The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (45 page)

I closed my eyes, unable to look at him. At either of them. I nestled into Chaine’s neck again, letting the sound of Hawk’s clicking teeth pulse through me. “I love you, Hawk.”

His phantom touch stroked my back, furrowing ripples along my silken walking dress. “I never doubted it. We both knew from the beginning, we had no future. You brought me back to my brother. You helped me finish what I’d left undone. So be with him. Give him the happiness and family he never had as a boy.” My ghost rippled my dress once more then pulled away, leaving me cold in his wake. I turned to watch him roll up his sleeves. “Do it now … before I change my mind.”

My body tensed as I shoved the covers down to Chaine’s waist. I placed the locket over his heart between a spattering of hair and covered the charm with my palm, holding back the cries dammed behind my sternum.

Hawk drifted to the other side of the bed.

Wait!
I screamed in my mind.
Oh, wait …

Hovering over his brother, Hawk met my gaze, his eyes aglow and teary.

My throat swelled on a thousand unspoken words. Even all of them together would not be enough. How could I live without him in my life?

“You’ll never truly be without me, China Rose. I will leave my music. That I vow to you.” He nodded toward Chaine’s chest. “Keep your hand over the locket. Keep it sealed until the end.”

I pressed my palm tighter atop the heart-shaped charm, the silver warmed by Chaine’s and my body heat combined.

Averting his gaze, Hawk placed his naked palms on his brother’s chest, and as if Chaine were a pond, he faded into him, bit by bit, until he ceased to be.

In that moment, I understood his final request and promise, for I absorbed part of him, too. A rush of warmth shot from the locket to my hand, evoking a change in my shoulder and shin. The throbs and aches eased away. Then my ghost’s voice, his songs, hummed within me … melodies I not only heard but felt in my very soul.

A spiritual serenade.

Numb, I stared at where he had been. After all of our time together, after his dramatic entry into my life—so filled with sound and bravura—that he would leave so quiet and swift … like morning mist fallen on a desert, evaporated in an instant by the sun. But so much like the mist, a remnant of him remained, far beneath the surface, nurturing a seed which would flourish to fond memories, long after the agony of his absence was gone.

Tangled in emotion, I opened the locket to find nothing left of the petal but dust. Snuggling beneath Chaine’s chin, I wept. I wept for his tortured childhood, for his brother’s tragic death; but most of all, I wept for the sacrifices both men had made for me.

All around, the world spun as if nothing had changed. Throughout the castle, preparations proceeded for the ball tonight, in spite of Chaine’s condition. Before his duel, he insisted everything go on as scheduled no matter the outcome, so his investors wouldn’t pay the penalty of his personal issues.

“Come back, Chaine.” I breathed the words against his flesh, my lips trailing his neck to taste him. “I need my dance partner. I’ll not attend a single ball, not without your rhythm.”

As I lay there, lost in my grief, I felt a slight tug on the mattress. I nuzzled deeper into Chaine and gripped my hands around his pillow. If Uncle thought he could make me leave, take me back to my room so I could rest, he was sorely mistaken. I would not abandon Chaine. They couldn’t drag me away. I had yet to tell him what he meant to me.

The movement stirred against my side this time, and a hand—with a touch so familiar for its calluses and compassion—lifted my chin.

Face to face with my gypsy prince, our noses touched. So grateful to be looking in his open eyes, my heart took wing.

“Chaine … I love you.”

A smile of genuine surprise parted his whiskers. “And I love you.” Wrapping me in his arms, he dragged his lips over my chin, my cheeks, my temples—whispering unheard words. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t hear them. For in their silence, there was a melody, sweet and pure.

I tried to kiss his lips, but he stiffened. He moved so I could see his face as he stroked my shoulder. “What are you doing in here? Aren’t you to be mending in your chamber? Your arm …”

I almost laughed at that. “You’re the one who almost died. Should I get the physician?”

“Surely you jest. I’ve never felt more alive.” He circled my waist and drew me atop him with just the blankets and my clothes separating us. My breasts pushed flush against his muscular chest, sealing the locket between our heartbeats. I stretched in perfect alignment with his beautiful maleness. His gaze held me—eyes overcast with those shadows I had come to understand were catalysts to profound emotion.

He cupped both sides of my face, thumbs stroking wet hairs off of my temples. “Am I in heaven? Your eyes … your skin … your hair …” He took strands in his fingers and splayed out the length, letting it fall in a golden curtain around us. “What is this?” His gaze scanned the room, stopping at each spray of flowers on the wall. “Something’s wrong. Or … no, it cannot be. Is it … can this be
color
?”

I had a passing curiosity. “Chaine? It is you, isn’t it?”

He winced as he resituated his back under my weight. Fearing I might be hurting him, I shifted. He tightened his hold on my waist to put me back in place atop him, surprising me with his strength.

“Of course it’s me. Who else would I be?” Perception furrowed his brow as he noticed the locket wedged between us. “Is Nicolae here with us?” He asked, his fingertips tracing my spine. A thousand tingling torches ignited beneath each vertebra.

I tried to concentrate in spite of the sensations. “I want to know that myself. You say there’s color? You’re color blind.”

“Yes. I-I am. The room looks like it always has, save the wildflowers, and you. What is happening? Did I get shot in the head?” He released me to rub his temples.

I repositioned his hands on my body and told him everything about the flower. And how his brother saved him with the last petal.

Remorse darkened Chaine’s features. “You had to choose me … over him?”

The question gouged my heart for an instant, until the truth became clear: I didn’t choose one brother over the other. I chose something much more monumental. And Hawk made that choice possible.

“I chose life over death, Chaine. I chose to
live,
with you by my side. It is the same choice you made in the mines, all those years ago.”

He closed his eyes and pressed my forehead to his, motionless.

At last, his lashes opened again, coated with tears. An almost-smile twitched his lips. “So, you thought, when I mentioned color, that I was Nicolae, having a jolly in my brother’s body?”

“Yes.” I narrowed my eyes. “In fact, tell me our fairytale. He never knew it. I want to watch you recite the last verse.”

The olive tone returned to his complexion in a dark blush. “Here we are lying in my bed, having confessed our undying love, both of us healed up right and true by my brother’s generous spirit.” He glanced all around. “No chaperon in sight. And all you can think of for celebration is to jabber about a ghost story and a fairytale?” His eyes lingered on the spread of my breasts against him and I felt the change in his body in response. The chance of paralysis no longer concerned me.

I traced his lips with my fingertip. “Indulge me.”

“Oh, I plan to.” He bit my finger gently, sending tendrils of desire uncoiling through every inch of my body. “The finest of friends, they both came to be,” he mouthed the words, “this spotless angel and the prince of debris. They renounced the word goodbye. They sewed suits for his chancellors, baked moths for his stewards, and gave the salamanders wings—”

I didn’t let him finish, too hungry for his lips. If his telling of the rhyme hadn’t convinced me, the passionate heat of his kisses did. So lost in one another, neither of us noticed Uncle’s entry until some unheard sound caused Chaine to break contact. I looked up to see Uncle flushed and beaming in the doorway. Behind him, Enya giggled alongside a line of maids.

“What?” Chaine looked at me and ran his fingers through my hair as he addressed our audience, eyes alight with joy. “Have none of you ever seen a man kiss his betrothed?”

Chaine amazed the physician with his swift recovery. The first afternoon upon my visit to his sickbed, his back stopped bleeding. Two days later, the incision had already begun to scar. Within a week, he was waltzing with me at the Christmas gala.

Once he fully healed, Chaine arranged for the mine shaft to be closed up again with new slats. The busted reservoir caused the entire lower tunnel to cave, leaving nothing but a solid barrier of mud; so even had anyone wished to search for bones of any kind, they would have had to dig for years.

As to Lord Larson’s accusations, read on the opening of his will, it raised not even an eyebrow. All it took was one look at Chaine’s twisted and gnarled right foot—yet another odd consequence of his spirit melding with his brother’s—and anyone could see by the birth defect that my betrothed was who he claimed to be: Lord Nicolas Thornton. And that the deed to the manor belonged, incontrovertibly and undeniably, to him and no other.

Holding true to his noble character, Chaine burned all of the damning ledgers he had on Lord Larson, so as not to drag the dead man’s family through the mud. He buried the past along with the sins of everyone who had ever wronged him.

And I loved him all the more for it.

Chaine had dreams during his recovery—dreams of his brother in heaven, spending time with Gitana. In the most vivid one, Hawk and Gitana sat beside a glistening waterfall with doves swooping in and out of the spray. Two other people joined them. A man who shared my lips, and a woman with long, golden hair and fawn-soft brown eyes, so much like mine. They asked Hawk of their daughter, China Rose. He told them she had found true love and abiding happiness.

I might have thought it some form of delirium, some residual malaise upon Chaine’s mind inflicted by the medication or the pain of healing. I might have thought that, had it not been for two anomalies: never once had Hawk seen my father; and never had I, Uncle, or Enya ever mentioned the pet name my mother gave me to Chaine.

The first week after Chaine’s full recovery, we retrieved the elderly viscount Merril from the sanatorium and brought him to the Manor to stay. In the mornings, we took him into the winter garden with us as we weeded and planted, so he might hear the birds and smell the flowers. During the afternoons, I was the old man’s caregiver. Enya helped Uncle run the boutique as it had become quite busy—so many women sporting new fashions brought about by The Rational Dress Society, and me providing custom ordered bonnets to match every gown.

Father Merril and I got along famously. I would sit up in his room day after day, working on my hats as he built his watches. We would talk about his stolen son and his gypsy bride, or even sit unspeaking, absorbed in our own contemplations. I respected him despite his mental unbalance. He was a kindred spirit. We both had what other people considered physical limitations, yet those prejudices did not prevent us from accomplishing what our hearts desired. In fact, it seemed we were made stronger for having such flaws.

At times, Chaine joined us in his father’s chamber to sketch when his schedule would allow. Inevitably, he would tease me with a flutter of breath at my temple, or a fingertip trailed along my nose in gentle leisure, then lean in to kiss me sweetly as his father chatted on about balance springs and wheel pinions.

Chaine and I met in secret every night, using our stairway behind Gitana’s portrait as a portal to passionate interludes. When the weather would allow, we bundled up and had midnight picnics in the star tower, or waded through moonlit pools of hot springs in the forest. Already beyond companionship, we became confidantes and together learned the ways of love. Yet my betrothed refused to take my innocence until we shared the Thornton name.

With three months left in my mourning period for Mama, we opted to set the nuptials for March to meet society’s rigid strictures. But Chaine and I were unable to wait, so we had a private Romani ceremony beneath the gazebo on a full-mooned January eve, with Aunt Bitti, Father Merril, Uncle, Enya, and Hawk’s barren flower in attendance.

I wore a new riding habit Miss Hunny made of white cotton with lacy cuffs and collar. I left my hair down at Chaine’s request and Enya tucked rosebuds throughout the strands.

Chaine decorated the gazebo with wildflowers, ribbons, feathers, and candlelight. But nothing compared to the vision of him waiting for me atop the misty platform, in a white wool frock coat hanging down to his ankles, a black vest, and fitted white trousers.

Even with his newly acquired color differentiation, he still had an affinity for clashing hues. I cherished this peculiarity as part of his heritage, part of the man I fell in love with. But on our wedding, he wore black and white only, in homage to who he had been before his brother’s gift of color.