However, Julian was partial to the simpler, subtler designs of the carousel and Ferris wheel, perhaps because they had been his first additions. Or more likely because they represented a happier time, when he, his brother, and their father had all worked together toward a common goal.
Five years ago, before Nick discovered women, he utilized his gift for carving wood to fashion intricate life-sized fantasy creatures for the carousel: nine stallions—four of them Pegasus and five of them unicorns—along with three stationary chariots hitched to giant butterflies. Father, using his flare for painting, brought each carving to life with gleaming, vivid colors. Julian constructed the inner-workings of the ride, installing bevel gears and offset cranks to give the stallions an up and down motion as they traveled around the mirrored center pole which housed the enchanting tunes of a band organ.
It was a masterpiece, just like the mini-Ferris wheel that the three of them began shortly thereafter. A project Nick lost interest in halfway through, leaving Julian, his Father, and a few servants to finish it. They had been on a deadline, pressed to finish before the summer season, and Willow had stepped in to help, surprising both Julian and his father with her mechanical prowess.
Since then, she always assisted Julian with the upkeep and construction of the rides, which proved to be a great help considering Nick rarely contributed in any way other than the maintenance of his carousel creations.
Casting a glance over his shoulder to check for his absent brother, Julian caught sight of the Ferris wheel. Its bright red gondola-style seats swung slightly with the breeze. He had designed the ride upon the memory of one he’d read about in an article heralding the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In fact, that exposition in May of 1893 had birthed his engineering and mechanical career.
Julian had been only nine at the time, too young to go to Chicago alone, and his father had been busy preparing for the summer season so he couldn’t take him. Instead, Father collected any and all articles, periodicals, and photos that highlighted the event so Julian could quench his curiosity. It had helped alleviate the quest for knowledge, although it never fully staunched Julian’s desire to cross the cultural bridge and meet scientists and engineers—men of a like mind.
Last year, Father saved enough money to accompany Julian to the National Industrial Exposition in Osaka, Japan. But Grandfather’s heart began to fail, and they couldn’t leave Mother alone to tend him. The money went instead toward doctor visits, a live-in nurse, and then ultimately funeral arrangements.
To this day, Julian regretted missing that exposition. He’d never voiced his disappointment to anyone in his family out of respect for his grandfather, yet he had told Willow. She was the one person that understood his need to hob-knob with the technologically and culturally elite … to debate which of the industry’s advancements would carry over into the new century. For Willow shared the same passions.
Julian patted his vest pocket, prompting a crinkle of paper. He lifted out the wrinkled ride design. Willow had been the inspiration for this newest project. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a favorite book from her youth. While she was learning to read English, Julian had sat with her in the branches of many a tree helping her cipher the words on the pages. Now he wanted to build the Journey into the Looking Glass in celebration of the second Lewis Carroll novel—the first book she ever read without his help.
Thoughtful, he studied the rough sketches. As an indoor ride, it would require a large enclosure to house the characters and settings inspired by the pages of the story. Boats shaped like open-faced books, with a row of seats set into the spines, would travel through a long, dark tunnel upon currents propelled by flume pumps. Strings of miniature lights would illuminate the separate showrooms such as the Hatter’s Tea Party, the Pool of Tears, and the Queen’s Croquet Court. He planned to implement Nick’s talent for carving to provide characters for the displays. Father had already agreed to paint everything, including the backgrounds.
Julian had hoped to have at least the enclosure built by the time Willow came home from finishing school for the Christmas holiday so he could surprise her. Nothing made him happier than to see her smile. But now that he had no funding, he had no materials. And it mattered little, for she was here early so he wouldn’t be able to keep the secret anyway. Folding the design again, Julian stuffed it in his pocket, trying to staunch an uncomfortable crimp in his chest.
He considered how Willow had defended him earlier to Nick. If she knew that Julian was the one who convinced Uncle Owen to send her to Ridley’s Conservatoire of Manners and Mores in the first place, she would despise him every bit as much as she did Nick at the moment.
A muscle twitched beneath his collarbone. Is that what Nick had whispered to her earlier? Is that what made her lose composure and strike his twin—that she simply couldn’t believe Julian was capable of such betrayal?
“Willomena,” he said her name aloud, finding comfort in the inflections of each syllable. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
Julian shot to his feet at the intrusion of his brother’s voice, turning to face him. “That you called her an urchin.”
Nick smirked. “She goaded me into it.”
Julian studied Nick’s swollen upper lip, tamping the urge to fatten his lower one and give him a matching set. “You started it. What the hell did you say to her to cause such a rampage?”
Nick stepped onto the carousel’s platform. He crouched beside a prancing unicorn painted with swirls of iridescent blue and white—like mist draped across a crested mountain top. Inspecting it, he ran his hands along its muscled lines. “Here I thought we were to speak of something pressing, such as Lady Mina’s accusation against you.” Nick’s slate gray eyes baited Julian as he leaned an elbow against a violet and orange butterfly’s wing. “What do you fear I told Willow? That it was you who convinced Uncle Owen to send her to that pretentious Hades … that you made her suffer in that miserable puritanical academy for the lone crime of kissing me?”
“You kissed her.” Julian snatched his spectacles off his face, folded them, then placed them on the chariot beside him while loosening the cravat at his neck. “And from my vantage point, she slapped your mouth for even trying.”
Nick grinned. “Ah, from your voyeur point, you mean to say. How many months had we been beneath your magnifying glass, Julian? You should’ve turned it on yourself. Perchance it would have illuminated your motives. You were jealous, why else would you have her sent away?”
Julian’s neck throbbed. “She needed to be away from you. From your influence. You would have deflowered her—ruined her. That is the only reason I suggested her hiatus.”
Nick’s shoulders appeared to grow as he stood. “Harsh, brother. It pains me to know I’m such a deviant you couldn’t even trust me with our mutual friend of eleven years.”
“Our mutual friend who has blossomed into an alluring young woman—and women are your obsession, along with bourbon and wealth.” Julian stepped up onto the platform. A Pegasus’s wing stood between him and his twin. Julian traced a finger along the etched barbs, stunned as always by how real the feathers looked. “You proved it this morn by being so drunk you let me take the blame for your affair with my investor’s wife. You’ve lost me my funds for the upkeep and accretion of this park.”
Nick’s chest expanded beneath his rumpled shirt. “Ah, yes. Your beloved park.” He waved at the rides around them. “This hoity-toity dandy-boy meadow of frolics and fun.” His gaze suddenly shifted. “What’s that in your pocket?”
Before Julian could react, Nick had the ride design opened in his hand.
“Journey into the Looking Glass.” Nick snorted. “For the building’s outer façade,” he read Julian’s descriptions verbatim, “trees and flowers cut from wood and brightly painted will alternate with geometrically shaped mirrors. A gigantic three-dimensional pocket watch with a round rabbit’s face—mimicking the white rabbit from the tale—will wink a
nd pendulate as people board on boats and drift through the tunneled entrance made to resemble a rabbit hole.” Nick looked up, his arm held high, thwarting Julian’s effort to snag the paper back. “How are you to make the rabbit wink and pendulate?”
Julian’s face burned hot under his brother’s scrutiny. If only his interest was sincere like it once was. “I’ve been tooling with gears and motors, utilizing Grandfather’s abandoned watch pieces. With what I’ve learned, I can incorporate movement in the figurines. There will be animated figures inside as well. The caterpillar lifting the hand that holds his hookah … the Mad Hatter waving to the guests.”
Nick simpered. “Oh, that’s precious. Tell me, this wouldn’t be for Willow, would it?”
“It’s for our family.” Julian grounded out the answer between clenched teeth. “We’ve made twice the revenue over the past three years due to this park drawing in a younger clientele.”
Nick’s smile curled like a vine intent on strangling an imposing weed. “It’s made you younger in the process. You should be a man by now, brother. Yet you haven’t even visited a brothel thanks to this park’s consumption of your time.”
“Having illicit affairs with prostitutes does not a man make. I’m saving myself, just as Father did for Moth—”
“Spare me the romantic rhetoric. Theirs was a unique situation. Yours is an overblown moral stance. I suggest you lower yourself enough to ravish a whore or two, and soon. Ladies prefer a man with some experience. How else will you know how to please the one you love—” his gaze sharpened—“if you don’t work out the foils first with someone who doesn’t matter? Or, you could remain a child, dawdling away your days as you always have, playing with toys to curb your primal urges.” His expression took on an arrogant slant. “Which, come to think, begs a question that’s always haunted me … what is it you play with at night? I’ve heard several cats go missing after dark, not to be seen until morning. As your brother, I feel I should enlighten you … a pussy by any other name, is not the same.”
Rage tore through Julian. It scalded his ears then bled into his eyes to color his world red. He rode the wave of crimson, diving across the wing’s tip. His head collided with his brother’s chest and plowed them both sideways into a mirror on the center pole. The ride designs scattered to the platform beneath their feet.
Julian’s spine shuddered upon the crackle of glass raining all around. Heat leaked out of tiny cuts in his scalp then chilled with the late morning breeze. Running his palm along the abrasions, he felt tiny shards prickle his skin.
Wincing, Nick glanced at his own forearm where a spatter of cuts sprouted blood beneath the snags in his shirt. With a chesty growl, he grappled Julian in a bear hug and rammed his back into a Pegasus.
Air shunted out of Julian’s lungs at the impact. He tasted the bitter-hot rush on his lips. A jolt of pain shot between his shoulder blades to his neck. Gulping a breath, he used the stallion for leverage and cuffed a knee into his brother’s abdomen.
Nick flailed backward, falling against a unicorn’s backside. He ended up wedged between its hind legs. Its ratty tail draped like a curtain from the top of his head and around his face.
Before Nick could attempt a counterstrike, Julian clasped his lapels and straddled his brother’s legs, his knees pressed along Nick’s thighs. “How the hell am I supposed to get out of this duel? How could you let me take the blame for such an offense? I knew you were a rogue, but I never thought of you as a coward.”
Nick’s expression shifted from malevolence to shock as he relaxed beneath Julian’s restraints. “The old man challenged you to a duel?”
Clenching his jaw, Julian tightened his fingers around his brother’s shirt until it pleated like the ripples in a pond. “He’s calling me out at sunset. A shame Father doesn’t know that detail. Desmond’s wife told him I seduced her with my mind. That sickens me most of all. That she thought she was with me the entire time.”
Nick clasped Julian’s wrists. “No. She knew it was me. She panicked and lied to Desmond to save my hide.”
“Why did she have my spectacles then?”
“We had been … playing games.”
“Games? This is my life!” Enraged, Julian shook his brother by his shirt, rocking the carousel’s platform. The movement triggered a chirping squeak from within the unicorn and Julian froze at the queer sound. No sooner had Nick shifted his gaze upward than a tiny white nose poked out just over his head from beneath the tail. Julian dragged his brother to his feet an instant before the little squirrel dropped to the platform and stared up at them, quivering. Half-starved and too weak to run, it fluffed out its dingy white fur in an effort to appear intimidating.
“Looks like your park’s been invaded.” Nick met Julian’s gaze.
Julian still ached to scuff his brother’s face to a bloody mess. But in that moment, an unspoken treaty passed between them. They both knew, were either of them to continue the fight, the little rodent might get squashed beneath their feet, or escape altogether before they could help it. All three of the Thornton siblings had inherited an acute sympathy for animals from their father. In fact, their family pet had been a wolf from Father’s childhood, though it died a week before Emilia’s birth.
“Just know … this isn’t over by far.” Julian laid out the promise to his brother as he took out his raspberry stained handkerchief and crouched down to scoop the rodent up. “It’s in a bad way,” he said, captivated by the wiggly ball of fur. “A squirrel should never be so easy to catch.” He swaddled it in the cloth to keep it secure, feeling an instant bond. It reminded him of the field mouse he and Nick had once tamed. “Must be an orphan. Looks a bit like Sir Isaac.”
Having gathered Julian’s ride designs, Nick folded then tucked them into Julian’s pocket. Studying the squirrel, he rubbed the gray streak of fur sticking up between its furrowed brow. The rodent screeched a warning. With a melancholy grin, Nick regarded Julian. “Good old Isaac the Newt.”
Julian grinned back. The small white mouse had been named after his favorite scientist, Sir Isaac Newton. “What was that … five years ago? He was the last thing we ever shared.”
“Right-ho. Since then, we’ve been fighting over everything. Especially Willow. I’m not a complete scoundrel, Julian. I know she’s unique. Wild and rash. Rare and lovely as a winter rose.”
“She’s also compassionate, enterprising, scholarly, spontaneous, and witty,” Julian added.
“Precisely. She’s what we would have been, had we been born a singular man.”
Julian almost gave in to a smirk. Nick was right. Willow was the summation of all of their best characteristics. Yet there was so much more to her. A woman courageous enough to face an untamed horse or climb the highest tree, yet so terrified of the dark she slept with a lantern lit by her bed each night. “We both know she’s haunted. Those secrets she keeps. There’s a side to her as frangible as a wounded child. And you would only have broken that.”
“No. If she’d given me the chance,” Nick said, “I would’ve been faithful. I would’ve changed my ways for her.”
Julian shook his head and nestled the wriggling rodent between his palms to ward off its shivers. “You love the dividends of seduction too much. The fancy accouterments you earn, the gold pocket watches … the pearl and diamond tie tacks. You’d not give that up for anyone. It is all a game to you.”
A deep somberness clouded Nick’s eyes. “You’re wrong, Brother. And I aim to prove it. I’m leaving the manor today. Taking Mina with me. She’s with child. My child.”
The weight of this confession nearly knocked Julian to his knees. “You’re sure it’s yours?”
“I’m the only man she’s been with besides her husband. And the old fellow was barely able to consummate their marriage. They’ve only been together that one time seven months ago. She’s three months along. You’re the mathematician, do the calculations.”
Julian always knew his brother’s careless philandering would end u
p hurting some woman, but any aspersions fell stillborn on his tongue. Could it be, that out of this unconscionable situation, his brother was emerging a better man by trying to do the right thing? “When did your affair start?”
Nick perched on a chariot’s side rail. “In December, when he first brought her here for the winter season, a month after Grandfather’s death. She was different than any woman I’d ever bedded. Each time she held me in her arms, I felt—” Nick caught himself, as if to admit anything tender might weaken him. “She’s very nurturing—surprisingly so for one of her age.” He lifted his shoulders then let them fall. “I’ve heard even strangers can grow to love one another, when a child’s involved.”
Studying the squirrel’s blinking beady eyes, Julian considered a response. He doubted that his brother was capable of such depth of emotion at this point, but he couldn’t bring himself to stifle his honorable intentions. “So you’re to take her away. Where? And how are you to live?”
“I cannot say where, considering the circumstances. We’re keeping that from everyone until the baby is born. As to funds, Father gave me the money he had saved to expand the butterfly garden to a conservatory. It will hold us until I find a job.”
Julian swallowed against the knot in his throat. That conservatory was to be Emilia’s birthday gift from Mother and Father. “Does Mother know?”
Looking sheepish, Nick shook his head. “She was in the herb garden earlier. I pulled Father aside to speak to him alone. He’s to tell her later—after I’m gone.”