by A. G. Howard
So, Lord Thornton was not only an architect, but he shared his brother’s artistic skills.
Hawk’s expression darkened.
The room’s color scheme surprised me. In this case the viscount’s dramatic and slapdash disregard for conventional palettes reaped a reward, for it was beautiful beyond words. Considering how his clothes often clashed, along with the garish berline we had arrived in, I was all the more curious as to what the remaining rooms in the house and castle looked like.
“Personally, I’m most curious about the décor in the dungeon.” Hawk’s growling voice shattered through me. He was obviously done hearing about his brother’s many talents. He waited at the opposite side of the room, tense and alert as he glanced out over the grounds through the salmon, blue, and clear glass blockings of a French door. “You need to bathe, and we need to talk. Get them out. Or I will.”
He purposely brushed his fingertips along the gauzy drapes to swish them. Enya returned in time to see the movement. Her mouth gaped and she backed into her room, closing the door behind her.
Miss Abbot noticed the curtains and rushed over to check the double-doors, assuming one stood ajar. Casting Hawk a scalding glare, I followed the housemaid and pretended to help check the latches.
Pleased with himself, my ghost stepped aside. I looked through the glass to find that I had the room with the rounded balcony I’d earlier admired. “Doesn’t this face east?” I could only imagine how lovely dawn must be, pouring in through the multi-colored panels.
Miss Abbot frowned. “We can order heavier drapes should you wish to sleep in.”
“No. I’ve always liked the dawn.” I shifted my attention to Hawk, imagining him in the morning, gilded by a prismatic spread of light. He arched a brow and smiled.
Miss Abbot drew the thin drapes closed. “All right then. The cooks are preparing browned tomatoes and cheese on toast, on the chance anyone needs sustenance. Ring the bell there,” she motioned to a long cord draped from the ceiling, “and I’ll bring it up.”
Miss Abbot’s attention jerked to the door. She rushed to open it. Two footmen carried in our luggage and left. The head housemaid started to follow, but paused, then came close enough so I could see her face in the firelight.
“Tomorrow you’ll break your fast with His lordship. He wishes to discuss new gowns for you.” Her gaze ran the length of me in obvious disapproval of our courtship. “He’ll be your escort to each party and gala upon the Manor’s opening.” With a curt nod, she offered the room key and closed the door on her way out.
I locked it behind her and faced Hawk.
My ghost leaned against the hearth and grimaced, arms crossed over his chest.
“You are jealous,” I stated.
“I am worried.” A wry frown belied his calculated answer.
“Worrying is fruitless. There is no turning back now.” I sat the key on the Secretaire then rummaged through my baggage, checking for Hawk’s journal within a hidden pocket in the trunk’s lining. Finding it safe in its hiding place, I shut the lid and trailed my fingertips through the bath water, my bones hungry to soak up the steamy warmth. “Beginning tomorrow, we will solve the mystery of what happened to you. Then we will leave. Simple as that.”
After dragging the wingback chair to the French doors, I positioned it to face the glass and opened the drapes a crack so Hawk could look outside. I motioned for him to take the seat.
He refused to budge. “Simple, aye? We’ve no idea how dangerous my brother is. At the very least he’s a randy and volatile spoiled prig. I may remember little about myself. But be sure, given the same opportunity as him, I would bed you within a fortnight and leave you with child to bind you to me forever. We’re twins. So who’s to say he won’t do the same?” Hawk stepped up next to the tub. He bowed in a dramatic sweep, beckoning me to the water.
Face burning, I didn’t budge. “The viscount and I aren’t even acquainted. He won’t have such politics ruling his heart. This entire charade is to earn his way back to society’s good graces. It is enough for him to offer me a pity proposal. When I turn him down, I will be left looking like an idiot, and he a charitable man.”
“He will not let you turn him down.” Hawk clenched a fist next to the edge of the tub.
“Of course he will. I’m beneath him.” I gestured to the chair, more insistent this time.
A muscle jumped in Hawk’s jaw as he tightened his stance … immoveable. “That’s precisely where he wants you. Beneath him and naked. Lord knows what else is on his agenda with his demented pastimes and hobbies. Throughout his life he’s been given everything I haven’t. A kind father … money … power. I refuse to let him desecrate the one thing that can better all of it. I refuse to let him seduce you right under my nose.” He tilted his head toward the tub in a less than subtle command, eyes aglow with mystical light.
I remained rooted to the floor. “You envy every aspect of his life—from his riches to his childhood. Even if I weren’t involved, even if you hadn’t heard the rumors, you would despise him.”
“But you are involved. And I did hear the rumors, much too clearly for my liking.”
“You think me a dimwitted country maiden.”
“I said no such thing. You’re too compassionate, and innocent to the ways of a man and a woman. He can use that to his advantage.”
“I have more wisdom than to let a stranger lure me into his bed, or into any sort of danger.”
Hawk frowned. “In a few weeks, he’ll no longer be a stranger.”
“Not so. I’ve known you for over a month, yet at this moment you’re acting as if I’m a stranger to you. As if you know nothing of me.”
A cloud of frustration extinguished the light in his eyes, but quickly passed. “Take your bath my lady, before your water ices over.”
“At your leisure, my lord.” I curtsied and pointed to his waiting chair. “If you’ll but take your place.”
“You can’t keep me from watching. It isn’t as if you can blindfold me.”
“Ah. But I can remove my locket.”
He raised an eyebrow—a dare.
“Or perhaps I shan’t bathe any while I’m here,” I demurred. “All the better. If I stink, the viscount will keep his distance and you won’t have to worry for my inability to resist his charms.”
“Dammit, Juliet!” Hawk slapped his hand atop the water in emphasis. The liquid sprayed across the floor and flecked my forehead. “Is it so much to ask for this one intimacy? I cannot even kiss you, for God’s sake. Yet he can tempt you into his arms any time he deems fit, simply by resembling me.”
I didn’t respond with the sharp-edged response he deserved. I couldn’t. Because where the water trickled from Hawk’s palm, he had become flesh.
We gasped simultaneously as he heard my thoughts.
Brow furrowed, he rolled up his sleeve and dunked his entire hand beneath the surface. He lifted his palm above his head. We both watched as the droplets drizzled from his fingertips to his palm to his wrist, coating him, coloring that part of him to life, making him solid where he was once transparent.
Holding my gaze, he moved toward me, dripping water along the way. Within moments we stood face to face. I propped my shoulders against the chair’s tall back.
“Your hand.” His husky demand prompted me to heed without question.
I held up my palm. His met mine with a warm, firm resistance.
He moaned.
I sobbed.
Staring at my face to gauge my reaction, he tugged his hand in a sensuous tour down my inner wrist, glazing me with wetness.
The pull along my skin was substantial and real … a joining of flesh to flesh. Man to woman. … so different from our first kiss. Nothing healing or invigorating like the merging of our spirits. I didn’t have to ask. I knew by the severity of his expression he could feel me as well.
At last, we were touching.
Tears blazed down my cheeks. We are touching.
In rapt sil
ence, Hawk retraced the watery path, his fingertip following the veins in my wrist, probing the intricate lines in my palm and the delicate skin between my fingers, waking places I never knew were dormant. Taking a deep breath, he laced our fingers.
I squeezed his hand.
Caught so off guard by the sensation, we laughed: the secret laughter of children who have discovered they can fly—despite that every adult swore it impossible.
The water formed a seal between us … a link between our worlds. But it was fleeting, for in each place it dried, Hawk became translucent again and our connection faded. A desperate wrinkle crossed his forehead as he pried our fingers apart to swipe the remainder of water across his lips. The wet glaze sparkled in the moonlight.
In dreamlike astonishment, he leaned over me. A droplet trickled down his chin and plopped on mine—so unexpected and gratifying it burned like steam.
In that glorious moment of suspension, one breath away from a kiss, he jerked back and glared over his shoulder.
Struggling to contain my pounding heartbeat, I shoved myself upright as Enya’s door opened.
She stepped into the firelight, an odd expression on her face. “I thought I heard you laughing.” Her gaze followed the droplets on the floor leading from the tub to me. “Oh, were you testing the water for your bath? I will assist. And when you’re done, I would have a turn.”
She hadn’t offered such help in weeks. This was her way of reaching out, an effort to mend the bridge between us.
“Get rid of her, Juliet.” Hawk’s voice was demanding, but his face full of supplication.
I didn’t know what to do—torn between my estranged friend and this amazing discovery. Now that Hawk and I had found a link to one another, so many more intimacies could be shared between us this night were we submerged together in the tub. The mere thought heated my entire body as if my blood had caught fire.
Enya frowned—either at my hesitation or my flushed skin. “Do you wish me to leave?”
If I told her yes, there would be no salvaging the closeness we once shared. In that moment, the limits of my mortal frailties swallowed me whole. My bones ached, my skin drained of the heat that had consumed it, and my mind thickened with exhaustion. The warm bath looked more inviting by the minute. And I could no longer stave off my stomach’s bid for food. Yet I knew once Enya and I both had a turn, the tub would be taken away … the water emptied.
So the decision would not be mine. In fairness, I couldn’t make it. Instead, I left it for Hawk to decide.
His gaze roved my body before settling on my mouth. He cursed, then, with a pained grimace, rolled down his sleeve. He slipped into the chair—so reluctant, his muscles coiled in resistance beneath his clothes.
He propped his elbows on the arms and stared out the window at the moonlit landscape … my silent, stoic phantom, locked in the chains of a gentleman.
Chapter 16
The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher.
Chinese Proverb
I slept, adrift in dreams filled with light and hope, though strangely devoid of music. When I awoke to the dawn, my ghost still sat by the glass doors, elbows on the chair’s arms, head tilted so I could see his profile. It looked as if he hadn’t budged for hours.
I nestled beneath the warm, lavender scented covers, and watched—captivated—as iridescent colors glided along his crystalized silhouette in the way a sunrise torches a serene lake. Our contact from the night before came back in a delightful rush, how he touched me, how close we came to kissing. Anticipation sluiced through my veins for our next such moment together, and all that it might entail. I planned to ask for a bath to be drawn every night. Perhaps even in the mornings.
“Seven petals—withered and fallen.” Hawk mumbled the words, breaking up my fantasies. “We are down to eight.”
The chill of morning clamped my shoulders as I shoved off my blankets, forcing my gaze to the bureau where seven brown petals spattered the white surface beneath Hawk’s flower.
I groaned. “No. How? I watered her last night.”
Hawk didn’t answer.
For a moment, I considered planting her in the winter garden to see if she might blossom anew. But once the patrons arrived, the possibility loomed that someone might pluck her remaining petals. “All she needs is some fresh soil and a larger pot. That will encourage her to bloom.” So difficult to portray a hopefulness I didn’t feel. “She’ll be fine soon enough. The journey was too much. It shocked her.”
He sat, unmoving. “The journey? Or our physical contact?”
I opened my locket and found the petal within still fresh and silver. Shutting it, I settled the locket back in its place against my skin. “The one in my necklace is safe. It was the transfer here. It had to be.”
“Or my interaction with the water. Each time I touch you, whether flesh to flesh or spirit to spirit, we pay a penalty. If we lose another seven, we’ll be left with but one. Are you willing to risk it, Juliet?”
His logic frayed to splinters and bruised my heart. I fell back onto the mattress, drew the covers over my head, and wept.
“The viscount cannot see you like this.” Enya had been scolding me since she came in and caught me with my face stuffed in the pillow, the locket clenched in my hand. My crying had awakened her.
Bewildered, Hawk sat on the edge of the bed where he’d perched after his observation about the petals brought me to tears. He had tried to apologize, tried to comfort, but I was inconsolable.
To wake in this strange place and encounter yet another barrier between us after such a glorious taste of hope; to anticipate breakfast with a man who embodied all of my beloved ghost’s features, behind which he harbored enough dark secrets to out-bluff the devil in a game of poker—it was too much. I was emotionally spent, and wanted nothing more than to crawl back to the gods of sleep and find my way to the dreams of death and music that brought me such comfort.
Enya clutched my elbow and steadied me to standing. “We’ll dress you, and find a way to hide the puffiness.” She patted the skin around my eyes, then moved the chair from the window and seated me before the mirrored bureau. I refused to look at the dead petals. Instead, I focused on my maid’s heart-shaped mouth in the reflection.
“We will call for a pitcher of water and make a compress.” She cinched her shawl around her chemise and rang the bell pull.
At the mention of water, Hawk growled in frustration and I bit back a new rush of sobs. My reflection didn’t help things—frizzed tangles and swollen eyes—the chaotic result of convulsing beneath the covers like a landed fish.
Finding a brush on a silver tray, I dragged it through my hair, wincing as the bristles snagged. I gave up and let the brush hang there in the knotted strands—a leech of wood and hog’s quills—sucking away every remaining ounce of my dignity.
Hawk stared out the window, silent as death.
“Tell his lordship I am ill,” I said to Enya when she returned to stand behind me. “I’m going back to bed.”
The maid clamped my shoulders and spun me along with the chair to face her. The brush, still attached by tangles, swung around and thumped my cheekbone. I winced at the resulting ache.
“You will do no such thing.” The freckles on Enya’s nose bounced as her face twitched. “You are to attend this breakfast. You are to be charming and demure. You will win the viscount’s heart and give your uncle the peace of mind and solitude he so richly deserves.”
Her command leveled me to awe. “Solitude? You want Uncle to be alone?”
Enya turned me around again and looked down so I couldn’t see her mouth. Had Hawk not been there to translate, I would have missed her response. “He will not be alone. He shall have me. Only me. At last.”
Hawk and I exchanged glances.
Enya tugged on the brush stuck in my hair, oblivious that I knew her heart’s deepest secret. I hardly noticed the pain at my scalp now. The gravity of her confession numbed al
l other sensations.
“I’ve suspected for some time,” Hawk said from beside the glass doors.
Why had I not seen the signs? A sidelong glance, a lingering pat on the back, the appearance of Uncle’s favorite food at each meal …
Enya and I had stayed up after our baths last night and ate together. First, she spoke of the weather, then of the mourning dresses I’d be wearing during our stay. But gradually, she opened up about Miss Abbot, how the head maid had been with the Thornton family since the viscount’s childhood. How she’d worked for his father before moving, along with several other familial servants, to the Larson estate under the young Lord Thornton’s request.
After that, all of our conversation centered around Uncle.
There was only one mention of the incident in my room in Claringwell. I explained that the pillow had been tucked behind my bed’s head frame making it appear to float—that Enya couldn’t see the wrought iron bars since they were the same white as the pillow dressing. She accepted the excuse too hastily, because she was eager to shift the subject back to her heart’s dearest obsession.
“On my mother’s grave,” I said aloud. “You love Uncle Owen.”
The tangled brush slipped from Enya’s hand and cracked my cheek again. Cringing, I patted what was sure to be a striking bruise to offset my puffy eyes.
Enya stumbled over to my bed’s edge and sat, burying her face in her hands. Hawk leaned against the double doors, looking on with interest.
I settled beside Enya. The mattress sunk beneath our combined weight.