The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (23 page)

“I know your uncle has some reservations.” The soft crinkles at his eyes turned upward in an earnest smile. “But would you like to learn?”

I tugged the handkerchief through my fingers a second time. If I were to become adept at riding, Hawk and I could explore the grounds outside the Manor walls while we were here. Possibly even find his mine. “Yes.” Then I wondered how far this man was willing to go to win my favor. “But I should like to sit astride the horse. Side saddle is impractical.”

I expected him to be put off by my boldness, but he nodded in agreement.

“And …” I bit my lip to appear coquettish, but there was no humility in my heart. “Let it be a surprise for my uncle.”

The viscount shook his head. “I’d rather discuss it with him. I do not wish to go behind his back, or fall from his favor.”

“What of my favor, my lord? Do you wish to fall from it?”

His fingers tapped the bench between us. “Ah. That would be a much more perilous climb to regain footing.” His teasing grin boosted my confidence.

“You would teach me then, in secret?”

His gaze shifted to the clouds above. “I will teach you,” he said simply. “You seem very eager to learn. Why is that?”

I couldn’t tell him about searching for his brother’s body. But there was the other reason: I had always wanted the freedom of flying atop a horse’s back. And since I couldn’t float through tables and drift in place like Hawk, I believed that would be the closest thing to having wings. “There are many things to accomplish on this side of death. Riding is merely one of them.”

“And why would a lady, so young as you, be entertaining thoughts of death?”

I clamped my lips tight.

He stroked the feather in his vest’s pocket. “I understand. The loss of a mother does change one’s vision of the world. Brings to light one’s own mortality—often with nightmarish clarity.” The shadows returned to his eyes.

“How old were you when you lost yours?” I asked, for his remark was personal and intimate. Hawk needed details of their elusive mother, and how his gypsy heritage came to be.

The meditative mask over my host’s face crumbled away, as if someone woke him from a dream. “That, Miss Emerline, is a story for another time. Some afternoon when you’re cozied by the fire, drinking the chocolate you’re so fond of.” A boyish grin lit his features, shattering any residue of melancholy.

With that, the viscount stood, leaving me unsettled in the wake of his growing awareness of my likes and dislikes. I still knew so little of his.

He picked up my basket of flowers and craned his neck to see over the honeysuckle copse. “It appears the kitchen maids are gathering up their things. They’ll take you by the shed before you leave. You may hang your flowers there. And you mentioned wanting to find a pot and some soil.” He offered his free palm.

I accepted his help and stood, marveling at how small my hand looked in his. The sun beat down upon my shoulders as we left the shade. I resituated my shawl.

“I will see you later today.” He lifted the back of my hand to press it to his lips.

His facial hair brushed me, a prickle so real it titillated my skin.

I quelled the desire to feel it again, remembering I had yet to ask of Hawk’s humidor. “Lord Thornton?”

“Yes.” His dark hair curled where it grazed his shoulder, making him look almost innocent, as if he were a rumpled little boy.

“Something caught my eye this morn,” I continued. “In the dining hall. A humidor … upon your sideboard. I’ve never seen one quite like it. Where did you get it?”

His features pooled to the unreadable mask once more. “A Thornton heirloom.”

A bold-faced lie.
“Indeed? For I understood you won it in a bet. Possibly at the Swindler’s Tavern? A certain … secret room.” I was using Hawk’s disjointed memories too flippantly, but they were the only bluff I had.

The viscount’s jaw clenched and he set the basket on the bench. “How would you know of such a room?”

“I know more than of the room,” I snapped. “I know of your reputation there.” That he chased women. That he nearly killed a man. That he’d used up his father’s funds.

Something new billowed in his eyes: ice and smoke intertwined. He unclipped the pin from his cravat, loosened the tie, and hurled it toward his coat, startling a white butterfly perched on the purple velvet. The neck of his shirt fell open, revealing a line of chest hair similar to his brother’s—though these glistened with tiny beads of sweat. “My reputation?”

I wrung my hands together, winding the viscount’s handkerchief between them, distracted as the butterfly lit beside my foot on the castoff lemongrass. “I eavesdropped on a matron. Heard her speak of your misconduct with women, among other discrepancies.”

Lord Thornton’s eyes narrowed. “You heard her? You mean you read her lips. As smoky as that tavern was, I would think it difficult to cipher one’s words with any certainty.”

The tables were turning on me. “S-someone relayed me what she said.”

The viscount nodded. “Ah.” He crouched to capture the butterfly at my feet with all the grace and deftness of a hungry wasp. He stood and held the insect to his cheek by its fragile legs—careful and studious—letting its wings whisper over his skin. I feared he was going to crush the helpless creature.

His lips moved again, stealing my attention. “Your translator wouldn’t have something to gain by spoiling your image of me, would he?”

“No. He—”

“He,” the viscount interrupted. “So, it was a man. A rival.”

My knees locked beneath my heavy petticoats. I’d been caught in my own trap.

Lifting his hand, my host set the butterfly free. It fluttered away, dancing on the breeze. His expression was pure smugness. “I don’t tolerate sharing, Miss Emerline. Your uncle mentioned no affiliations with other suitors.”

The crass assumption burned my ego like a brand. “You mean to say, that because I am deaf, you imagined no one else could ever want me.”

The viscount regarded my features. “Not at all. In your sixteenth year, you caught the attention of two men. One retracted his interest the moment he realized you were deaf. He feared you would taint your offspring. He was unworthy of you. I hope you know that.”

Again, my host confounded me; not only with this intimate knowledge, but by the empathy emanating from those silent words.

“And the other man?” Lord Thornton pressed. “Your uncle never told me what happened with him.”

I wanted to lie. But something about Lord Thornton’s tender expression, something about the way he had patiently helped bundle my flowers and watched Mama’s bluebirds in quiet thought and retrospect, coaxed the truth from my lips. “I managed for four months to sustain the illusion I could hear. He became besotted with me and offered his hand in marriage. Wanted me even after I confessed the truth. But I turned away the proposal.”

“Why?”

How could I tell this stranger that the thought of being intimate with a man without the ability to hear our shared breaths, the rhythm of his heart pounding inside my ear, or the moans of our pleasure, both frightened and embittered me?

My tongue ran across the back of my teeth. “I ended our courtship without any explanation. If I refused him a reason, why would I offer you one?”

The viscount’s demeanor changed from sympathetic to resolved. “Your secret beau—this cad who speaks ill of me—would do well to be warned. I’ve no intention of losing the battle for your hand.”

“You mean the battle for my dowry.”

He scowled. “Stop telling me what I mean. You read lips, not minds.”

I struggled for the upper hand. “If I’m to uphold this farce as your intended, I would like to meet your father. Where is he? It is rumored he went missing when you sold his estate to buy this one.”

Paling to a white that rivaled the honeysuckle petals around us, the viscount took two steps back and slumped onto the bench, barely avoiding the basket of flowers we’d gathered.

I almost pitied him, to be so defeated by my accusation.

“I didn’t buy this estate with my family’s funds,” he said at last. “Father went away on holiday to escape debtor’s prison. To save our family’s name, I challenged the prior owner of the mines, Larson, to a game of cards at the tavern.” His teeth clenched. “The humidor was one part of the wager. But there was a deed within. The land that you’re standing upon … this Manor of Diversions … it is my winnings.”

As I stood staring at the viscount’s lips, wondering if I’d misread them, Hawk’s observation from earlier resurfaced in my mind. He had mentioned a sealed envelope beneath the cigars in the humidor.

It was the deed to this land.

The maids were leaving the herb enclosure. Their timing annoyed me. I wasn’t ready to go. The viscount wanted me to believe he was a hero … that he had saved his absent father’s reputation with a game of cards. Yet there was more to this story.

“You had nothing to ante,” I baited. “You said your father was bankrupt. And from what I understand, your gambling had a hand in that.”

His jaw, a blurred haze beneath the honeysuckle’s canopy, appeared to spasm. He stood and my heart hammered a staccato rhythm at how large he appeared. “Enough of this dance. My past conduct is none of your concern, Miss Emerline. Unless you wish to divulge your past to me as well.”

“I am a deaf milliner. What part of my past could possibly interest a grand viscount such as you?” I blinked against the glare of sun behind his solid form, knowing I fanned a flame, but somehow unable to stop myself.

He leaned in, his shadow imprisoning mine. “Let us start with the time that you spent with my brother.”

I licked my lips, my tongue turned to sandpaper. From the corner of my eye, the maids paused on their trek toward us to talk to the gardeners. A rash change of heart overtook, a plea that they would hurry and rescue me. I had no explanation as to how I would possess intimate details about a Romani man who would’ve been eight years my senior. “Why do you presume I spent time with him?” I stalled.

Lord Thornton’s hands twitched at his sides, as if he thought me some enigma whose meaning was just at his fingertips. Either that, or he wished to strangle me. “You called out the name Hawk. To acquaintances he was Chaine Hawkings. Only his closest friends shortened his surname thusly.”

I knotted the handkerchief in my hand, wondering upon the discrepancies. In Hawk’s journal, his name was Chaine Kaldera. So, he must’ve changed it to Hawkings upon his escape from his father. That could explain his tombstone. And the weathering of eight years could’ve worn away most of the letters. Unless his nickname had been used.

Did Lord Thornton bury him? Or, perchance their Aunt Bitti helped arrange the burial. But the viscount didn’t know her. If he did, then why had he been locked out of his brother’s grave that day in the cemetery?

Curiosity made me bold. “I want to know how Chaine died.”

An annoyed wrinkle formed above Lord Thornton’s brow. “And why should I tell you?”

“As the little girl in the mine … as the child he saved. He would want me to know.”

The viscount’s defensive scowl softened at my words. “He died out here. In the mines. An accident.”

My heartbeat leapt into my throat to have my and Hawk’s suspicions validated at last. It was unbearable, to think of him dying in the same place he’d endured such torments as a child. “So … where are his remains?”

Lord Thornton glanced at his palms. “His body was never found. Some servants saw him fall through a decayed scaffolding.”

“I should like to interview them.”

“They were employed by Larson. They no longer work here.”

“Could you offer their names?”

“I have none to give you.” That hardness in his brow returned, impenetrable.

The maids resumed their stroll in the distance. A suffocating weight heaved upon me—either the humidity, the sun, or my emotional turmoil—and I turned on my heels, determined to meet up with them and escape.

I inhaled sharply as Lord Thornton snagged my elbow. He coaxed me back into the copse’s obscuring depths, standing behind me, close enough the wool of my skirt clung to his trousers. His warm palm glided down to my wrist—his thumb heavy against my pulse point.

I struggled to breathe, as helpless as the butterfly that he earlier pinched between his fingertips. I couldn’t face him, unnerved by the feel of his breath at my ear, his lips whispering unreadable words.

My wrist chilled as his hand moved to my chin. He slanted my head, leveling my eyes to his mouth.

“What did I just say?” he asked.

His insensitivity stung like a slap. My eyes burned as I refused to answer.

“Only in this is your infirmity a downfall,” his lips said. “For you become a victim when you must rely upon another’s paraphrasing of unreadable conversations. Trust no one but yourself. Even the most honorable man might lie to gain advantage over another.”

Was he speaking of himself? Or his assumed rival?

He began to release my chin but I shifted my body around to face him and spread his fingers to cup my cheek, holding him there, not yet ready to give up the reality of his touch.