The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (39 page)

Without my prompting, Hawk followed Chaine to keep me apprised of their conversation. I borrowed Uncle and Enya’s telescope while Hawk relayed Chaine and Larson’s words from across the other side, his voice loud and resonant in my mind.

“How dare you interrupt my time with Lady Emerline.” Chaine’s profile stood a full head taller than the bird-like investor. I slanted my telescope in their direction and turned the dial to adjust the lens so I could watch them. The visual, when combined with Hawk’s narrative, made me feel as if I stood right next to them, eavesdropping on their hushed exchange.

“I wanted a tour of the tower. So here I am.” Lord Larson turned his head to scan the surroundings. “I suppose it will suffice. You may open it tomorrow.”

“
Sarp
.” Chaine clenched his cane so tight his knuckles whitened.

“What did you just say? Don’t start with your gypsy gibberish again.”

Chaine met the investor’s gaze as he put on his gloves. “Snake. You, sir, are a snake. A scale-bellied, vermin-eating, icy-blooded reptile. Clear enough for you?”

Studying his fingernails in the blue light surrounding them, Lord Larson shook his shoulders on a laugh. “Ripe talk from a migrant tramp masquerading as a viscount. You’d do well to remember I have enough dirt in my shovel to bury you … to bury you like you did your twin.”

Upon this, Hawk glanced my direction. I watched my ghost through the telescope as he shook it off and resumed relaying the argument.

“Keep your voice down, pig.” Chaine’s profile snarled.

“Oh please. I’m whispering, for God’s sake.” The investor looked toward my uncle and Enya. “Who’s to hear from such a distance? Are you worried the linen-draper and his niece’s maid might tell your little deaf chit about your murderous ways?”

Chaine cast an anxious gaze to me and I tilted the telescope toward the sky. When I saw him turn his back to face the investor, I resumed my spying, swallowing a knot of trepidation.

“You are never to speak of her,” Chaine said—a wall of corded muscle ready to spring. “Keep her the hell out of this.”

“Me? I’m not the one who involved her. And on that note, there’s been a bit of a change in my demands. I want the deed to this Manor back; a percentage is no longer acceptable now that you’re planning to take a common wife and have heirs with her. I refuse to let my legacy fall to the tainted bloodlines of Thornton madness.”

“Oh, you want the estate back do you? Now that I’ve made something out of it … how convenient, that you waited all these years.” Chaine threw down his cane, caught the man by both shoulders, and propelled him against the wall. “Shame I don’t negotiate with snakes.”

I gasped. Enya and Uncle came to stand beside me, curious as to the emotional conversation taking place in the distance. Uncle urged me to stop spying through the lens but I refused.

“Ahh. This scene is familiar.” The investor clutched Chaine’s wrists where his hands gripped his jacket. “Is this not the same hold you had on your brother just before you shoved him into that open mine shaft?”

Hawk’s voice broke as he turned to me. Confused tears banked behind my eyelids, but I pressed my ghost to listen … there had to be some explanation.

Chaine’s back tensed to a powerful ripple of restraint as he dropped his hands from the investor.

Lord Larson straightened his jacket lapels. “Too bad you had a witness, aye?”

“A drunken witness.”

“Not too drunk to know you and your brother switched places in that card game to fool me. I’ve never told you what tipped me off, have I? You limped on the wrong foot at one point. Caught yourself, you did, but not before I noticed.”

Chaine clenched his hands to fists, silent.

“And I also know once you cheated me out of the deed with your gypsy trickery, you decided to cut your brother out, as well, so you could live his life without sharing the lucre. And don’t even think of killing me. I’ve written it all on parchment and sealed it in an envelope along with my will. It sits in the office of my solicitor. Should anything happen to me, all will be read. Just after midnight it was … ochre mine #34. Wouldn’t be hard to find the bones in that shaft. All someone need do is pry back the boards on the opening and have a look. Soon as they find a skeleton with a deformed right foot, they’ll be no question who you are. Too bad you’re so afraid to go into that tunnel yourself—after all those years you spent there as that weasley little child—else you could have hidden the body away by now, aye?”

Hawk choked on the narrative, unable to speak another word. Through a blur of tears, I watched in disbelief, wanting it all to be a lie. Wanting to wake up in bed, victim to a cruel nightmare.

I eased back from the telescope, legs sluggish beneath me, as if I’d stepped into a sinkhole of mud. Larson hadn’t mentioned Tobar being there. And Chaine hadn’t denied the investor’s accusations.

He’d lied. He did have a hand in the death of his brother.

My Hawk
.

I sought out his ghostly face. He’d propped himself against the wall, breath heaving, as if he couldn’t grasp it. “It’s true.” Hawk’s voice carried over to me. “I remember …”

I sobbed. Tobar and Larson had succeeded in turning Chaine into a monster. He wore his kindness and gentleness as a mask. I should’ve known. No child could live through years of such torment and not lose humanity in the battle.

He had fooled me so easily. All his promises that he cared for me. Lies woven into pretty pictures.

Trembling, I plucked the sketch from my shawl and let it drop to my feet. I had fallen for him, thinking at last I’d found a man of flesh who could see beyond my faults and love me despite them. No … that he could love me
because
of them.

When all along, he’d been using me to cover up a murder.

Across the way, Hawk rose behind Chaine, levitating. Lights gilded his silhouette—a phantom of fury and blue ice, ready to toss his brother over the wall.

Only my plea stopped him—silent cries in my head no one but Hawk could hear. As my hostile ghost moved to the stairway, I begged Uncle and Enya to take me back to the townhouse, feigning a headache.

Abandoning his fight with Larson, Chaine tried to intervene as we started to leave the tower, his cane in hand.

“I’ve a headache,” I whispered, not even attempting to use my vocal cords.

“Then I shall walk with you—help you down the stairs.”

I looked away from him, fearing he’d pull me into his spell once more. “You left to play fisticuffs with your investor when you should’ve been seeing to my welfare. So go back to it.” Petty and insolent. Yes. And there was no ignoring the doubt within Uncle’s and Enya’s faces. They knew me well enough to question such a tantrum.

However, Chaine didn’t. Holding a fingertip to my chin, he coaxed me to look at his face. “Please, forgive me. Let me see you to your chamber at the least.”

“I don’t wish to see you again,
at all
.” I made sure he caught the underlying message. With that, I shoved him aside and accompanied Uncle and Enya back to the townhouse, nursing the bloody stub that was once my heart.

When we first arrived in my bedchambers, Hawk was calm. Too calm.

He stood before the French doors, painted by moonlight, and the words rumbled from his throat, quiet and chilling. “Chaine and I had started to suspect Larson owned the tavern, so we took turns frequenting the place, to spy on his routines. He was a degenerate, shared my weakness for bourbon and card games, so we arranged for a private set at the tavern, to cheat him out of the deed for this land. Wasn’t so hard to convince him. The mines were used up. The land was useless. For my ante, I told him I would finish the giant clock my father had never completed. I offered it to Larson, free of charge.”

“The clock your father was working on when you were young?” I asked from my seat in the midst of the bed, fingers gripping my quilt. “The one at the top of the tower?”

“Yes. I never had any intention of paying up. I wanted that clock for myself. I felt no guile in the deception. Larson owed Chaine. Hell, he owed my family. All those years, watching my brother being tortured summer after summer … seeing me in my contentment during the seasons when the gypsies were absent. He could have told my father. It is impossible that he missed the similarities; we were mirror images of one another. I believe it’s why Larson forbade any of his servants to mingle with the gypsies … he wanted to keep the secret for his own. He liked having Tobar in his pocket.”

The investor’s cruelty gouged at my sternum. Just like Chaine had said in his journal entry and the note about his mother. Larson controlled the gypsies through their king, and used Tobar to trick the English gamblers out of their money.

“On the night of our plan’s execution, Larson excluded Tobar from the private game. He couldn’t risk the gypsy king recognizing his son. Perhaps Larson thought he had learned enough tricks from the Romani. He never considered my brother and I might have found one another. That we knew he secretly owned the tavern. Or that my brother would be sitting in my place during the card game. Gypsy tricks are useless against a gypsy. But what I never suspected, was that when it was all over … when Chaine had trumped him … he would throw me into the mines, so he could have it all to himself.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” I asked on a trembling breath, still wanting to believe in my mud prince, even after all he’d done.

“Dammit, yes, Juliet! I remember that moment … Chaine and I met at the witch tree, because of its significance to his past … to you. I only see bits and pieces after that—but we were arguing. He clenched my lapels in his hands, shaking me, and next I knew, I was falling into the mine … then everything crashed atop my head.” Hawk’s face contorted on a snarl. “I cannot believe I ever pitied him. He doesn’t want the goods on Larson to save the estate and Father. He wants to save his own worthless neck. To silence the one witness to my murder!”

I sensed it on the verge: the eruption of emotions he’d been holding at bay. I buried my face in my hands, bracing myself. Given all he’d just learned of his brother’s ruthless betrayal, I didn’t try to stop him. I allowed his fury and frustration to run its course.

He roared and scattered things about. The brush, comb, and tray from the vanity … the pillows from the bed … papers and quill from the Secretaire. Even the inkwell. Splotches stained the salmon carpet in blots as black as nightmares, the musky scent overpowering the wilted lilies beside a fireplace now faded to embers.

Had I not wedged Chaine’s discarded shirt between the bed’s frame and mattress earlier, Hawk would have cast it on the embers to revive the flames.

My ghost clenched his hands in the hair at his temples. “Damn his lying tongue and petty gifts!” He kicked aside a basket of strawflowers and feathers. The contents erupted and drifted all around me—a snowfall of petals and plumes—several catching in my hair. I didn’t bother cleaning them up. I was too miserable to care.

“First he steals my life … then he steals my love and breaks her heart. I could kill him!” The venom in Hawk’s voice burned my incompetent ears. I had no idea how far he’d carry this rampage. A flicker of conflict crossed his face as he considered the flower’s terrarium—his brother’s most treasured gift.

“Hawk, no … its contents are priceless.” A sob gathered in my chest. “Your time with me is too precious to squander in a moment of rage.”

He met my gaze then glanced at the seven fragile petals locked safe within. Groaning, he turned aside and stared out the French doors.

I scooted to the bed’s edge. “There are things that make no sense. Why would Chaine wish to bring you back if you could accuse him?”

“He only wants me to materialize before Larson, the one person who already knows. I doubt I even asked to be brought back at all. Chaine just told you that, to pacify you. He and Aunt Bitti are using me. Once the investor is terrified to silence, poof, they’ll send me back to my purgatory forever.”

Light shifted beneath my door from the hallway.

Hawk grimaced at the locked latch. “You still have an audience. Wretched lives of the living … so bored with reality they must glean entertainment from other people’s angst and turmoil.” Silver moonlight gilded his panting silhouette. His hair was mussed, his teeth clenched, an excited glint to his eyes—a portrait of enraptured misery so beguiling yet terrible my breath stalled in my lungs.

“I’m glad to be dead. Do you hear me, Juliet? I’d rather be a rotting corpse than what they are … vultures supping upon the bloodied carnage of another’s raw emotions.”

I shivered, for two of those vultures were my loved ones. I had no doubt Enya and Uncle still stood on the other side of my door where I’d left them. By now half of the servants must be gathered, drawn by the outburst. Everyone assumed the viscount and I had a lover’s quarrel. That
I
was destroying my room.

If only it could be as insignificant as that.

The moon sunk beneath a cloud outside my French doors, and the growing shadows brought unexpected serenity. Hawk studied his destructive wake while leaned against the portrait of Gitana, his face awash with change as sorrow rolled over him in a dark, silent wave.