“Yet how can you be with me, a ghost, trapped within one last flower petal?” Hawk gazed at the water surrounding us.
Hot pinpricks flushed my cheeks, a rush of self-disdain. “I’m unworthy of you Hawk. To fall for two men, what quality of lady does such a thing? You’re too good for me.”
“Good?” He laughed, a tortured sound which stung my ears and prickled my spine. He stood, water cascading from his clothes in shimmery streams. A thousand emotions played across his face, illuminated by the sun’s bouncing reflections. “I remembered everything—my past, my death—the moment you revived me with the locket and I dragged you from the water. Being in the place of my death brought it all back.” A muscle in his jaw clamped. “But when I realized we could touch, I decided not to tell you the truth so I could make love to you just once, so I could have you for myself. My brother’s innocence be damned.”
His confession froze the air in my lungs.
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Yes, let us bask in my goodness. Once a rogue … always a rogue, aye?”
Silent, I studied him, teetering between injury and empathy.
“Let there be no mistake, Juliet. My brother’s the good one. Always has been.” He turned his back, his shoulders rising on a shrug. “When we first met, Chaine and I kept our knowledge of one another a secret. We never let on to anyone but Father there were two of us. And he … as you know … never believed it. For twelve months, Chaine and I took turns trading places. At times, he played Lord Thornton. Borrowed my clothes. Learned to talk like me, move like me. Damndest thing. His gentle spirit enabled him to see past my deformity. The one weakness that had shamed me my whole life. The imperfection that drove me to seek validation in bourbon and strange women’s arms, that made me rely on empty rage to verify my manhood. Yet Chaine took pride in emulating that very flaw. That’s why I made him the pocket watch. It was my way of honoring his shame … his broken past.”
Hawk’s hand fumbled for the watch that once hung upon his waist. “I lost it when I dove into the water after you.”
Absently, I searched the waist of my riding skirt. Was it he or me who had lost the watch in the chaos? I supposed we would never know.
“Only one thing Chaine could not master.” My ghost angled a glance over his shoulder, a half-smile dimpling his cheek. “How to sing. My brother is blasted tone deaf.” Snorting softly, he turned away again and towed his boot through the water to leave ripples in its wake. “I had never met anyone like him. How can a man who cannot hear the tonality of a note, have such an affinity for the songs of birds and the aura of the wind? How can a man who was never blessed with color or beauty throughout his childhood have more appreciation for a rose’s bleeding heart or a butterfly’s fractured wing than a man who has had beauty and light cast at his feet all his life?”
My heart bruised upon the profound admiration in his voice … for a brother he hardly had a chance to know.
Hawk trudged through the water then leaned against the dirt wall, facing me. “I was intrigued by my Romani blood. So each time Chaine walked in my shoes, I visited Aunt Bitti. She taught me the language of the gypsies … their symbols and folklore. Their songs. I suppose it was her way of making up for her mistakes. I coaxed her into moving to Claringwell, to keep her close to Chaine and me. Father had purchased a plot in the graveyard years earlier when he’d learned of Gitana’s death. He couldn’t bury her memory in his family plot in Worthington. His cousin’s family was buried in Claringwell, and he’d always thought the graveyard peaceful and lovely. To honor Gitana, he fenced in a small parcel of his land and erected a tombstone. Left it blank out of respect. In the gypsy culture, to etch the name of the dead on a stone … their given name … is an insult.”
I frowned as the puzzle started to fit together; I had to have been wrong about Bitti throwing me in. Perhaps someone else had done it, and she saw the aftermath. “Is this why Bitti buried your caul there years later … and the flower? Why they engraved ‘Hawk’ upon the stone, in lieu of your name?”
“I assume.” Hawk looked toward the darkness of the tunnel. “I was already dead by then.”
“But Chaine played no part in your death?”
Hawk smoothed the wrinkles in his shirt, already fading to translucent in places where he had started to dry. “No. Only Tobar and Larson are to blame. From the beginning, Chaine and I had different reasons for tricking Larson out of his deed for this estate. We both wanted to save our father from debtor’s prison. It was my responsibility, as my drinking and gambling were what put him in debt to begin with. My brother joined the cause for a second reason. He wanted access to the mine’s records. He hoped to find you through them.”
As Hawk spoke, my shoulder throbbed, the pain grinding beneath my flesh. I resituated my arm with the other hand, propping my lower back against a rock to quell the nausea in my stomach.
“Remember, how I told you that Tobar was excluded from Chaine and Larson’s card game on that fated night?” Hawk went on, unaware of my suffering. “Well, Tobar was furious. No doubt he thought Larson was holding out on him. So while Chaine was bettering Larson in a game of cards at the tavern, Tobar visited the estate and broke into Larson’s country house to steal his handwritten ledgers … records that not only exposed Larson as the anonymous owner of the tavern, but provided a decade’s worth of names … men Larson had hoodwinked into financial ruin. Tobar planned on blackmailing Larson with the information. What he didn’t plan on, was me being at the estate for the very same reason. I saw him coming out the back door. My brother never knew what transpired next. This is why I needed to return from the dead … to tell him where to find the ledgers.”
A cold sweat dotted my brow, and my surroundings became dusted with black fuzz. But I could not give in. I had to relay Hawk’s message to Chaine once I was found. If I was found …
“Chaine and I were to meet in this very spot beside the witch tree after he got the deed and I found the proof to blackmail Larson. Chaine had drawn pictures of Tobar, ugly and twisted as the man himself. I knew it was him the moment I saw him leave Larson’s home. And he recognized me as well. Or thought he did. He came at me with a knife, intent on killing the bastard son he had abused for so many years. The one who had escaped at the age of fourteen.”
My vision blurred and I couldn’t swallow for the stomach acid burning my throat. I squeezed the locket and a lightning sharp pain radiated through my arm. Hot and cold raced through me. I clenched my teeth in an effort to stay conscious.
“We struggled. Tobar stabbed my chest with the knife. I’d been holding Chaine’s watch within my breast pocket, until he finished cheating Larson. The blade dented it, broke the face, but protected my heart. I bent forward, feigned injury, then snapped up and cracked Tobar’s chin with my cane. As he slumped to the ground in a daze, I took the ledgers filled with Larson’s sins and set off on my horse for the witch tree. I had just shoved the pouch into the tree’s mouth as Tobar’s mare broke through the bush. When he arrived, I made it look as if I’d tossed the ledgers into the mineshaft.
“There was a rope and pulley system leading in and out of the tunnel. Tobar took the contraption down to retrieve his prize. It was the perfect opportunity to make him pay for all the years of misery my brother lived. The fitting place for the gypsy king to meet his end. I was about to follow him when Chaine came upon the scene. He tried to stop me, fearing for me, but I was so drunk and set on revenge I could think of nothing else. My brother and I argued. He clenched my jacket, trying to shake some sense into me. Then we both heard a sound behind us. Larson’s spying provided just the distraction I needed. I broke free from Chaine and took the plunge, riding the rope to the bottom.”
Nausea rushed through me, a roiling snarl in my stomach.
“Tobar and I fought in the tunnel,” Chaine reached the ugly conclusion. “A cave-in resulted, and crushed us both. Chaine climbed down to find me, but he was too late. I was dying, and had only strength enough to make him promi
se to live my dream, and to bring my spirit back. I took my last breath upon those words.”
I wept as the morbid scene unfolded in my mind; yet in the same instant, the weight of Chaine’s guilt lifted off of my chest as if it sprouted wings and took to the sky. Shivering, I could no longer hide my pain. “My arm …” Black speckles dotted my vision.
In a blink Hawk was at my side. He dunked his hand in the water then felt my forehead. “You’re feverish. Just hold on Juliet. I hear horses in the distance.” A worried wrinkle etched his brow.
I tried to smile, but groaned instead. “You’re lying. There’s fear behind your eyes.”
Another gut-twisting jolt shot through me. The black fog swarmed me. My body fell lax, and the locket slipped through my fingers into the water below.
Chapter 35
Death closes all doors and pays all debts.
English Proverb
Six times I had watched dawn come into this room, but never one as dark as this. For not once in my stay here, not once in the prior weeks at my home in Claringwell since Mama’s burial, had I faced a morning without my ghost.
Propped on a feather pillow, I touched my neck, devoid of the locket I’d lost forever in the mines. My gaze wandered to the terrarium on the Secretaire. Seeing the barren stem, the spattering of the last seven petals withered and black upon the wooden base—scored my insides. As if the very air I breathed sprouted thorns and raked me from within.
I’d spent the night abed, in and out of consciousness. Never lucid enough to ask any questions. This morning, I would have everything answered. Enya sat next to my bed, reading. She was to be my informant.
Unfortunately, my chamber danced with activity: maids tending my every whim, butlers carrying in bouquets of flowers from Chaine and my uncle in their absence, Miss Abbot spooning porridge into my unwilling mouth, Enya fluffing my pillows beneath me and laying compresses on my shoulder.
The Manor’s physician flitted in to check my stitched shin and shovel bitter medicine down my throat. I’d already decided I spared no affection for him. The one memory I had of my arrival back to the Manor yesterday centered around the red-haired rooster-faced man and his conclusion my shoulder was out of socket. With all the tenderness of an insolent child forcing a square peg into a round hole, he popped my bone back into place.
I had screamed. I knew it was loud by the tension on my vocal cords and the startled looks on everyone’s faces. Uncle and Chaine had stood in the corner, both of them holding their hats in their hands, their coloring green as algae. Tears steamed Chaine’s cheeks … just to see me suffer so.
I had the passing thought of how it would be one day when I gave birth to our children, as I imagined such pain would be tenfold.
I hadn’t yet told Chaine that I would bear his sons and daughters. But I had decided it yesterday upon my rescue from the mine.
For I remembered.
I remembered how he lowered himself into the shaft with afternoon sunlight splaying behind him like an angel’s halo; I remembered thinking of the courage it took to face his childhood nightmare—the rats, the darkness, the demons—yet he had insisted he be the one to save me.
No one told me of his insistence. No one needed to. I saw how the determination stormed in his eyes as he wrapped me in his coat and tied the rope around us both, how it throbbed in the thudding of his heart as he held tight to me, kissing the top of my head while the others lifted us out.
And I knew in that moment I would share the rest of my life with him.
Which led to the question I wished to ask Enya. Where were Chaine and my uncle now? The two men who loved me most in this world had yet to visit me this morn. It left a very unsettled feeling in my gut, compounded by the agony of Hawk’s absence.
I couldn’t believe I would never see my ghost again. I could not make peace with it or risk breaking down. So I chose, for today, to push aside the niggling emptiness, bury it deep, and focus only on those who lived.
As I had finally realized, after all this time, I did indeed belong among them.
At last, my chamber cleared of servants. Asking if I’d had enough of the bland white slop, Miss Abbot gathered her tray and left.
Enya and I sat in solitude.
I placed my hand atop the pages of the book she read. She looked up and turned it—open-faced—upon her lap. A tender smile lifted one corner of her mouth, but dread cowered in the circles beneath her eyes.
I asked of Lord Thornton’s and Uncle’s whereabouts. Instead of answering, she bent forward and pulled a small box from beneath her chair. Without a word, she placed it in my good hand, helped me lift the lid, and spread open the tissue paper. My locket and chain lay there on a swatch of red velvet.
My heart skipped a beat.
Reading my unspoken question, Enya explained.
“When Lord Thornton brought you up from the tunnel, you kept mentioning your locket. After the physician treated you, his lordship asked me about the necklace’s significance. I told him you kept your parents’ portraits within. He went back to the mine with a net, a lantern, and three footmen, and dragged the flooded shaft until he found it. I was told he wouldn’t even let his servants help. They waited above to draw him up when he finished. He didn’t return until well after supper.”
Such devotion humbled me. At the same time, I worried for what else he’d found. Had he been forced to face his brother’s bones … Tobar’s skeleton? Apparently everyone still believed he was Nicolas. I vaguely remembered his cane in hand while he stood watching the physician mend my arm and stitch my shin. He still maintained the masquerade. That must mean Larson hadn’t come forward with his true identity.
Had they met some sort of compromise? After learning all I had of the investor, it seemed implausible he would even know the meaning of the word.
Then something else occurred to me. Had Chaine touched the silver charm when he drew it from the water? Had he seen his brother’s spirit—talked with him?
With it so cold in that tunnel he had probably worn gloves …
Enya fluttered her hand in front of my eyes to catch my attention. “I must tell you, Juliet. When the viscount handed me this box while you slept, I waited for him to leave then opened it to see if your parents’ portraits had survived. Only to find a silver petal within. I didn’t touch it … I know how fragile you say they are. But when I held the locket in my palm, I had the strangest feeling … as if someone were looking over my shoulder, watching you. I even thought I heard a groan. I placed it back in the box and glanced behind, but no one was there.”
Heart aflutter, I grabbed the locket, keeping the velvet between the metal and my flesh. I held it in my right hand and worked the hinges open with my left to reveal Hawk’s last petal, bright and alive. As I closed the locket again, anticipation swelled within me. It hadn’t withered. I could place the chain upon my neck and revive him. We didn’t have to say goodbye. I could preserve it forever within the silver, if I was careful enough.
Enya lifted my chin, centering my gaze. “What is this power the blossom wields?”
My thoughts jumbled; I could think of nothing but the truth. That it conjured a man’s specter; that it could fuse your spirit to his and heal your wounds; that it could bridge him to flesh with the assistance of water.
A ghost flower. Who would ever believe such a Banbury tale?
Enya had yet to tell me where Uncle and Chaine were. I shut the necklace within the box. “Tell me where Lord Thornton is. Why hasn’t Uncle been to see me? I want someone to bring them both here, post haste.”
Her face flushed. “You don’t remember?”
My shoulders tensed, spurring a distant ache in my wounded arm. I could move it now—a vast improvement over yesterday. “What am I to remember?”
“I tried to tell you when you awoke in the night. You must have been too groggy to read my words.” She sighed, closing the book upon her lap. “Lord Thornton’s aunt is here. The same gypsy that you brought in from the fo
rest those weeks back. She saw you get pushed into the shaft. Came running into the house with her wolf, caused such an upset with all the cats running awry everyone became distracted. It didn’t help that no one could make sense of anything the old woman said. Had Lord Thornton and your Uncle not come back from Worthington early … you would have been in the mine till nightfall when the others returned.”
I shifted in my bed, trying to get comfortable. “Why did they return early?”
“The moment they arrived in Worthington and unloaded, Lord Thornton realized someone was missing from the guest list. The investor, Lord Larson, had not ridden with the caravan. He’d stayed behind, here at the Manor, without any of us knowing. The viscount borrowed a fresh horse in Worthington and came back, with your uncle following behind in a borrowed carriage. When they arrived, the old gypsy told Lord Thornton everything. How Larson had followed you as you left the manor. How he’d shoved you into the mine. I suppose he thought it would look like an accident. In truth, it would have, had the old gypsy not seen.”
I pondered what motive the investor could have to push me into the shaft. Perchance he wanted to lead others to the mine in their search for me and expose Chaine’s true identity.
I studied Enya again and noticed her eyes tearing up. “Enya, whatever is wrong?”
“Your viscount … he was furious.”
My chest twisted to a fist. Something in her haunted expression did not bode well. “Was?”
My maid dabbed at her lashes with her sleeve cuff.
Sitting rigid in the bed, I threw off my covers. “Tell me.”
She shook her head. “Your uncle says you’re too weak. We must wait until this evening … perhaps … perhaps you’ll be strong enough to visit him then.”
Bile burned my throat. “Visit who? My uncle? What’s wrong with him?”
She shook her head. “No. Lord Thornton. He challenged the investor to a pistol duel. The man hurt you, yet would not admit to any wrong doing. No one could prove his part. Larson claimed the old gypsy was lying, that she pushed you in. But your viscount was bent on justice—on defending you. So they met at midnight in torchlight. Your uncle served as the viscount’s second. They were to use single-shot derringers. It was to be one shot fired … those were the terms.”