The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (35 page)

An entrance to another world
.

Hawk frowned at me from our perch atop my bed. “Why did you not tell me he said that?”

“You were too busy throwing a tantrum over the kiss.”

Cursing at the reminder, Hawk drifted off the mattress and stationed himself at the portrait, waiting for me to join him.

When we had first returned from horseback riding, Enya came upstairs to help me freshen up and dress for lunch. During the meal, Lord Thornton apprised me we would take supper with the investors in the evening so he might make introductions. Until then, he suggested I spend the afternoon resting in my chambers.

I had undressed and laid my gown aside to keep it fresh for another wearing, but instead of resting, spent my solitude with Hawk, relaying all I’d learned at the gazebo. Everything slipped out … even those things I feared would hurt him most. Yet his grief over lost moments with his brother and father during his childhood paled when my mind tripped across Lord Thornton and me dancing. Hawk’s temper had burst asunder upon realizing we’d been unchaperoned and shared a kiss.

He had leapt onto my bed and stirred all the pillows into a frenzied tornado. Two came within inches of the fireplace, nigh bursting into flames. One hit Hawk’s flower. Thankfully, I’d locked it within its new terrarium, so it was unscathed.

I stepped over the pillow pile to join him beside the portrait, at a loss. “Why is it,” I asked, “that I can’t stay on the good side of one of you without offending the sensitivities of the other? Are twins always so competitive?”

Hawk glared at me. “How would I know, Juliet? I remember none of it. I respect the way he cares for Father, and the way he runs this estate. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand back and watch him seduce you. One wink of his lashes and you become a puddle of wantonness at his feet.”

I ran my hands along the right side of the frame to redirect the anger rising to rosy-hot swirls along my cheeks. “Oh, how I wish you were flesh.”

Hawk’s head dipped down, so close his breath would have singed the shell of my ear. “You do, aye? So you could stop using him as a substitute? So you could kiss me instead?”

“So I might slap your arrogant face.”

Hawk’s chin set to iron, and I worried he was about to unleash another room-rocking tantrum, when my fingers passed the left side of the frame where curved, metal ridges met the wall. I gasped.

“What?” he asked.

I blindly ran my fingertips across it again. “It … it feels like hinges.”

Our gazes met and all of his jealousy melted away. “A door.
Brilliant
, dear brother.”

It impressed me as well. Such a cunning ruse. The burnished frame curved out so wide it hid this anomaly from the wary eye. Only by feeling behind could someone find it.

“So …” Hawk backed up, expectant. “Where there’s a hinge, there’s an opening. Search for a latch on the right side. What are you waiting for?”

My heart knocked in my chest.
What was I waiting for
? Acknowledgement that all of this time, my chambers and privacy had been at the mercy of an old woman on the other side of a hidden doorway. I didn’t want to face such a truth. Everything I’d experienced with Lord Thornton today—the admiration and trust he stirred in me, my ever growing fondness of him—it all grew ugly and withered in light of such a secret.

To think he would allow his aunt to spy upon me …

Hawk clucked his tongue. “Are you listening to yourself? Do you forget how you spied upon her? Stole from her. From him as well?”

My cheeks flamed. “Under your advisement! Every dour turn my morality has taken has been by your urging. You were my mentor in sin and skullduggery.”

He grinned, a teasing lilt to his brow. “And an excellent student you’ve been.” His gaze ran from my sleeveless chemise to my pantlets, reminding me of our many moments of sensual play. “Come now, China Rose. All is fair in love and war. I love you to the point of pain … and though it is at war with your nature, you’ve proven yourself a fine accomplice in the arts of pleasure and plundering. Some part of you must like it, to be so adept at it.”

With his dark, unruly hair … his open shirt and furred chest … with the smug gleam blinking out at me from sable lashed eyes … he looked like the devil himself. I had to admit, I did like it. I liked it more than was good for me.

I flushed and glanced down at the floor.

“Ah, just once, to see that blush in the full glory of color,” he whispered. His fingers rippled the ruffle at my décolleté. “My brother has no idea how fortunate he is.”

Envy pocked the statement, and that familiar twinge I despised gnawed inside my belly. Unrequited, unanswerable desire for the boy who had saved me in the mines. For the man who had sought me till the day he died.

Before my despair could get the better of me, I ran my hand along the frame’s right side, nudging my fingertips into the space where it met the wall. I dug deep until a cold, metal clasp met my fingers about midway down. Pressing on it, I felt a click. The frame jerked out and slapped my leg, unable to fully open for my body.

“Move over,” Hawk pressed, but I stood firm, one hand banked on the wall.

A stench drifted through the cracked door—a combination of musk and old cabbage—carried in by a cold gush of air that stroked my upswept hair like a demon’s caress. Chill bumps raised across my underdressed flesh.

My pulse rocked at the base of my neck. Opening the door a smidge wider to spread some light upon the surroundings, I peered within. A stone staircase wound in circular ascension, disappearing as it rounded the domed obstruction of my room’s ceiling. Hawk had been right all along. The staircase led to a fourth floor on the other side of my chamber, in the part of the house where the ceilings became level.

I swallowed at the lump in my throat. “I should get dressed first.”

“No time,” Hawk answered. “Enya will be back soon to help you prepare for supper. I’ll take the lead, assure no one is there.”

I bit my lip and opened the door as wide as the frame would allow. “It’s quite dark.”

Of all the dreams I’d had of the afterlife, nothing compared to this. I sensed something foreboding about this darkness and the secrets it hid. Beyond even death. Something monumental waiting to be overturned, that could alter my world forever.

Hawk swept around me and stood on the first step, slathering the wall and stone with his soft, greenish glow. “I will be your light, China Rose.”

Staring at the winding steps, I craved the soothing comfort of contact, like when Lord Thornton took my hand in his.

Sadness bridged my and Hawk’s gazes. “I would give anything to hold your hand,” he murmured. “But you’re brave. And I’m here, in spirit.”

I took the first step, my bared feet chilled by the stone’s iciness. Each step grew easier. In short time, I found myself at the top of the flight with my ghost, standing outside a closed door. To keep myself from fleeing back down the stairs, I forced my hand to grasp the knob and turn it.

“It’s unlocked,” I said to my accomplice with surprise.

On Hawk’s instruction, I cracked it ajar first. He slipped inside and I watched through the slight opening as he drifted around the room to assure no one hid within.

“No one’s here. Come in.”

The door creaked, a stutter lost on my deaf ears that rushed through my palm. As I stepped in, a glut of spices accosted my nostrils along with the scent of dog.

The windowless room was cool but not cold, and larger than I had envisioned. It appeared to take up the ceiling space of two chambers. Another door sat diagonal from where I stood. Though closed, I suspected it led to a stairway and the grounds outside.

“Do you recognize these?” Hawk stood beside two trunks, lending soft light to our surroundings.

I nodded, running a finger along the trunks from his Aunt Bitti’s tent in the forest. Her pots and dishes littered the floor in one corner, along with her knife and three spoons made of bone. At another corner, her thin mattress waited, covered with the hand woven rug.

She even had the shallow three-legged iron pot, and judging by the coke within, used it as a fireplace still, just as in her tent. Why would Lord Thornton force her to live up here in such sparse conditions, when he lived below like a king?

“Not that I should wish to defend him in your eyes”—Hawk stood at the opposite wall where Bitti had piled her books—“but I imagine she
chooses
to live like this. She’s accustomed to moving constantly. For anyplace to feel too much like a home would be an aversion to her lifestyle.”

Hawk’s explanation rang true to the man I had come to believe Lord Thornton was.

Upon a table in the room’s midst, I found an opened book written in the gypsy tongue, and a small wooden box. I called Hawk over to translate the pages as I worked off the box’s lid.

“It’s some sort of summoning spell,” he said of the script. “For a fallen spirit tied to the earth.” He paused, his voice wavering. “A spirit which cannot leave.”

Right at that moment, the lid popped off the box. I looked within to find the seven withered petals from Hawk’s flower, along with something crinkly pressed upon a paper, like snake skin yet transparent. Shuddering, I took a step back. “What is that?”

Hawk glanced at it, then at the book again. “A caul.”

A sick knot twisted my stomach. From watching the birth of Enya’s youngest brother, I knew of the filmy membrane sometimes covering a newborn’s head. But why would anyone save it?

“It says here,” Hawk offered, “that the presence of a caul intact and unbroken upon a newborn babe is considered a sign the child will one day have wealth and power. By rubbing a sheet of paper across the baby's head and face, the caul is transferred, and upon drying, the paper is presented by a midwife to the mother as a sumadji.”

Sumadji.
That word had latched onto my vocabulary weeks ago when we explored the tent. So this caul was an heirloom, a keepsake.

“Yet so much more.” Hawk’s face held an arrested aura, as if he didn’t believe his own findings. “It goes on to say that when a man dies with something yet unfinished, his spirit can be bound to the earth, so it can later be summoned up to speak or interact with those who are yet alive—so he might complete his task. One must bury the dead man’s caul along with the seeds of a flower. When the flower blossoms, it shall inherit his spirit, thus holding the deceased in the world of the living.”

“A ghost flower,” I said. Feeling dizzy, I propped myself against the table. “She … your aunt … she is the one who kept you here? She enabled you to make contact with the living by using your caul. Why? All so you could find me to thank me? Surely there is more to this.”

Hawk had no answer, and looked as nauseous and perplexed as I was.

I studied the box’s contents again. Something was written in the corner of the caul’s paper backing. Gingerly, I lifted it with my thumb and forefinger, holding it as close to my face as I dared. I scanned the word twice, unable to make out the script, then held it up so Hawk could see.

“Nicolae.” His eyes widened. “Nicolae? The gypsy equivalent of
Nicolas
.”

I took a trembling breath. “This caul belongs to your brother? To Lord Thornton? So why is it in a box with your petals?”

No sooner did I think this, than the door opposite us—the one leading to the grounds—opened slightly. I dropped the paper, startled as a silhouette crept within, low and stealthy.

“Juliet, get back!” Hawk’s voice jostled me into movement.

I stumbled toward the wall to escape Naldi, her jagged teeth opening on a slobbery snarl. She rushed me toward the far corner, eyes aglow with icy light. I almost tripped over the pans as Hawk positioned himself between us, the one thing keeping her from attacking.

The door opened all the way to reveal the viscount and Aunt Bitti. Their lips moved in agitated calls to the wolf.

Ears lying back, the beast retired to the viscount’s side. She settled next to him, not the old woman, and gazed up at Lord Thornton with her wolfish stare—a study of adoration a pet reserves for no one other than their master.

Her
master
.

Candlelight glazing his face, the viscount regarded me, his mouth clamped shut. Something other than anger sparked within the flames reflected in his eyes:
profound relief
.

It dawned on me that he didn’t have his cane. He had taken the flight of stairs without it.

A flicker of revelation must have crossed my face, for I saw that he knew the exact moment when I realized who he was in truth … when I realized he’d been lying to everyone all along.

My heart pounded against my sternum. I gasped for air. Dazed and overwhelmed, I turned for the door behind me, tottering the pans as I shuffled for the secret stairs leading back to my chamber.

Too shocked to follow my flight, Hawk stayed in the attic room with Bitti—numb and wrestling reality. Even he could not refute the many signs that had pointed to Lord Thornton’s true identity all along; the idiosyncrasies we’d failed to acknowledge. It explained why Hawk knew all the parts of a watch, why he harbored memories of Merril reading to him in his childhood, and why his ailing father missed Nicolas’s songs now—the melodies Hawk sang to me alone.