The Hummingbird Heart

  In short duress, the two realized they shared a love for novels, not only reading them, but writing them. The countess had sent Emilia a few chapters of her work in progress. At first, Emilia struggled to read the older woman’s handwriting. It had a very disheveled and strained quality to it. But once Emilia learned how to decipher it, she was awed by the woman’s talent for seeing things from the male’s perspective per her lifetime of experience.

  The two decided to write a romance novel together—a tale of an enchanting maiden who becomes the object of desire and contention between a broken beautiful man and the evil ghost that inhabits his body—under the guise of exchanging butterfly essays and research papers. Emilia was responsible for the chapters in the innocent heroine’s point of view, and the countess took the possessed hero’s.

  “Now…” Emilia slid the papers from under the glass weight, adding the ones she had tucked beneath her thigh, and organized them all in her hands. “Would you like to hear chapter ten of ‘The Butterfly’s Mistress’?” She pronounced the title with grand bravado, drawing out each syllable as if it were taffy.

  Anticipation sluiced through Willow. She delighted in this tale, in part because the otherworldly premise had obviously been inspired by Emilia’s parents’ own ghostly experiences. Still, Emilia and the countess managed to make it fresh with their unique setting of a rain forest and rich subplots.

  “Sì, si,” Willow answered her friend, trying not to smile. “I want to hear all about the naughty rumpus. Need you ask?”

  When she’d lived in the orphanage, Willow had seen her share of naked boys; however indecorous it was, she knew and understood the physical differences between males and females. She’d surmised quite early, with the help of some rather explicit medical tomes with illustrated details on anatomy, how these differences might unite in a spectacular rush of friction and rhythm. Once she came to live at the manor, her theory of the ‘naughty rumpus’, as she’d coined it, was played out in full color when she stumbled upon a pair of guests in the throes of passion, writhing within the stable’s loft. Now she and Emilia had both adopted the term and though they could say it without batting a lash, they rarely managed it without smirking.

  Willow leaned her head back against the settee, eyes closed. Soon, Emilia’s smooth voice carried her away to a gothic world of forbidden love and passionate yearnings.

  Reading such a torrid romance novel aloud was a wicked enough indulgence, one that Emilia’s parents might very well frown upon. But were they to know that their proper daughter was writing it alongside a seasoned dowager in lieu of her ‘poetry’, they would be shocked above half.

  Many an evening had been whiled away up here in the star tower, scouring over pages under candlelight. Only Nick and Willow had been invited to such readings when Willow came home for visits from Ridley’s. Emilia had never brought Julian into her circle of trust for this particular project, due to his tendency to scold her. He liked to think of Emilia as his sweet, guileless sister who worked in the garden with their father and made hats with their mother.

  But Emilia had another side to her, a fire that lapped at the recesses of her soul with seductive imagery and erotic scenes. The flame could only be subdued when turned loose to burn up the empty white spaces of a hungry page. Physically, she remained chaste as any virgin. However, Willow sensed that would change were Emilia ever to find a man who encouraged her defiant spirit and sparked her intellectual muse as this countess had.

  “Here’s the finest part.” Emilia paused in her reading as though breathless, and Willow opened her eyes to find her friend’s cheeks flared to an attractive blush beneath her bonnet.

  “Sitting in the cool of the shade, Benedict and his ghost watched—a voyeur and a doppelganger—caught between darkness and light. Elizabeth stepped deeper into the gleaming pond, holding the bouquet of marigolds against her naked skin. Her breasts peered out from between petals of orange and the pond lapped at her bare ankles. A fine spray from the waterfall coated her long, golden hair in glistening silver down.

  Benedict’s need to touch her elicited a groan. His palm covered his mouth and raked his stubbled chin. The demon spirit demanded he take her here and now, savor her flesh, sink into her softness—a slow, warm, descent into suffocating splendor. But the man pleaded that he romance her, persuade her with tenderness and gentle words.

  Benedict surrendered to neither calling. Instead, he stayed hidden and watched in dry-mouthed wonder as she indulged in a strange ritual, rubbing the flowers’ stamens along her body until fragrant grains of pollen clung in yellow clusters to her dampened flesh. Then, mumbling a rhythmic chant he couldn’t quite hear, she tossed the used blossoms to the water so they drifted in lazy succession around her.

  Every muscle in Benedict’s body tensed, begging permission to act. In the past, it had been the simple things, her daily habits that simmered to desire in his gut. The way her skirt lifted and revealed her shapely calves as she raised an arm to hang clothes on a line; how her curves rose and fell beneath a loose bodice during a swift walk through the forest; or the flame reflected in her vivid lilac eyes just before she blew out a candle for the night. Today, everything had changed. In this moment, she was not exquisite in her normalcy, but remarkable in her madness. She was unbalanced, just like him. His pulse hummed in his ears, a thunderous exultation. Perhaps she could accept him after all—this duplicitous curse be damned.

  Just as he stood to make himself known, in the moment it took to slip from his jacket before stepping out, he heard it: the flutter of a thousand tiny wings. They came in droves—black swallowtail butterflies—darkening the mid-day sky with their descent. In a blink, they surrounded Elizabeth, their diminutive curling tongues licking and sipping the nectar from her naked flesh as she held out her arms. She laughed like a child beneath a snowfall.

  The throaty sound streaked through Benedict’s heart—a raw, ripping sensation. His jaw clenched. Jealousy, green as a meadow and cold as an arctic lake, pumped through his blood. Enraged, he fisted his hands at his sides and allowed the demon spirit to master his will. He would capture and imprison them … every last butterfly. For they had accomplished in one day what he’d not had the courage to do in all of these seven weeks. They had devoured her; they had tasted of her sweetness and elicited her laughter.”

  Willow perched at the edge of the settee. “Maledizione.” She offered the Italian profanity, wishing she had a fan like the ones at the finishing school, so she might slap a breeze into her face to cool her chest and neck. Instead, she strolled to one of the windows cut into the tower wall which showcased the grounds below and inhaled a clarifying breath of sunlight and trees.

  “You see?” Emilia asked. Willow turned to watch her companion tie a string around the pages to bind them. “Felicity has captured the anti-hero’s point of view. His needs, his physical responses.”

  “It is tantalizing.” Willow leaned against the chilled, bumpy stones behind her. “But how do we know that’s what a man would think and feel without Nick here to offer his insights?” Secretly, Willow doubted that men thought in such a way. Especially not Julian. However, she could certainly see a woman susceptible to that mindset—so captivated by the object of her desire that his everyday mannerisms became a sensual release. She experienced it each time Julian touched a pen to his tongue’s tip while considering some mathematical puzzle. A coil of lust unwound within her as she imagined that same tongue tasting the skin on her neck, or trailing her décolleté on a journey to somewhere even darker and hungrier.

  “I suppose we shall have to wait and ask Nick’s opinion later.” Emilia’s suggestion broke into Willow’s fantasies. “I do wish that Julian could join us. Two men’s observances would be better than one. I so often feel like we’re excluding him.”

  A wave of uncomfortable dry heat suffused Willow from head to toe. Just to imagine Julian sitting with them as the carnal scenes unfolded to pictures of the mind—surely he would take one look at her an
d know she was assigning herself the heroine and he the hero. He could read her better than anyone in the world.

  “No,” Willow blurted, a bit louder than she’d intended. “You know how aboveboard Julian is. And so protective of you. He’d be aghast.”

  Emilia grinned as she tucked the pages away in the box’s secret compartment. “I am not so sure anymore. Have you seen the latest two rides he’s designed? It isn’t as if he’s an ogre out to commit genocide on the art of making love. He realizes there’s a time and place for romance … for desire.”

  Willow shook her head. “Julian’s the sort of man who will one day tape his daughter’s hands in mittens to prevent her discovery of certain parts of her own anatomy.”

  At that, Emilia let out a full-fledged giggle, nearly losing the sip of lemonade she’d just taken. She patted her mouth with a linen napkin. “Not so.” Stifling a smile, Emilia set aside her glass, straightened her dress, and came to lean against the wall next to Willow. “He would simply tell his daughter that to touch herself would give her leprosy. His is of a scientific mindset, lest you forget.”

  They both laughed then. A sharp pang of guilt needled Willow for disparaging Julian, even in jest. Deep down, she didn’t mean it; but she couldn’t have him sitting ringside when her vulnerabilities lay exposed. “Honestly, there’s no predicting his reaction to your literary ventures. Better not to chance it.”

  Shrugging, Emilia sobered. “I suppose you’re right. Were I to show him the book, he’d likely have me sent off to Ridley’s like he did y—” She slapped a hand over her mouth in midsentence.

  Willow stared at her friend, the taste of bile hot on her tongue. “Julian? Julian had me imprisoned at the finishing school?” No. Her little cabbage would never betray her like that. He’d held both of her hands on the day she left, listening attentively as she’d fumed. But … looking back, that could have all been a pretense to sooth his guilty conscience.

  “Oh, forgive me, Willow.” Emilia’s brown eyes were imploring. “Blasted promiscuous tongue. I should tie a band around it until it withers and falls off! Forget I said anything, please.” She touched Willow’s arm.

  Willow jerked away. A surge of blood rushed into her head, making her temples feel as if they would implode. She and Julian had always had an easy companionship. But she’d been sensing tenseness between them before she left for the school the first time. Now she knew why.

  Julian, with his straight-laced, list-making, premeditated mentality. It all made sense. It had been only a matter of time until she drove him to madness with her impulsive nature … her lack of polish and decorum. She offered nothing but turbulence to his standardized life; the one thing that didn’t follow his carefully calculated plans. So he’d found someone to train her, to goad her into obedience like a temerarious pet.

  She cursed her gullibility. To have thought Julian accepted her as she was, warts and all. Yet upon the first opportunity, he laid her out on a slab—ax in hand—ready to lob off those small protuberances of her individuality that made her so unappealing to him.

  A whimper escaped her throat, which further infuriated her—that he could bring out such a sissified reaction. Il maiale.

  “Well, speak of the Devil dog.” Willow clenched her jaw.

  Emilia, who’d been standing silent and befuddled throughout Willow’s mental breakdown, followed Willow’s line of sight through the turret’s window down into the courtyard where Julian had just entered the gates. Glancing at the winter garden, he took a swift detour toward the townhouse, stumbling once.

  “Whatever is he carrying?” Emilia queried, an obvious distraction tactic.

  Still fuming, Willow inched closer to her friend to share the window’s view. Emilia’s scent of honeysuckle tickled her nose.

  “It appears to be a blood-stained handkerchief,” Emilia answered her own question as several reddish splotches on the white cloth balled within Julian’s palm came into view. He pressed it against his chest and disappeared into the townhouse.

  Julian’s and Nick’s tussles always ended with cuts and bruises, but never a bleeding chest. The image of a pistol duel slammed Willow against the wall, draining her anger away. What if old man Desmond had decided not to wait for sunset? What if Julian had been shot?

  She gasped and bounded for the seven flights of stairs, barely aware of Emilia’s questioning shouts as her friend gathered her writing box to trail behind.

  Five

  “Julian, hold still.”

  Julian sat in the drawing room upon a winged back chair—braid taken down and head tilted sideways by his mother’s soft hands. Parting his hair, she stood over him, a damp rag draped within her elbow’s crook. Tiny red dots speckled the cotton square where she’d been dabbing at his cuts each time she removed a shard from his scalp. Her scent of gardenias overpowered the metallic stench of his blood.

  Several candles were lit on tall, barley-twist sconces, though daylight streamed in through picture windows. The sunny heat illuminated the print on the wall’s mossy-green damask hangings. Julian studied his mother’s face for a distraction. His father often compared her features to that of a fairy queen—delicate, regal, and erudite in one turn. Her hair was still golden and glossy with just a few silver streaks, though she rarely wore it down anymore. And her porcelain skin had aged little in all of Julian’s nineteen years. What few wrinkles had formed around her dark-lashed, dove-like eyes merely accentuated the wit and wisdom behind their warmth.

  It felt odd to have to look up at her. He and Nick were a head taller than her petite and slender frame the moment they turned thirteen. As grown men, they now towered over her. But that never compromised her ability to influence her sons. What she lacked in stature, she made up for in strength of will, mind, and heart. He cringed as she worked out a jagged piece of mirror from his scalp.

  “Julian. Stop moving.” She cupped his chin with one hand and pressed the right side of his face against the apron covering her lavender taffeta dressing gown. He could feel the warmth of her through the fabric, absent as it was from any barriers such as layered petticoats. It dawned on him that she and Father both were dressed for an outing.

  Julian closed his eyes, fingers clenched to the chair’s cushioned arms to counteract the stinging stabs along his scalp. The rhythmic rattle of shattered glass fell into a porcelain bowl—a tinkling accompaniment to the flames popping in the fireplace, almost musical. Times like this, Julian pondered Mother’s inability to hear. The fact that she had fallen deaf as a child had made it easier for her to voice coherent streams of words, but it also made him hurt for her even more. For she had once walked in an acoustic world.

  He wondered if she ever missed it, though she never claimed to. Perhaps since she’d had the short reprieve from silence twenty years ago, when his uncle’s ghost had come to her for help. At times, she spoke of the songs his uncle used to sing that only she could hear. She used to tell Julian and Nick that those very songs lived on through them. But in truth, they were hers alone. For Julian had heard her often throughout his life, humming the Romanian lullabies in perfect tune. It was as if the melodies still lived within her, satisfying any want for that missing sensory element.

  Their bond must have been a powerful thing. But it couldn’t compare to what she shared with Father. The two could sit in a room, look deep into each others’ eyes, and have an entire conversation without moving their lips. It was as if they spoke with their bodies, minds, and hearts.

  Mother called Father her ‘gypsy prince’. A sweet and tender sobriquet. Julian had to admit, the man did have an air of royalty about him—his face austere with high cheekbones, a full expressive mouth shrouded in a trim black and silvery beard that matched his thick head of hair, and sagely gray eyes which twinkled each time he looked at his family.

  And though he had an affinity for vivid, clashing hues in his wardrobe, and even if he was crippled in one foot and used a cane, it had never tainted the distinguished image he presented not o
nly to his family, but to the manor’s guests, as well. Eight years Mother’s senior, yet still his stature was as tall, straight, and muscular as his sons—due to the upkeep of the grounds and gardens. He wasn’t the sort of man to stand by and command his servants. He worked alongside them.

  Julian slanted a sidelong glance to the other side of the drawing room where his father knelt in front of the hearth, warming Emilia’s new pet. His broad shoulders blocked any view of the squirrel, but Julian could hear its chittering. Father was checking for blood in the ears or nostrils and for any swelling around its head or limbs. He would search for parasites as well.

  They’d been through this ritual countless times throughout their lives. Living next to a forest, Julian and his siblings had rescued everything from turtles to chipmunks, even the occasional bat. Their father, with his innate gentleness and understanding of nature, was a master at caring for orphaned and wounded animals.

  In an effort to see better, Julian turned his head too far to the left and caused his mother to scratch one of his cuts with a fingernail. A gouging pain radiated across his head. “Ouch!”

  She turned his face up to her. “If you don’t stop your squirming, I’ll have your father tie you to the chair.”

  At that, Father turned to meet Mother’s gaze, pausing to assure she saw his lips. “Oh, I believe you’re perfectly capable of tying him up yourself, my love. Use the Flemish knot I taught you last night.” He winked at her.

  A blush chased Mother’s answering smile and Julian rolled his eyes. He wondered how many other adults had to tolerate their parents behaving like infatuated adolescents.

  “Please.” Julian glared at his mother. “When I’m one hundred I’ll still be too young to be privy to the details of your love play.”

  His mother feigned being shocked. “Julian Anston Thornton. Your father was referring to our time in the stables before we took our twilit ride on Draba. He taught me how to form a bridle out of rope.”