The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (38 page)

I studied his lips, grateful for the lantern that hung from a hook in the canopy overhead. As always, Chaine had been thinking of me when he brought the extra light, anticipating my need for illumination.

“You made me proud tonight, tiny sparrow,” Uncle said while smiling. “The way you charmed the investor’s wives before supper. I watched from across the room … they were riveted to your every word. What were you speaking of? Your hats?”

A wry smirk turned my mouth. “The Rational Dress Society. No one of them had ever heard of fashion reformation. I decided to plant the seed and see what might blossom.”

Uncle’s grin widened. “And?”

“And it shall be interesting as to what sort of trappings line the halls upon our welcome gala on Monday. The husbands are in for a brimming good shock.”

I shifted my shoes beneath me, making waves in my seven petticoats. No new gowns had yet arrived from Worthington, and as the merino-wool was my most posh ensemble, I had been forced to wear it again tonight for our visitors. I would also have to wear it on the morrow, too, as everyone planned a trip into Worthington for Sunday worship at a local parish. I dreaded it. My legs already ached from the climb up the stairs.

“And what did Lord Thornton think of your brass with his guests?” Uncle asked, his hand on mine to recoup my focus.

Chaine and Enya were discussing the constellations. Chaine pointed to the sky with his cane, but I didn’t miss his sidelong glance my way.

“He seemed … pleased.” Chaine had in fact encouraged it—stood by my side with an amused smirk stirring his whiskers at the ladies’ enthralled expressions. I couldn’t deny his presence and support had given me the courage to attempt such a connection. The ladies turned out to be more personable and receptive than I ever anticipated, and I no longer dreaded servicing the upper crust in my and Uncle’s shop.

“I am not surprised,” Uncle said. “The viscount lives only to make you happy.”

I nodded, though secretly disagreed. The “viscount” lived for something more. I knew that now … just as I knew his true identity. He had an ulterior motive for inviting Larson here. He’d been harboring revenge, and it was cold and ready to be dished upon a platter.

Tonight, I would learn of his plan, however dark and twisted it might be.

“I have something for you.” Chaine sat beside me on the settee after Uncle and Enya strolled over to a telescope in search of Hydras—the water snake constellation. He sat as close as propriety allowed and pulled a cylinder of paper from his coat pocket.

I hesitated to take it. “You have yet to answer my question about Larson,” I reminded him.

He pressed the paper into my hand. “Just, please. Look at it. I drew it for you.”

Biting my cheek, I unrolled and flattened the sketch along my thigh to reveal a black and white rose—its petals drawn to such spiraling perfection I might have plucked one off and sniffed its perfume. A broken, bloody thorn marred the stem. So beautiful in its fragility, it took my breath.

I met my host’s gaze. “You always see beyond the faults and capture the loveliness. Thank you for sharing your gift, Chaine.”

Grinning like a schoolboy, he traced the sketch’s lines along my thigh, his gloved finger penetrating the paper and my skirts, sending a dark coil of desire from my legs into my belly.

His eyes narrowed in the shimmer of the lantern. “Sweet
Devla
. This is torture. I want to take your hair down … to touch you again.” He was making it difficult to keep our earlier rendezvous in my chambers blotted from my mind, something Hawk shouldn’t be forced to see over and over.

I rolled up the picture and Chaine took it, tucking the cylinder into my shawl’s knot to keep the sketch safe.

“Might I have just a kiss?” He leaned closer. “’Tis all I could think of at supper. The wine held nothing to the flavor of you.”

“A kiss would hardly be appropriate here,” I stalled. “Considering our present company.”

Chaine craned his head around the canopy’s edge where my uncle and Enya stood out of earshot in the tower’s midst, looking through a telescope. He drew his head back in. “They are lost in their own besotted world.”

How to tell him I referred to his phantom brother? Outside, Hawk drifted aimlessly from one window to the next, feigning distraction. Seeing his shoulders hunched in despondency severed my insides like a razor. Bad enough he had to witness the romance Chaine rained upon me. I would not add to Hawk’s emotional contraband by kissing his brother in front of him.

“You are trying to distract me.” I steadied my gaze on Chaine and squeezed his hands to scold him.

He responded with a roguish half-smile. “You distracted me first, by stroking my hair.”

“It was falling into your eyes.”

“Like I’m falling into yours?”

I couldn’t refrain from laughing. “Answer my question.”

He inclined his head and smiled back. “For a lady of silence, you certainly cater to noise. Has anyone ever told you this?”

“Practically everyone who knows me.” I linked our fingers. “Now, indulge me with an answer.”

“Oh, it will be my pleasure to indulge you.” He lifted my inner wrist to his mouth, breaking his other hand free to skim up to my elbow. He nuzzled me, his whiskers snagging on my lace gloves before assuring I could see his lips again. “Once we are married, proper and true, I will carry you up the stairs wrapped in nothing but furs, and indulge every facet of your beautiful body, here beneath the stars.”

Despite the dark, hungry fire racing to my core, I managed to glower at him. “You are incorrigible.”

Laughing, he turned me loose. “Not even one kiss?”

I pressed a finger to his lips. “Not even one word, lest it’s in answer to why you invited Larson to the Manor’s opening.”

He took off his gloves and rested his elbows on his knees so the splay of light illuminated his entire face. “Larson invited himself, just as he assigned himself an investor. He knows my true identity. He’s blackmailing me.”

This caught Hawk’s attention and he came to sit in a chair opposing us.

I regarded Chaine. “How did he find out?”

Chaine tensed. “I’m not sure. Before I won this estate from him in a card game, I learned that Larson ran a gaming hell in the
Swindler’s Tavern
. He’s the anonymous owner of the place. If I could prove that, and that he cheated dozens of noblemen out of their purses, I would have something to barter with.”

Hawk and I both leaned forward, as if connected to his words by a towline. “So the gambling room in the tavern—” I pressed.

“Was Larson’s snake pit,” Chaine answered. “During the gypsies’ off seasons, Larson masqueraded as a customer and used my stepfather Tobar as the card dealer and ivory turner, pretending they didn’t know one another. The gypsy could turn a hand or dice to Larson’s favor at the drop of a wager. Only the most affluent customers were invited to partake in the games, and the wealthy idiots never had a chance. To keep Tobar quiet, Larson gave him a percentage of the winnings each time. Part of my and Nicolae’s plan was to get proof of this, so we might always have a way to keep him in line.”

“Do you know how to get the proof?” I asked the question given to me by Hawk.

“No. And I could use it now, more than ever. Should Larson come forward with my identity, I’ll no longer own this place. My brother’s name is on the deed.”

“You should be wearing Nicolas’s clothes,” I said, worried. “And you should bide a stricter adherence to his way of living. You are casting suspicion on yourself through obvious discrepancies.”

Loosening the crimson cravat at his neck, Chaine propped an arm over the settee’s back, his hand just short of touching my shoulder. “I’ve been living this lie for eight years, and I’ve managed to fool everyone but Larson. People think me eccentric, with a touch of my father’s madness. In the gypsy culture, it is bad luck to wear the clothes of the dead. So upon Nicolae’s death, I had to have a new wardrobe, post haste. My aunt provided the fabrics. Then I hired Miss Hunny to sew styles befitting a viscount. And as to following his lifestyle …” Chaine’s wrist moved so his thumb and forefinger could pinch the shawl where it grazed my left breast. My flesh tingled in learned anticipation. “Would you have me romancing every woman I see? Or hold true to my heart, and desire only you?”

Hawk squirmed in his chair, either uncomfortable watching his brother’s advances or shamed by his own repute as a whorehound. Either way, I knew by the twitch in his jaw—so much like Chaine’s—that his emotions were set to kindle.

“Don’t fret,” Chaine said, reading the turmoil on my face. “I intend to put a stop to Larson’s threats very soon.”

I caught his hand. “Assure me you aren’t to kill him.”

His expression shifted from concern to malevolence in an instant. “That would be a most satisfying solution. But I can’t abandon my father. Were I to be put in the pillory, all of this,”—his sweeping gesture encompassed the Manor and the grounds—“would fall to commonwealth. There would be no funds left to oversee my father’s care at the sanatorium, and he would be sent to some bedlam within a fortnight. I’ll not have him in a place like that … thrown into a pit of lunatics and left to fend for himself.” His jaw clenched. “No. This must be handled with cunning and foresight. And a measure of gypsy magic.”

Gypsy magic.

I inhaled an icy breath. “That’s why your aunt is here.”

Chaine grinned. “Precisely. Larson has insisted on overseeing and approving every aspect of the Manor before it can be opened to the public. It is why the star tower is still closed to the guests who’ve begun to arrive. He has yet to endorse it. I’ve supported his idiosyncrasies, as this very arrogance has provided the leverage I need to silence him once and for all. Monday night, after the ball, I will take him into the dungeon.”

My stomach shuddered as I glanced at Hawk. His suspicions had been right.

“I’ve a room prepared there,” Chaine continued, oblivious to my silent exchange with his dead brother. “It’s called the Museum of Oddities. The grim theme is slated to entertain the younger men who take sport in feeding their own fears. Larson must approve of it tomorrow night, so I might open it to the public. I shall take him on a tour, alone. Within the museum—alongside several circus-macabre attractions and torture devices to set the mood—will be a gypsy fortune teller who has a penchant for conjuring ghosts.”

“
Ghosts
?” Blood rushed to my face. The night at the tavern, when the tigers spoke of the viscount’s macabre fetishes, the blueprints I’d seen in his room … all along, Chaine was setting the scene to trap the man who tormented him. It was never a dark indulgence, nor an exhibit. It was a brilliant ruse.

“Paranormal subterfuge,” Hawk said in my mind.

I focused on his brother. “This is why you and your aunt wish to summon Nicolas. So he might help you scare Lord Larson to silence. Because that slug played a part in his death.”

Chaine watched my reaction with interest. “The dead speak louder than the living, Juliet.”

I coughed, a knee-jerk reaction to the profound truth behind those words. “You are using your brother’s spirit in a game.”

“Game? There is nothing frivolous about this. Nicolae left me with this mess. And he asked to come back, don’t forget. I believe it may be the only way his spirit can be at peace and move on to the other side.”

I glanced sideways at Hawk—his expression a jumble of worried lines. In all our time together, never once had he and I discussed what would happen should his purpose for remaining be fulfilled. Such considerations boded a finality neither of us wished to face.

Chaine caught my hand, centering my attention on him again. “You say Nicolae has visited your dreams. Is there something you know that can help us make him visible for just a few moments? That’s all it would take. Is there anything we can—”

“Larson is on his way over!” Hawk interrupted and I reacted instantly—leaned forward and pressed my lips to Chaine’s, silencing him before the investor could hear our discussion.

Chaine stiffened. Then his mouth curved to a smile beneath mine and his arms drew me against his willing male body. I clung to his shoulders. Just as his hand trailed upward over my back so his bared fingers could nestle into the hair pinned at my nape, the edge of the canopy lifted.

Chaine broke away, the glaze of interrupted passion clouding his eyes. Lord Larson’s crow-like features lengthened to shadows in front of the blue lights. He winked at me. In a flurry of movement, Chaine shoved the man back and stepped outside the canopy—locked in a protective stance between us.

He gestured to Larson with his cane then turned back after the investor strode to the other end of the turret. Offering his palm, Chaine led me outside of the canopy. I shivered from the cool rush of wind and he tightened the shawl at my neck, assuring his sketch remained safe in the knot.

He frowned. “Wait for me. I wish to escort you back to the townhouse. And perchance visit you later tonight, as well? Through our secret doorway.”

I nodded, but couldn’t hide my concern.

“All will be well,” Chaine assured me. He glanced toward my uncle and Enya. “Perhaps you might look at the constellations with your uncle, until I finish this … business.” His lip curled on the final word. Then his expression softened and he leaned forward to kiss my forehead, smoothing my hair as he would a child’s.