The Architect of Song Page 13

  I glanced down at my fingers where they nestled in Uncle’s hand, wishing there were some way to show Hawk my appreciation.

  “A lady traditionally repays her knight with a kiss.” His eyes held a teasing glint. “But since that’s out of the question, I’ve another idea. When next you bathe,” his gaze roved the faces of our returning coachmen, “which, after such a taxing journey, will no doubt be tonight … what say you allow me to watch?”

  I kneaded my hands in my lap. You’re asking me to make myself vulnerable, in a way you never will be to me.

  Hawk trailed a fingertip along his shirt placket. “Well, if you'd like me to strip down, too, I'll be happy to oblige. You're the one who will have to see me naked every moment of every day thereafter. Though I suppose it would give me a new place to hang my pocket watch.”

  I emitted a shocked snort and Uncle pinned a glance on me. To resist Hawk’s infectious laugh, I busied myself studying the room. My attention landed on the entrance where Lord Thornton was helping the burly bartender escort the troublemakers through the door. It appeared he hadn’t yet made it to the stables, and something told me he had never intended to go there in the first place.

  A plump matron intruded on my line of sight. Shifting from one foot to the other, she sputtered the choice of fare. Her lips moved too fast to read.

  Uncle repeated the options, beating Hawk by a blink. I ordered the stewed beef and a steamed chocolate to soothe my stomach.

  When our drinks arrived, the chocolate’s sweet, creamy aroma curled through me. Enya nursed her tea and avoided my glance. She had spoken little to me since the pillow incident and I missed our closeness, especially now.

  Uncle had his back turned to talk to the coachman next to him, no doubt discussing the remainder of the trip. My attention settled on our bar matron who delivered drinks to the tigers at the far end of the table. Her mouth shaped Lord Thornton’s name, but I couldn’t make out what she said. Frustrated, I asked Hawk to listen in.

  Standing beside me, he scanned the room, oblivious to my thoughts for once. “Several men just slipped into an alcove in back. The entrance is tucked behind that stone antechamber and guarded by a watchman. I believe it’s a gambling hall.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, wondering why it would need to be guarded.

  His teeth gnawed his bottom lip. “There must be a great amount of money at stake. Juliet, this place … feels familiar.”

  He had my full attention. The other time he’d said that, we found the journal in a gypsy camp. Have you had a memory?

  The ropelike muscles along his neck corded. “Nothing quite as substantial as a memory. More of a … moment. Something to do with a paneled glass humidor and a deck of cards.”

  I frowned.

  Hawk raked a hand through his hair to smooth it. “Perhaps I gave someone a card dukkerin here, and they paid me with a humidor.”

  I’d learned bits of the gypsy language while he’d read his journal to me. Dukkerin meant a fortune telling.

  Taking another sip of chocolate, I asked if I should help him explore the secret room.

  “No. There’s a door and a wall. We would get separated and spurn a petal. Besides, you require my help hearing something?”

  With a grateful smile, I gestured toward the matron.

  Hawk moved closer to her captive audience. “She just told the tigers that my brother used to frequent this place. According to her, Nicolas had a weakness for liquor which made him loose with his money … and his bed. It appears he’ll chase anything in a skirt. And she says he has a past history of going into rages—almost killed a man once. This is his first appearance back in some years, and he still brought trouble to their doorstep.” Hawk pursed his lips, somber and suspicious. “My brother’s been ostracized from high society. No doubt to the point he no longer has the option of capturing a debutante bride. Perhaps that is where you come in.”

  A queasy knot roiled in my stomach. It angered me, to know the viscount was pretending to take pity on a deaf girl to win favor with the elite, to secure success for his beloved manor’s debut. Preying upon a physical shortcoming he had claimed to empathize with due to his own gimp leg. At least now I knew this attempted betrothal was a farce from every side.

  The food arrived, but I couldn’t swallow much of the stew.

  Hawk moved closer to the conversation on the other end. “It’s rumored Nicolas had a weakness for gambling. He frequented the gaming hells quite often. Lost much of our father’s wealth. Some seven years ago.” Hawk narrowed his eyes just as I realized what he was thinking. That was right around the time Lord Thornton acquired the Larson estate and the ochre mines. How could he have afforded such a purchase, if he had already lost his money?

  “Interesting,” Hawk answered, watching one of the viscount’s drivers answer the matron. “According to the tiger, Nicolas has been squandering money left and right for that manor ever since. He sold his family’s stables and estate from under his father’s nose for funding. And no one has seen the eldest Thornton for some time.”

  Hawk’s gaze met mine and I gulped a half-chewed bite. I watched the matron leave to tend other patrons. The tigers still spoke among themselves, and Hawk seemed captivated by their words.

  What happened to the eldest viscount? Do they know where he lives now?

  “Perhaps the question we should be asking is if he lives at all,” Hawk said. “For a nobleman to inherit his father’s title and estate without the predecessor first dying is nigh unheard of. Maybe the elder viscount’s body is buried alongside me. Somewhere in the mines.”

  My sip of chocolate soured on my tongue.

  “Or perhaps he’s in the castle at my brother’s lofty estate,” Hawk continued, his attention still on the tigers. “They speak of a secret room in the dungeon. They’ve seen boxes opened after they’re carried down, all of them containing disturbing and monstrous oddities. Medieval torture devices, mutated animal fetuses in jars of formaldehyde, creaturely skeletons wired together in mismatched masterpieces—fused and mounted for display, like scientific experiments gone awry. He has a proclivity for the macabre and demented, Juliet.” Hawk moved back next to me. “I fear what you are going to encounter at this manor of nightmares.”

  My skin prickled beneath my clothes, not only for Hawk’s formidable insinuations, but because right at that moment, Lord Thornton returned.

  He took a seat on the other side of Uncle, his hair messy and his clothes torn. Slashes of fresh blood shimmered on his knuckles and smeared his shirt—belonging either to him, or to the man he’d escorted out.

  The viscount caught me staring and wiped his hand on a napkin, then drew his cape across his disheveled shirt, his eyes hooded in darkness once more.

  When at last we crossed into Worthington, a violet sunset struggled to break through low-hanging clouds. My eyelids grew heavy with weariness, and my heart with fear. I couldn’t tell Uncle of the unsavory rumors surrounding the viscount. In much the same as I couldn’t tell him of Lord Thornton’s familial connection to the gypsy woman we rescued. For somehow, though Hawk and I had yet to unravel the mystery behind their birth-parting, these men shared Romani blood.

  How would I explain knowledge of such things?

  During the final two hours of our trip, Hawk and I secretly spoke of his brother until I became overwrought. He put a stop to the mental dialogue, vowing to protect me by any means necessary. And he’d proven with the wolf and the inebriates at the tavern he could do just that.

  From the top of a tall hill the estate appeared, nestled within a valley of snow-capped trees meshed together like crocheted lace. We took a steep, cobbled roadway, sanded in preparation, and wound through the forest toward a set of wrought iron gates. On the other side was a clearing surrounded by a wall of stone. In the center, the castle loomed over two smaller edifices.

  Twilight moved across the glistening snow. I had hoped to look upon the manor in the light of day. Seeing it in darkness tightened the
shackles of mystery and apprehension already locked around me.

  Our berline swayed as the head tiger descended to open the black barred gates. Two slivers of wood hung on the stone walls at either side, bearing strange markings painted in ochre-red and glazed by moonlight.

  “Gypsy rune-signs,” Hawk informed me.

  I didn’t question why the viscount would have such symbols upon entrance to his Manor. I wanted to assume, per his earlier handwritten note, that just as he purchased the mines, he did this in honor of Chaine and his heritage. But after learning of Lord Thornton’s darker tendencies, I wasn’t so sure of the motives behind anything he did.

  “The one on the left is the pentacle of Solomon,” Hawk explained. “It attracts prosperity. It’s harmless enough. Though I can’t decipher the one on the right.”

  Hawk’s memory had sharpened with each step closer to the quarry. In the hours since supper, he’d experienced several images from his past: a table cluttered with mechanical drawings; the same old man who read him fairytales, working over a jumbled array of gears; and the scent of ink, coal-oil, and feathers. Although none made any sense, it encouraged Hawk to have them.

  As we rolled through the gates, I concentrated on the unsolved rune and memorized the symbol so I might draw it later in my chamber. Surely Hawk would recognize it in time, if he could study it.

  I didn’t notice the other carriages parting ways with us, taking the viscount with them, until we came to a stop and Uncle patted my hand from the seat opposite me.

  He took Hawk’s flower as the carriage door opened to reveal two footmen in scarlet waistcoats and pumpkin orange breeches waiting at the bottom of the step. I staunched the fear within, and pasted a false smile over my suspicions, as I reached for their hands and stepped down into the viscount’s world of shadows and lies.

  Chapter 15

  The night rinses what the day has soaped.

  Swiss Proverb

  My legs gave out upon my descent from the carriage, atrophied from sitting in one position too long. The viscount must have apprised his servants of my deafness, for neither footman spoke a word as they supported me.

  “Oh, they are speaking,” Hawk assured me. “Albeit furtively. They consider you an upstart for aspiring to marry their master, a man above your class.”

  I hadn’t considered what the viscount’s servants would feel towards me for trying rise above them. An awkward shame flickered within my chest.

  “No, Juliet,” Hawk scolded. “They should be ashamed for judging you when it’s my brother beneath your station. With a history like his, he doesn’t deserve even a passing glance from such a lady.”

  Uncle Owen handed me the flower pot and climbed out behind me. After assisting Enya, he turned his attention to the footmen. Their mouths moved but I made no attempt to read them in the darkness. Only our steps were lit by the torches. I trusted Hawk to relay anything of importance.

  Behind us, the star tower rose to the sky. A giant clock nestled at the top, with a face as square as Hawk’s pocket watch—so similar in fact, it appeared to have been made by the same craftsman. Hawk heard my silent observation, and we shared a curious glance.

  The snow-crisped air carried the underlying scent of ochre. The Rat King picture danced in my mind’s eye along with a memory, solely belonging to me and Hawk: a young girl in the belly of a tunnel with her mud prince.

  “The castle is being prepared for the patrons.” Hawk’s voice drifted to me, offering a reprieve from my macabre musings. “We’re to stay in the Viscount’s townhouse with the rest of his staff.” The spacious three-story edifice sported two-tones of paint. Morning would reveal what extravagant and discordant color scheme the viscount had chosen, but even at night one could discern the exquisite design and unusual ric-rac paneling which ran the length of the townhouse and tipped the coned and spiked turrets.

  Uncle guided me behind the footmen bearing our personal luggage. On our way to the door, I noted a circular balcony on the third floor at the left corner of the home’s front, arranged along a turret with picture windows on each of the two lower stories.

  There was movement from behind the window on the first floor, and I wondered if we would have to face the viscount again tonight.

  “He’s busy overseeing the placement of your birds and plants in the enclosed garden,” Hawk answered. “But, he has arranged baths for all of you in anticipation of your weary bones. How fortuitous.” He grinned and held his pocket watch up. “Time to try this on for size.”

  I bit my lip to hide a smirk, but heat flared through my neck and face, knowing he was only half-teasing.

  We followed Uncle and Enya into the house, led by a middle-aged, lantern-bearing housemaid dressed in an orange frock, scarlet apron, and a mossy-green snood over her hair. I wondered upon the staff’s outrageous uniforms, how similar their vivid color schemes and fabric designs were to the items in the trunk that had belonged to Hawk’s gypsy aunt. Perhaps everything here was meant to honor the viscount’s gypsy heritage.

  The head housekeeper, introducing herself as Miss Abbot, asked for our coats and gloves. She then brought us to an expanded hallway along marble floors polished to such perfection I felt as if I skated on ice.

  Arched pilasters guided the eye to two sets of stairs on opposite ends. Evergreen and berry garlands ornamented the walls in honor of the upcoming Christmas holiday, and a citrus tang—reminiscent of the special wassail Enya made each year—tickled my nose as we passed dwarfish orange trees trimmed with red and green bows.

  A house steward came to lead Uncle in the opposite direction, explaining that the ladies’ south-side quarters were isolated from the men’s on the north wing. Uncle hugged me and bid me goodnight, though he glanced over his shoulder several times as we parted.

  We ascended our staircase with Enya and Miss Abbot almost nose to nose in conversation and tossing glances my direction. I hugged Hawk’s potted flower, clenching the cold wrought-iron rails with my other hand. As we passed the second story, curiosity got the best of me and I broke down to ask Hawk what the maids spoke of.

  But he didn’t hear, too intent on the high stucco ceiling.

  “What hell is this,” he mumbled and I paused mid step, slanting my gaze upward.

  A line of macabre rats was sketched within the white plaster by an artist’s tool. The design ran amuck along the ceiling to taint what otherwise would have been an architectural masterpiece.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Hawk perched next to me. “That he had all of this done for me? Some form of … brotherly penance … to make amends for his better life? Or was it a sadistic barb at my expense?”

  I had no response. I’d realized tonight that this man—who wore my beloved ghost’s features like a mask—could be any number of things: A murderer, a rogue, an architectural genius, a sadist, a loving brother, a kind guest and host.

  I had no idea which was his true face.

  The maids waited on the staircase four steps ahead for me to follow. At the top of the stairs, we walked a long corridor with closed doors running both sides. Coming to the end, Miss Abbot wriggled a key within a brass knob and swept us into a spacious corner chamber where cheerful flames danced inside a white brick fireplace. Tall ceramic vases filled with lotuses and lilies released a stale wine scent from either side of the hearth.

  “This is the Water-Lily Room. My brother insisted you have it.” Distrust edged Hawk’s voice as he translated the maid’s explanation. His attention stalled on the larger than life-sized portrait of a Romani beauty—in a colorful dress and long, brown braids interwoven with red ribbons—taking up most of one wall.

  “Her eyes … I know those eyes.” Hawk’s ghostly whisper was so reverently quiet, I almost didn’t hear him. He stopped before the painting, and I didn’t respond, giving him privacy in hopes it might spark the memory he was struggling to reach.

  It wasn’t difficult to give him his distance, for I was enthralled with my surroundings. I stepped ins
ide, my feet springing atop an imperial carpet of delicate fleurons staggered upon a rich salmon background. Turquoise wall paper—with flying birds and ivy-covered trellises hand-blocked in aqueous tones—stretched around the room to meet in the center of the domed ceiling. It gave the illusion of standing within a globe with water pressed against the surrounding glass walls. A reverse aquarium.

  White molding paneled the lower halves of the wall, and a four poster bed of the same color sat in the corner. Layers of silk draped the bedposts in shades of salmon and turquoise with matching sheets, blankets, and pillows.

  The room had little other furniture; a wardrobe, a mirrored dressing bureau with wing-backed chair, and a Secretaire—all painted white like the wall’s panels.

  Miss Abbot strode past the fireplace where a tub of steaming water waited for my bath. To the left of the bureau, she opened a door, revealing the adjoining servant’s alcove in which Enya would stay. Enya ducked inside and I used the opportunity to get the housemaid’s attention.

  “Did the viscount decorate this room?” I asked.

  As if shocked that I could speak, the maid stammered. “Of course. As he did all of them.” She elaborated on her answer while turning her head to see about Enya. I lost my connection to her lips and Hawk turned away from the portrait to help me, to fill in missing words. I asked him stop. The staff of a household often knew more about their master than he wished them to know. For that reason I needed to gain their trust.

  I set the flower pot on the bureau and patted Miss Abbot’s wrist to urge her to look at me. “I must see your mouth to read your words.” I pointed at my lips. “Can you repeat what you said?”

  Twisting her apron’s hem, she nodded. There was a pinched quality to her cheeks which made her appear to be sucking something bitter. But she made an effort to speak slowly, a compassion contradictory to her sour expression. “His lordship designed this entire estate.” She glanced at the gypsy portrait on the opposite wall beside Hawk. “Also painted the artwork.” An odd expression passed through her face before she continued. “Even as a lad he was creative. A designer of sorts. Had the plans for this estate drawn up many years before he bought this land. Been his dream since childhood.” At the confession, she brought her fingers to her mouth, as if she’d said too much.