“If ye like the apple fritters,” Hannah called behind him, “I be glad to make ye more when ye visit Johnny. Mayhap even some supper. Jest come by anytime.”
Nick turned to find the old woman had followed him to the side of the house. She wound her hands in her apron, awaiting Nick’s answer. Johnny had stayed in the cottage, already making himself at home.
“Ye can chop some firewood in exchange.” She grinned. “Always have tasks needin’ to be done. Have lots of neighbors who do, too. So we can put yer brothers to work, as well.”
“Brothers?” Nick asked.
“I saw them through the window earlier, waitin’ out front. Next time, ye can introduce us.”
Confused by the cryptic words, Nick nodded then led the pony around the cottage. When the hitch wagon came into view, he saw two stable hands waiting instead of one. Their backs faced him, but Nick couldn’t miss how the uniform sagged on the second one’s smaller, delicate frame.
Before she even turned at hearing his footsteps, Nick knew it was her … knew she’d been hiding beneath those blankets in the wagon … knew she’d been the cause of Tobias’ earlier unease.
“Miss Aislinn,” Nick scolded sharply.
Eyes as wide and deep as the ocean at midnight blinked under the boyish hat. Her dark locks were tucked into the brim and the exposed ivory skin flushed with shame. Or, on second glance, brash excitement. Her mischievous smile reminded him of her aunt when she teased or challenged him. He felt a pang, missing Felicity all the more—a void made even bigger without Johnny.
“What is that?” Aislinn asked. She reached for the parcel of clothes and pastries. Lifting a corner of the cloth, she inhaled deeply. “Mmm. Apple. My favorite.”
Nick stared at her, slack-jawed and speechless.
Her long lashes fluttered. “Where’s Johnny Boy?”
Tamping the stitch in his heart, Nick answered. “He’s going to keep this widow company for a while. You’ll be taking Butterscotch back to the castle for Lia in exchange.”
Tobias and Aislinn traded stunned glances then followed Nick’s gaze as he waved to the old woman framed inside the cottage window. Johnny Boy appeared next to her, his tongue lolling and his wet nose streaking the glass.
Aislinn returned her attention to Nick. “What a selfless thing for Johnny to do.” Her expression tendered as she smoothed her sagging uniform. “Sir Thornton, my aunt will be worried for me. You must see us home.”
“See you home?” Nick asked, still blindsided by her impromptu appearance.
She lifted her chin. “You cannot expect me to ride alone with a young man. I need a chaperone to protect my virtue. You insisted such to Tobias yourself, if you recall.”
Slanting a glare to Tobias, Nick watched the boy flame red from head to toe in acknowledgement of sharing their private talk.
When Nick turned again to Aislinn, she was already climbing into the wagon. Tobias moved to help her up, but Nick gave him a scowl and the stable boy pulled back. After handing off the pony to Tobias, Nick took Aislinn’s elbow and assisted her.
“You planned this all along,” he said, half accusing, half praising. “You stowed away so I’d have reason to return to the castle.”
She settled into place on the wagon’s seat and withdrew a fritter from its wrapping. “Good thing, too. Otherwise, you’d have missed Lia’s smile when she sees that gift you bartered … with your heart.”
Face hot with embarrassment, Nick climbed into the wagon on the opposite side of Tobias, placing Aislinn between them.
She handed them both a half of a fritter and licked her fingertips. “Now, let’s be on our way. Can’t have Auntie miffed with us.”
Nick took one last look at Johnny Boy. A knot formed in his throat. “No. We can’t have that.” Then he bit off a chunk of pastry and snapped the reins.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Jasper. Please. I know Aislinn’s visited you. She believes she’s reached you. Can you answer me?” Wincing at her resounding echo in the domed turret, Felicity laced her brother’s fingers tighter and squeezed. She’d been trying to coax a response for half an hour. No matter how much pressure she exerted, his hand remained limp.
Now, the slackness became a contagion, numbing her own limbs. She tucked his arm back at his side, pulled the sheets to his chin, and sank from the edge of his bed to the chilled floor.
She had imagined it all. It wasn’t her brother who’d possessed her to write the novel with Emilia. It was her own demented past that had poisoned her mind and made her insane. Just as she imagined the shadow in her bedchamber. She’d been so desperate to have him come back to her and the girls that she’d conjured these things out of thin air and dared to believe … dared to hope that Aislinn had performed a miracle.
Nostrils stinging from an amalgamation of candle wax and ammonia, Felicity studied her surroundings through bleary eyes. Two years gone by, yet nothing had changed. Still the same cobwebs along the vaulted ceiling, glistening in the milky daylight which filtered through six dirty windows no bigger than envelopes. Still the same bare, stone walls paired with a floor carpeted by the occasional avalanche of handwritten journals and lepidopterology tomes.
The familiar pot-bellied stove in the corner lent a warm glow. Clooney kept it filled with coke. The distilled remains of coal provided the perfect means to warm the room, emitting no flame and little smoke yet considerable heat.
Her gaze skipped to the small table beside Jasper’s bed where Clooney kept his medical accouterments. There, most daunting of all, sat the urn—Isabella’s remains keeping vigil over her dormant husband. An eerie still-life of loyalty marred by fate’s cruel paintbrush.
Jasper had been obsessed after Isabella died. So much like Nick, trying to find some way to reach his lost bride, to tell her things he’d neglected to say. Unlike Nick, Jasper had been driven by passionate love and went one step further. After he pored over the occult sciences to no avail, he turned to nature, seeking answers in his butterflies. At one point, he thought he’d found something, and it compelled him to travel to the orient for the jeweled longwings which soon thereafter became the mainstay of Felicity’s thriving business. Being rare and frail, most other caterpillar breeders avoided the Heliconious. But Jasper’s need to contact Isabella negated any such hesitation.
He had just had a breakthrough, was at the pinnacle of his studies, when he’d been struck down. Sometimes Felicity wondered what he’d learned, but Aislinn had that particular journal, and kept it hidden somewhere.
Perhaps, through his catatonia, Jasper had found a way back to Isabella. Fragile hope flickered in Felicity’s chest; it would be a comfort to know that he wasn’t the empty shell he appeared to be. That within his brilliant mind somewhere, he and Isabella were together on some level—convergent and at peace.
Shoving to stand, Felicity slid her back upward along the cold, hard wall until her shawl slipped off to puddle at her ankles. “Dear brother,” she whispered. “If only you could hear me.”
Jasper’s black lashes fanned slowly to shutter an empty blue gaze pointed to the ceiling. The only other movement was a steady breath from his nostrils, prompting the black hairs of his moustache and beard to part slightly. The rest of his thick hair spread over his entire pillow, smooth and glossy like an ink spill. Even in his hollow helplessness, he was beautiful.
It always hurt to see him. To have these outward bursts of life—the perpetual growth of hair, the blinking eyes, the swallowing when offered water or broth. His body’s mock functioning taunted her. This is why she’d left his daily care to Clooney. Why she’d stopped visiting shortly after he’d fallen into a catatonic stupor. This, and the grudge she’d held due to their rash pact.
After the initial stroke left the right side of his body paralyzed, he’d begged her never to let his daughters see him so helpless. Felicity watched him wrestle his inadequacies, saw him emotionally deteriorate to the point that he had to take doses of laudanum hourly.
; Considering he’d come to the estate to help her, she felt indebted to oblige him. She faked his death, soliciting Clooney’s help in making a counterfeit body filled with sand which they wrapped in sheets. They then employed the stable boys’ help to carry the corpse from the turret. They assured the servants and girls witnessed them placing him in the coffin before nailing it shut. Then, following Jasper’s instructions, Felicity and Clooney destroyed the final flight of stairs with the help of the stable hands, leaving everyone with the impression it had been an eccentric scientist’s dying request. Only she and Clooney were left with access via the secret passageway Jasper had found years earlier. A passage no one else knew of.
But when Felicity started making plans for his “funeral” in the forest, she saw how heart-broken the girls were after losing both their mother and father and realized how wrong the lie was. Unfortunately, the very day she was going to tell Jasper that she’d changed her mind, the day she’d intended to tell her nieces that their father still lived, he’d had a second stroke which rendered him suspended in this stasis without words or communication—locked in a purgatory where he drifted aimlessly along irreclaimable minutes and hours.
She’d lost the chance to go back on her word. For she knew, if her brother couldn’t bear having his children see him as half a man, it would kill him for them to see him as a vegetable. As it was, he was hanging to life by a very thin thread.
Being here with him now—his skin pale and shadowy, his once muscular tone atrophied and thin—all bitterness fell away.
So spindly and frail, he looked like a fairy prince woven from moonlight. For once, Felicity truly understood his viewpoint. Why he didn’t want his girls to see him in such a state. She felt as if she’d let him down … owed him an explanation for what had happened a few months ago.
“Aislinn had been watching Clooney and I, you see.” She spoke aloud, falling back into the habit of the one-sided conversations they’d shared since the beginning of his stasis. She paced the floor, her bare feet skating along the chill stone in an attempt to keep her thoughts on track. Her gown’s hem brushed her ankles.
“We were so careful with the servants and with Lia. But Aislinn…” Felicity bent to pick up a dusty picture book of butterflies. “Well, you know her, Jasper. She’s inquisitive, tricky, much like you. It’s a miracle we managed to keep it from her for that first year.”
She slanted her gaze from a vivid monarch to her brother’s motionless form. “And clever beyond her age. Beyond even mine. I assure you, she’s keeping the secret from Lia. In the past two years, she’s not whispered a word. And I’ll not let another soul know of your condition henceforth. You can trust me.”
Felicity paused, thinking she heard some movement behind her. Hairs lifted along her arms as if someone were watching her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing but the wall. Shrugging off the sensation, she padded to Jasper’s bed and eased down on the mattress.
Finding a picture of an Adonis Blue, she laid the book beside Jasper on the pillow and compared his empty blinking eyes to the butterfly’s spectacular blue wings. She smiled sadly.
“Not only does Aislinn have your mind, she has your eyes. You know this already. You saw her for yourself as she grew. But…” Hot tears edged her lashes as she touched the freckles on her brother’s straight, narrow nose. “But did you ever take the time to look? You were so busy searching for ways to reach Isabella … I fear you lost sight of the gifts she’d left behind for you.”
Moisture streaked down Felicity’s face. “Lia. Oh, Jasper, you should see her now. She is so beautiful, just like her mother. And such a bold little ingénue. Her seventh birthday’s coming up in a month. She wants a carousel.” Slapping at the tears, Felicity moved the book aside to stroke her brother’s silken hair. “I wish you were here. I wish you could see how they miss you every day … how very much they love you still. They speak of you constantly. They’re keeping your memory alive.”
The weight of those words heaved upon Felicity’s shoulders, to think of how she’d shut her eyes to everything that reminded her of him. She sobbed, burying her face against his neck. “Forgive me! I never forgot you! Never forgot the memories we shared.” Her strangled breaths bounced back from Jasper’s skin, warming her face. “I was angry. From the moment you left, all hell followed in your wake. And I needed you here to help. And you were here … but yet you weren’t.”
Resting her cheek against the sheet which covered his chest, Felicity struggled for composure. Her throat swelled with words. It was as if every thought she’d pent up for want of speaking now clawed for a turn to be free. “There’s a man, his name is Donal Landrigan … he was the earl’s son. He came after your second stroke … he means to take the estate. He’s so determined, I fear he’ll stop at nothing. He startled Aislinn from a tree, nigh caused Lia a snake bite … he even claims to know something of my past…” She sniffed, letting the tears run down her face and into the sheet beneath her. “He stole the pigs and has threatened to do as much to the girls … though he was very careful in his wording.” Thoughts of the incident reminded Felicity of Nick coming to her rescue that first day as she argued with Landrigan in the courtyard.
“Remember the young man I told you of? The one who saved me years ago? He found me again. His name is Nick. He’s a beautiful lost soul. He understands loneliness, and the loss of a child. He’s experienced both as intimately as I have.” She smiled sadly. “More so, even. Until coming here, his only friend was a dog. You should see how he talks to that hound.” Her smile faded. She and Nick truly were so much alike. It was their one comfort in an otherwise lonely existence to confide in sources that could not respond verbally.
She was so thankful Nick had Johnny Boy. Otherwise, he would be alone. So utterly alone.
“I couldn’t ask him to stay,” she nestled closer to Jasper and whispered against the damp sheet as if he’d heard her thoughts and bade an explanation. “He wants a son one day. I’ll not deprive him of things I cannot give. Things he deserves…”
The confession didn’t staunch her regret any more than it lightened her worry. She closed her eyes, trying to crush the image of opium tincture in her mind. “He’s strong. I know he is. He will find his way.” Taking a deep breath, she smoothed the shoulder seam on her brother’s shirt.
She pushed herself to sit up, wiping wetness from her cheek. She’d been idolizing her young hero for seven years. An unattainable infatuation that had carried her through her loneliest hours. When she finally met him, he was all she’d imagined and more. Not in spite of his flaws … because of them. They’d made him human, molded her fantasy hero into a man of flesh, bones, and blood with strengths and weaknesses. Just like her.
That was why her feelings had changed so abruptly. Why they’d flourished into real and tangible affection.
Or, if she dared look deeper, something even stronger…
Trying to busy herself lest she cry again, Felicity patted the sheet at Jasper’s neck, finding the fabric soaked. She folded the cover off his neck. The action exposed his chest where the nightshirt curled open and she noticed that a spattering of tiny red circles marred his skin.
“Odd.” Brows furrowed, she pulled his shirt back more. A startled whimper stuck in her throat. Ten or more longwing pupas hung from his skin beneath his clothes, attached as if he were a passion vine. The circles seemed to be indicative of ones that had been pulled off or fallen away.
Her pulse stuttered. Could this be the cause of the shortage all these months?
She took stock of when the pupa shortage first began. About three months ago … sometime after Aislinn had discovered Jasper’s final secret journal. Weeks later, perhaps. And then recently, the Dark Raven had begun to make his appearance.
Nick’s words in the greenhouse tangled with her reasoning. “Perhaps your brother has become one with the butterflies, perhaps his faith wasn’t so foolish after all.”
Aislinn’s statement solidified the sentime
nt: “I think I have found a way to bring father back to us.”
Felicity drew back in shock. Toppling off the bed, she nearly fell over. She recouped her footing and stood rigid and shivering, arms crossed over her breasts. “Aislinn … what have you done?”
A swishing sound swept by then a cool rush of air settled in front of her. Felicity felt her life drain to her toes.
She held her breath as he appeared—a faceless man shaped of butterfly shadows—just like the girls had described. Unable to move, to even moan, Felicity stared in awe as the shadows transformed to full color until Jasper stood over her, clearly imprinted on a thousand butterflies—as if the fluttery wings were the puzzle pieces which formed his image. He reached for her.
In disbelief, she reached back.
Just as her trembling fingers almost touched him, the door to the turret creaked open and Jasper’s image burst apart into a thousand butterflies, then vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
Chapter Twenty-two
Clooney stood in the open door of the turret, staring at Felicity with his mouth agape. An interminable silence passed between them and she knew without a doubt he’d been hiding something monumental for months. Before she could ask him about the miracle she’d just witnessed, Clooney spoke up.
“So, you saw.”
Dry-mouthed and dazed, she nodded.
Clooney stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. “Aislinn. She’s been in such torment. Please understand, I never meant for it to go this far. Didn’t realize how it was affecting your shipments until you mentioned it the other day. I was to put a stop to it this week, just hadn’t told her yet with all that’s happened.”
“You’ve seen him, too?” Felicity asked.
“I’m responsible in part.” Clooney strode to the bed, studying Jasper’s chest with where the pupal barnacles tagged his skin. “Those two years ago, when Aislinn discovered Jasper’s body here, she also overheard you and I hypothesizing about your odd writing stints. How you thought it impossible it could be him, since he wasn’t actually dead. She came to me in secret, said that if his spirit was capable of leaving his body to enter yours, well … we might be able to heal his body and lure him back into it, for it proved he was still here in our world, and not another plane. For months, she read his findings to no avail, until she stumbled upon his final journal. Within it was a passage that outlined the rejuvenating abilities of the jeweled longwing pupas. She begged to try an experiment in hopes to bring him back. I hadn’t the heart to tell her no. But all it’s done is feed the child’s imagination. She’s convinced now that the ‘shadow’ she claims to see is her father, and that he’s connected to that strange fungus. We’ll put a stop to it today. Obviously, it hasn’t worked.”
The Glass Butterfly Page 23