by A. G. Howard
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.
Chapter 30
In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.
French Proverb
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.
The viscount shut the door at the top of the staircase as he chased me, cutting off my contact with his brother. My ghost would be cast into the purgatory he hated—until I could bring him back with a new petal—fighting more than the demons of darkness. Now he had demons within himself.
My host entered my chamber behind me and closed the portrait as I whirled to face him. We stared at one another, winded from our race down the stairs. I felt utterly naked in my underthings, not only stripped of modesty, but of balance. With his true identity revealed, nothing stood us between us but shadows, flickering light, and a pile of pillows.
“Enya?” His lips formed the maid’s name as his gaze ran the length of me from head to toe.
“Downstairs. Your limp?” My mind shook so fast I could think of nothing else to say.
The viscount’s eyes darkened. “Never had one.” He leaned a broad shoulder against the picture, looking vulnerable yet ominous—a pigeon with a serpent’s bite.
I considered his raspberry breeches and the clashing purple shirt, at last understanding the flash of his clothes … the black and white of his chambers. It wasn’t a gypsy eccentricity. He had no concept of color, for he was color blind. The only thing that made sense as to the tasteful décor of the townhouse and castle, was to assume he had used his brother Hawk’s—no, Nicolas’s—architectural layouts, the plans Miss Abbot spoke of to Enya. He must have followed them to the letter when he stepped into Lord Thornton’s life. Just as he marked his brother’s headstone with his own nickname.
My host picked his way through mountains of pillows toward the door. He appraised my bed’s messy covers on the way, no doubt assuming I’d been napping as he suggested.
Once he’d locked my latch, he centered his attention on me.
Feeling the room shrink two sizes, I stiffened. “You are not the architect.”
“No. I am the artist.”
Confusion lumped in my throat. “Everything you have told me is a lie.”
“Not so.” He cast a soulful glance to the beautiful portrait we’d just stepped through, then looked back at me to assure I could see his mouth. “Everything has been true. Told through my brother’s eyes.”
I swallowed. “Your reaction at the gravesite, your anger toward him?”
The viscount clenched his fists. “I never wanted to take his name. To live a nobleman’s life. He didn’t listen to me. Made a hasty decision and left me standing in the wake of his folly—alone without him once again. But I made a vow, to take care of our father. To build Nicolae’s palace of dreams. It’s imperative you keep my secret, and tell no one my aunt is here.”
I struggled to frame my rattled thoughts. “Did you have anything to do with your brother’s death?”
In contrast to his bright costume, the viscount drained of color. “Holy Devla, woman. Does your distrust know no bounds?”
Ashamed of the accusation, I framed a new question. “Did Larson kill Nicolas … did he take your brother from you?”
As if avoiding a punch, my host flinched. “No. But his greed had a hand in it.”
“Then who?”
He paused, studying his palms in the firelight. “Tobar.”
I did not need to hear his voice. I could feel the repulsion snarling his lips upon his step-father’s name. To think of all the things that monster had done to Chaine—the man standing before me now—and then to have killed Nicolas as well? Rage simmered in my heart, softened only by my compassion for all Chaine had endured, both in his past and present.
Fire-sheen dusted the sculpted lines of his high-boned cheeks, glistened upon the turn of his auburn-tipped hair.
His whiskered jaw clenched—a ravaged gypsy prince in a foreign land. All this time, I’d failed to notice how out of place he was … until this very moment. But one thing I had noticed from the beginning—this man was an enigma. Even more so, now.
Gentle and steadfast, despite all of the torments of his childhood, as testified by how he cared for his family and staff, how he adored nature and animals. As testified by his loyalty to a girl he had not seen in thirteen years.
“So … it is true? You were never after my estate?”
His expression tendered. “Lord no. I hated putting you through that. I’d found your interview in Larson’s files years ago, long before I met your uncle … long before he had me look for it. I knew it was you by the date. But there was no name, no town wherein you lived. For years, I traversed all of England, asking at local taverns if anyone knew of a child who had almost died in the Larson mines years earlier. Finally, I came to Claringwell, and someone directed me to you. The young, deaf milliner whose mother was ill. I couldn’t come forward as myself, for by then I wore my brother’s shoes. So I pretended to want to buy your estate to have a reason to see you.”
For so long, he’d searched. Such devotion humbled me. It must have been so difficult for him not to confess the truth upon our meeting in my home. “The bird. The bird with the fractured wing. You drew it on the bench at the gazebo today. You were trying to tell me.”
He nodded, a studious slant to his chin.
I should’ve known. So much like the sketches in the journal, and the ones in the writing desk of his chamber. My fingers clutched the puffy legs of my pantlets, twisting the cotton between them.
“I’ve wanted to tell you since the moment I saw you at the cemetery,” he said, standing rigid in front of the door. He appeared distracted by my hands’ activity.
I released my pantlets and laced my fingers in front of my waist.
He relaxed and propped his shoulder blades against the wall. “All these weeks, I waited for you to come. Then when you arrived, it was hell. Every day I walked in the shadow of my brother’s sins, and you despised me for it. But I had to know you would accept me, no matter what my past entailed. I had to know I could trust you.”
My mouth went dry. “So today you drew the bird … as I’d finally made peace with your—Nicolas’s—reputation.”
“And now the lies shall end. At least between us.”
I, too, wanted us to strive for the honesty lacking since that first day in Claringwell. Trembling, I made my way over to my trunk and fished out the journal with the stolen excerpts folded inside. I held it out.
He didn’t budge—didn’t even look surprised. “I don’t mind that you took it. I had Aunt Bitti bury it in the grave for a reason. I wish to forget my past. All but one scene.”
Our scene.
His hand raked through his hair, shoving long strands from his forehead. He penetrated my lingerie with his gaze of smoke.
From the corner of my eye, I glanced at Hawk’s blossom. “And what of the flower?” I asked, defenseless beneath the intensity of his stare.
“Ah. Well, that I needed. Nicolae desired to come back. It was the last thing he said to me. It is why my aunt planted seeds with the caul, because he had something yet undone. But she’s having no luck summoning him, even with the petals she gathered from your room. She believes you might have … she believes …”
“That his spirit has visited me?”
The viscount’s jaw clenched. “She said you knew of the pocket watch he made for me, of the engraving upon the back. He had it with him when he died.”
Of course. That had to be why it didn’t disappear with Hawk’s clothes when he dropped it our first night. Because it never belonged to him as the other things had.
My host’s countenance softened. “It was his gift to me. To show me I had moved on from my past. To show me I controlled my future; that time was no longer my enemy.”
This glimpse of their affection for one another made me hurt inside … for all of their lost moments … for the years they would never get back. More than anything, I wanted to give Chaine hope. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to disclose everything. Not until I discussed it with Hawk. For now, a half-truth would have to suffice.
“Your brother has visited me. In dreams.”
His face lit.
“Is this why you wanted to court me, why you invited me to stay at the Manor?” I asked. “So you would have access to the flower, to my thoughts?”
My host angled his head in a scolding gesture. “You know the reason.”
“Yet I cannot fathom it.”
“You were my”—he pounded his chest—“desrobireja. My emancipation from a life of slavery. You saved me from killing myself.”
“I was just a blundering child …”
“No. You were light and hope. An angel.” A wrinkle formed between his brows. “Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a young man who lived in a hole. He was the prince of mud and grime. The rats were his chancellors, the spiders his stewards, and the salamanders his jesters of rhyme.”
Hand clasped to my mouth, I choked—memory surfacing at the words upon those lips. The beginning of the fairytale. The fairytale told to me in the mine so many years ago. Hawk had never been able to remember it. I hadn’t either, until now.
I squeezed the journal and shivered as all the terror of the event came to dance upon my heart: plunging into a shaft that seemed to have no end; my shins and arms torn by jagged wood and tree branches; bugs and rats scraping me with their claws and spindly legs. But the boy … he broke my fall.
He brushed the vermin away, ministered to my wounds with soothing red mud. He worked leaves and pebbles from my hair and cooed to me, comforting and calm. When my crying ebbed, he made up a fairytale rhyme so I would not fear the creatures sharing the darkness with us.
From beneath my down-turned lashes, I caught my host’s movement when he took a cautious step forward, as if trying not to frighten me. I watched his mouth recite the second verse, but had no need to read it. For I was back in my memory, sitting beside him in the tunnel, hearing his beautiful young voice.
“There the prince lived, alone and unkempt, with no one to tend to his hunger and stench. Until an angel fell from the sky. She combed out his tangles, mended his trousers, and fed him plums and gingerbread pie.”
My legs shook, inconstant, like sheets fluttering on a line. I tried to steady them as he took another step.
“The finest of friends, they both came to be … 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 to fly.”
I stood, rooted in place, unable to speak, tears banked behind my eyelids.
“Say something.” His unexpected request knocked me off kilter. “I need to hear your voice.”
He needed to hear me? He knew nothing of need … nothing of how I longed to hear his voice, to know if it matched the pleading turn of his brow.
“Please, Juliet.” He strode toward me, kicking pillows to clear a path.
I backed up to my chair and plopped down with the journal clutched to my breasts. “Chaine.”
My breath froze as he dropped to my feet.
Jerking the book from my hands, he flung it away and clasped the chair on either side of my hips. “Thank you. Thank you for saving me.”
Was I dreaming? My mud prince, the boy-hero from my childhood, knelt before me as a man—flesh and blood and bones—profound gratitude etched in every minute line of his face.
Without warning, his head buried in my lap.
As if it all came back to him in a crushing blow, he wept like a child—flaming tears that saturated the cotton and singed my thighs. I wove my hands through the hair at his nape, letting the length slide through my fingers in strands of silken chocolate. I suppressed my answering sobs. It was my turn now, to be strong. To cradle and comfort.
In the absen
ce of Hawk’s presence, a profound silence roared in my ears, a lovely silence that spoke of forsaken dreams recovered, of lost moments recaptured, of a broken boy stepping up to reclaim his manhood. A silence not to be abhorred, but to be honored.
Time wrapped around us, a cocoon of minutes and seconds binding our emotions in a symbiotic exchange. His lips mimed indecipherable words against my lap, his breath heated my thighs—intimate, fragile sensations.
I lifted his head and placed my palms on his wet cheeks. He slid his fingers up my ribs over my chemise, a slow skim along the outside of my breasts which made my lips part in a tortured gasp. When he reached the nape of my neck, he drew out the pins holding my hair until it fell in a golden rush around my shoulders.
He mouthed the word, “beautiful,” with such conviction, I believed it was true.
Leaning forward, he nuzzled my hair. His breath sent a shimmer of sensation through my neck and into my stomach. His abdomen—a firm press at my knees—grew corded and tense as he drew back so our noses touched and our breaths mingled.
His lips took mine—no longer cautious, but a confident, languorous pressure that awakened my body. Sampling the outline of my mouth with his tongue, he left me writhing in anguish beneath a tease of whiskers. Then sweet union again in a kiss—tangible, delicious, real.
I couldn’t hear his passion, but I felt it. In the moan at his chest where my hand sought his heartbeat, in the shift to insistent exploration as he nudged his tongue to break the seal of my lips. I allowed him passage, allowed him to fill me.
I became drunk with it—the slickness of his teeth and tongue, the taste of salted tears and almond liquor. So drunk, I might’ve imagined his hand moving down … down toward my neck … across my décolleté.
I sobbed into his mouth in anticipation.
Answering my need, his palm cupped my right breast over the cotton—full contact—thumb skimming a slow circle. I arched into the resistance that met me—this man, this body afire and unyielding, meeting my every demand with acute proficiency.