines for the same paltry dues—”

Hawk slumped against the chair. All of the light had drained from his eyes. “They had a bloody business arrangement with my misery as collateral.” He sat so close that could I have hugged him, my cheek would’ve pressed his sternum where his shirt hung open.

I covered the page with a shaky hand, unable to bear another word. Weeks earlier, I shared this child’s humiliation and abuse through entries now as elucidative as any fossil, with traces of emotion so powerful I experienced Chaine’s state of mind as if they were my own. Most indelible was the crown of living rats writhing on his head for hours until his savage step-father deemed fit to lift him out of the pit.

Never would I have imagined that a partnership between two grown men had enabled this unthinkable crime. It made sense now as to why Lord Thornton invited Larson back as an investor—even why he appeared to hate him so.

He was planning revenge.

“Yes,” Hawk murmured. “My brother has something in mind for Larson … something sinister.” Hawk’s quivering timbre made my stomach twist. “I told you what he said to our father about Tobar being ‘already dealt with’? Perhaps I went after Tobar and something went awry. Nicolas must be planning to avenge my death. That must be why my aunt is here as well. Perhaps even the dungeon plays a role. Listen to the rest of the entry.”

His finger floated over the erratic script.
“Let them laugh. Let them plot. Aunt Bitti says that to die frees your spirit. You can be places no man can be … do things no man can do. So I’ll let the monster send me to the tunnel today. But I’m taking his arsenic with me. Shouldn’t be so hard to swallow. I’ll close my eyes and pretend it’s garlic. After I’m dead, Aunt Bitti can bring me back to settle everything. Better this way. I want to see the other side … I want to be free. The pit is so dark. So cold. I need proof of light. Any light. There’s none in life, so it must wait for me in death. It must.”

Hawk’s voice broke and tears scorched my cheeks. Perhaps Lord Thornton’s quest was not simply to avenge his brother’s death, but his brother’s stolen childhood as well. And, oh, how I wanted to help.

My thoughts ran rampant with a poison which both boiled and chilled my blood. I burned to leave my room … to storm the dark halls of this house … to find Larson’s chambers and suffocate the greedy pig beneath a wave of rats and mud and arsenic. I’d almost worked up enough senseless rage to rise to my feet and let them take me where they would, when Hawk spoke again.

“Wait.” His composure had returned, so strong and unwavering it gave me pause. “Hear this.” He pointed to the final short paragraph, written later the same day with lilting curves and loops as if Chaine’s entire demeanor had changed. “
I chose to live today, with the help of a sky-fallen angel. I thought to swallow the arsenic, truly I did. I held it up to my lips when a tiny slip of a girl fell upon my shoulders and into the pit. I lost the arsenic in an effort to dig us out from under the debris. When I found her, she hugged my neck and wept. I’ve never felt such warmth … to be needed. I never knew that to help another is what gives us light. I made up a fairytale in rhyme to stop her tears, and she giggled with the laughter of a meadow lark. When her family came for her, I had to hide … else they would fish me out and I would suffer the wrath of the monster for being found. But I have a plan now. I’m going to leave … escape this place. And one day, I’ll find the girl again—look upon her in the light—and thank her for saving me.”

Hawk met my gaze, his luminescent face a portrait of gratitude and awe. “No wonder my brother sought to find you after reading this. He’s taking care of you, to make up for my suffering. Juliet, he does love me.”

Fresh tears welled in my eyes as there in our solitude we silently pondered the power of a brother’s devotion and loyalty, and the unbreakable bond of gypsy blood.