by A. G. Howard
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?”
Chapter 37
A hard beginning maketh a good ending.
The Proverbs of John Heywood (1546)
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.
After our vows, so heartfelt and
sincere our audience wept, Chaine and I rode into the forest on Draba to immerse ourselves in a hot spring and consummate our love beneath a star-filled sky.
For so long I had dreaded my first time with a man—concerned my deafness would impede our enjoyment, that I’d feel alone and awkward in the silence. Yet, I discovered when one has the right partner sensation becomes its own symphony, performed by two hearts. My husband played me like a beloved instrument, teaching me to play him, too. With each tender sweep of his knowing fingers as he bared my flesh to the night, part of my innocence fell away like broken notes. And I relished the raw harmony he exposed.
He led me to the water’s edge, his eyes never leaving my body. There, I bared him of his clothes and couldn’t resist learning every facet of his moonlit nakedness, each part of him lit-up in rhythmic flashes reflected off the water.
His sheer perfection beguiled me.
He lifted me to sit upon a smooth rock and stepped into the spring, his face level with my waist as he submerged up to his chest. He coaxed me to take a bow, my body arching like a harp, curled over him so he could strum my strings with kisses. My skin flashed from chill to flame upon the flavor and scent of him combined with the night air. His lips and tongue dragged lower and lower still, tasting every facet of my woman’s body, even the hidden places no other man … or ghost … had ever laid claim to. He tortured, teased, and titillated, until I gasped with every touch.
When he brought me down into the water, the warm slickness of the spring offered a calming welcome—a contrast to his intensity. The song had reached its cadenza, and it was time for our duet to become a solo. Chaine’s gentleness gave way to our fervent, fiery need to unite our souls. Until that moment, I never knew pain and pleasure could be as one. His mouth pressed unheard words of encouragement and love to my ear—his panting breath hot, his teeth nibbling. I didn’t need to hear him, for his every touch sang to my flesh in a vernacular more potent than words or sounds.
At the peak of rapture, another song lit within me—the resurgence of Hawk’s baritone—as powerful and enduring as when he shared my mind. It was the manifestation of his vow … that I would never be without music again.
And beneath my husband’s tears, for I could taste them on my face mingled with my own, I danced in the rain like I once did as a child. Only this time, I was powerful and uninhibited, dancing as a woman and a bride.
It was mid-July when Chaine, Father Merril, and I at last made a journey to Claringwell to attend Enya and Uncle’s wedding. They planned to return to the Manor after a weeklong honeymoon. They enjoyed working in the boutique, and had come to love the estate with its vine-covered arbors, flowing streams, and grassy slopes, every bit as much as I.
By this time, Chaine and I had been married—publicly—for over four months. Although in truth it had been six.
After attending Uncle and Enya’s nuptials, we visited with family and friends at the old house. My nightingale adored my husband like all animals did, and sang to him with fluffed feathers until he opened her cage and preened her with a fingertip. Uncle’s spaniel followed Chaine from one room to the next as if his pockets were filled with mutton. And Enya’s brothers and sisters idolized his gypsy heritage—the girls for his charming fairytales, and the boys for the card tricks he shared. I had never seen him so happy, to at last be surrounded and accepted by a loving family of his own.
In the late afternoon, Chaine and I slipped out to visit the cemetery wherein I had first seen him and contacted his brother’s spirit … the place where love had waited so patiently for me to find it.
We carried Hawk’s flower stem in its terrarium. Ever since his departure, I had planned to one day plant it again where it belonged, in hopes it would bloom anew.
The sun cast a golden glow all around us and a warm breeze blew over the grasses. My husband and I walked hand in hand. He limped with grace, leaning on his cane as we wove through statues and headstones, the scent of honeysuckle and lilacs thick with the season. We paid tribute to Mama and Papa, leaving China roses upon the ground. Then, after Chaine took me in his arms and kissed my tears away, we passed the two angels that stood guard over the dead.
As we arrived at the enclosed grave, Chaine fished out the key his aunt had given him and opened the gate so we could enter together.
He wouldn’t let me help dig the hole, for I carried his seed within my womb, a condition which brought about a most endearing protective streak in my Romani prince.
Lifting the flower from the terrarium and the pot, he settled it within its new home and raked soil around the roots. Once he’d patted the loose sod into place, he dusted off his gloves and studied the stem.
He looked up at me, curious. “There are buds forming.”
I feigned surprise. In truth, I had seen them already—a month earlier. On the day I realized I was pregnant, two bumps appeared upon the barren stem, too tiny to be seen by anyone other than the plant’s caregiver. It was a sign: God’s way of righting a wrong brought about by the greed of arrogant, foolish men.
There was no question in my mind. I was carrying twins—Chaine’s sons. Two brothers who would never be parted and would know more love, joy, and gentleness than any children who had ever walked the earth.
And they would be born with music in their hearts. For in them would live the songs of their uncle Nicolas, the brilliant architect who built a cathedral of melodies that now sprang eternal within the forgotten silences of my soul.