“I don’t know. When I buried my mama earlier today …” I struggled with the lump in my throat. “I came across a tombstone. And I saw the name, ‘Hawk.’ The plant is from the gravesite, and you are obviously connected to it.”
This caught his attention, and he stood, slowly. “You dug it up.”
Wavering, I got to my feet with the pot cradled in front of me. “Yes. I defiled your grave. Are you angry?”
“Considering I threatened to defile you moments ago, I believe we’re even now.” He managed a tight, self-deprecating smile. “By taking the flower, you released me from Purgatory. I’m no longer alone in my darkness.”
I glanced at my feet, still gritty with residual dirt. “Nor am I.”
Our attention settled on one another—appraising and thoughtful. I wished I could read his thoughts as he did mine.
“No, Miss. You have no business probing the nightfall of uncertainty that is my mind.” He clasped his wrist, as if searching for a pulse. “How long, according to the stone?”
I caressed the petal. “The flower distracted me from the epitaph.”
Behind him, through the transparency of his chest, the fire snuffed to embers. It was a tragic image, as if I watched his hope die.
Silence stretched between us, a merciless roar.
Hawk cleared his throat. “Might I ask your name, Miss?”
The formality struck me as almost comical, given our situation, until it dawned on me how difficult it was to escape the confines of society, even after death. “You may call me Juliet.”
He nodded. “Juliet, I'm sorry for the loss of your mother.”
His kind sentiment was almost as beautiful as hearing my name spoken. “Thank you.”
“She must have been an exceptional woman, to have left such a hole in your life.”
I shut my eyes, framing her face in my mind. I would never forget her appearance as I had her voice. I would make sure of that.
“But you said you are deaf.”
My eyes snapped open upon my guest’s redundant observation.
“How could you have known your mother’s voice to forget it?”
I studied my feet beneath the throw’s fringe, tilting my left one to the side to shake dirt from between my toes. “A childhood illness took my hearing. Before that, my mama sang to me.” I sighed. “Since then, so many years without music, so many nights without lullabies.” The flower’s incense rushed through me, comforting. “Until your song.” I smiled. “So lovely. So unexpected.”
Compassion and a hint of something else—humility?—flashed across his troubled features. “You flatter me.”
“No. I would venture you have much in common with Aria.”
“Your nightingale? Her melodies were far from harmonious earlier. She doesn’t like me much.” His lips formed a thoughtful line. “She seems to notice me even without touching the flower.”
I glanced at Aria’s covered cage. “I've read animals are endowed with an extra sense … a perception humans don’t possess. Could it be the same holds true for plants, and somehow, by touching the petals, such insight is imposed upon me?”
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Or somehow, that flower holds my very essence.”
“Can you remember anything that would tie you to this plant? You apparently know a second language.”
“Nothing. It is all a void. I couldn’t even tell you the language of my songs.” A muscle in his jaw fluttered. “Although …” He flipped his pocket watch to look at an engraving on the backside. “Rat King. Damned if I know what it means. But it’s in English.” He tucked the chain away again. “As is the name I keep hearing when I’m in hell.”
Hell. The despondency in his voice over the acceptance of his fate sliced like a blade. “What name?” I asked.
Hawk’s brow furrowed. “Thornton. The voices in my purgatory. They speak it often.”
A horrified knot formed in my chest … undeniable confirmation that the viscount was somehow bound to this tragic soul. For his name to be carried to Hawk’s dead consciousness on a choir of haunting voices, paired with the outburst I’d earlier witnessed, Lord Thornton might be more dangerous than I ever imagined.
Hawk stepped closer. “What do you know of him?”
“Very little. I have never even seen his face. But he was at your grave today. He had no way in and appeared distraught about that. A padlock kept him at bay. There’s a path that leads from the backside of the fence surrounding your tomb. A well-worn path. Someone else keeps a vigil at your grave. They have the key.”
My ghostly guest’s eyes grew wild. “You must return to the cemetery! I need to know my identity. How this fate befell me. Please …”
My stomach flipped. I had already been planning to go so I might outmaneuver the viscount before he came at week’s end. Yet, now, faced with the ever deepening chasm of my doubt about the man’s emotional stability and the possibility he was involved with another man’s death, I’d lost all courage.
A shiver ran through my spine as I realized how dark and chilly the room had grown.
Hawk looked over his shoulder at the embers. “Let me stir the fire for—” The statement broke and he bowed his head, cursing.
I wondered how anyone could bear such frustration.
He slumped onto the hearth. “God help me. I’m nothing more than a puff of wind or a passing chill. Just put the flower down and cast me back into the darkness! I can’t expect you to carry a blasted pot around for the rest of the night.”
“But you hate the darkness.” After the accident I’d endured as a child, I of all people could empathize with the gruesome notions a lightless setting could inspire.
“What kind of accident?” Hawk asked, as though eager to turn the subject on my past and away from his own absent memories.
I didn’t answer. My attention had caught upon the singular rose petal I’d earlier had in my glove. The one I’d taken from Mama’s rose to hold her spirit close to me. It gave me an idea.
Biting my lip, I plucked the petal I’d been holding on Hawk’s flower. I fisted my hand around it and set aside the pot. When I looked up, Hawk was still there.
I raised my eyebrows. The flower didn't have to be intact to bind us, so long as I held a petal.
He stood, tentative. “That’s encouraging. But …” He rubbed his chin. “It will prove a challenge to carry that around and never drop it. The chain on your neck. Did I see a locket earlier?”
I tugged on the necklace to expose the heart-shaped charm and the intricate rose embossed on its front.
“Is it pure silver?”
A “yes” was all I could manage as he strode closer, intent in his study of the necklace. A full head taller than me, had he been flesh, his breath would have warmed my brow. I wondered what he smelled like … if the upturned hair at his shoulders was as soft as it appeared. Cradled in the safety of otherworldly isolation, I wondered all the things I’d never let myself wonder about any man.
Then, remembering my nakedness beneath my bed gown, I blushed.
Hawk’s fingertip scattered upon attempting to touch the necklace’s chain. A ripple of sensation grazed my collar bone, gone before my brain could even register it. “It seems I’ve stepped from one purgatory into another,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“As am I.” He smiled, though sadness cluttered the curve. “Tuck the petal within your locket,” he instructed. “Silver is the most conductive of all metals. Perchance it will allow the energy … life force … whatever I share with this flower, to find its way to you.”
“I shall lose you in the transfer.”
Anxious lines scrawled across his forehead, but he nodded.
“I’ll be swift.” I promised, then placed the petal in the pot.
He vanished.
With a sense of urgency, I picked up the pot and carried it to the dining table. It pained me to remove Mama and Papa’s portraits from the locket. But if Hawk was correct, there mu
st be nothing to interfere with the silver.
I caught a flicker of him as I placed the petal inside and latched the locket shut. The moment the charm slipped between my breasts beneath the throw and touched my skin, my ghostly companion reappeared. This time, to stay.
Chapter 4
Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
Proverbs 9:17
I dreamt of a moving darkness with legs like centipedes. It crawled along my skin until nothing remained but bones. The shadows whispered, bidding my spirit to join them. I obeyed, no longer walking but flowing: a liquid, lightless void.
I became one with the night, oozing into the depths of some underground world, joined by the skeletons of others who had followed the shadows long before me. The only colors were black and white, and a red as deep as the mud coating Hawk’s ghostly boots.
He hovered over me, his lips so close I could taste his breath—mint with a hint of chicory. As he started to sing, other voices gathered for the serenade, all of my friends and family who’d passed throughout my life. Their music swelled within my soul.
It was then I realized I no longer resided in the land of the living. And it wasn’t so unpleasant here, in the world of the dead …
“A man arrived with the sunrise.”
The deep voice nudged at my subconscious, but I kept my eyes closed, basking in the afterglow of fading music. Mama was there by my side, listening to the final notes of the song, a contented smile on her face, the same look she always gave me after we’d spent a day together, stitching on our hats. Then I blinked, and the music was gone. Like a slice of winter wind the reality of Mama’s absence from my life sucked the breath from my lungs. I bunched my knees to my chest and sobbed, willing the pain away.
“Dear Juliet.” Hawk’s compassion broke through my self-pity.
I opened my eyes to find him leaning over me, much like he’d been in my dream; though now I was atop a feather mattress and pillows instead of in an underground world, and there was no serenade.
“A serenade in another world.” He smiled gently, his face close enough that if I but raised my head, I would disrupt his chin’s image for an instant. “Sounds enchanting. You must tell me of this dream later.” It was an obvious effort to cheer me.
I forced a smile, grateful that though he could read my thoughts, at least my subconscious remained private. My fingers clasped the locket pressed against my sternum. “What time is it?”
“A few hours past dawn.”
I blotted my eyes with my quilt. “I slept through the night without waking even once?”
“Didn’t hear a peep out of you,” he answered.
I squinted at him, remembering what he had told me last night about how he no longer required sleep.
“I held true to my promise to sit at the desk and not stare at you. At least for the first few minutes.” He winked.
I smirked, unable to resist his good humor. In truth, I was grateful for his vigil. I had struggled with sleep since Mama first became ill. Each time I closed my eyes, that near-death experience from my childhood resurfaced in my mind. I was only six when it happened, and the details were hazy. But flames of fear had crisped the memory to a nightmare, which snowed like ash over my dreams.
I didn’t make it to bed until well after midnight. Having buried Mama, I anticipated tossing and turning. Yet after Hawk turned his back to allow me to crawl beneath the safety of my covers—proving even a ghost could be a gentleman—I fell away to the sound of his beautiful lullaby. And even if it was only a few hours, it was the most restful sleep I’d had in some time.
Hawk cleared his throat. “As for your visitor … you told me of a maid, but didn’t mention any male acquaintances.”
“My Uncle Owen.”
On Wednesdays, Uncle always came to sort through the greenhouse, choosing blossoms for his fabric dyes: sunflowers, geraniums, foxgloves, and bloodroot. In all of my emotional upheaval, I’d lost track of what day it was. The most tender part of me didn’t think life should resume so quickly after Mama’s death. But Uncle felt most at peace when he worked.
Hawk frowned. “Ah. I thought perhaps it was that Thornton fellow, come early.”
“Heaven forbid.” My heart hammered at the thought of the viscount. I needed every hour and minute of the next two days to prepare for that encounter.
Slipping out from my sheets, I held a blanket across my chemise, waiting for Hawk to look away.
He crossed to the other side of the room and stopped beside my rosewood desk where I’d placed his flower and its pot. His gaze toured the south window. “Well, since it’s your uncle, perhaps we might use his cart and sorrel for our post-breakfast expedition.”
I glanced outside over Hawk’s shoulder. Fog hugged the sky and cloaked the sun, thick and gray like a wolf’s pelt. A miserable day for facing Mama’s grave again. But on the bright side, this weather aggravated Uncle’s back injury, which had inspired him to drive his two-wheeled sprung cart as opposed to walking.
All I needed was a way to keep Uncle and Enya from realizing I was gone until we returned.
Hawk’s feet shifted, swishing the curtains at my window, once again affecting the world around me. “Shall we plan some elaborate scheme? Or would you prefer to follow my lead?”
I secured the steel knob clasps upon the front busk of my corset over my chemise, and eased into stockings and garters. “You wish to be my puppet-master?”
“Hmmm. Me in charge of all your strings? That could prove most entertaining.” Hawk threatened to turn around but I yelped at him while slipping quickly into my wide-legged drawers.
His broad shoulders shook on a chortle. One thing I had learned in our short time together: he had a wicked wit and his laughter was infectious. Such a masculine, full-bodied sound. It purred through my ears, pulsed through my blood, and lifted my heart to soar—a refreshing counterpoise to the deep silence I had been wrapped within for so many years.
In that instant the sun broke through the fog. Gilded by the light, Hawk resembled a luminous, human-shaped bubble—even more breathtaking and ethereal than the shimmering silver petals of his flower.
“I’m not sure how to feel about that,” he teased. “Being compared to a flower.”
“Would you prefer a weed?”
He laughed again, and I smiled at his back while arranging a princess panel dress of black crape over my curves. I still hadn’t learned how to hide my rampant thoughts and curiosities about him. For the most part, he was taking it all in stride, and was kind enough to make light of it, to ease my embarrassment.
“I must warn you,” I said, brushing my hair and rolling it to a chignon at the base of my nape. “Chloe will be downstairs. Uncle always brings her.”
“Chloe?”
“His spaniel.”
“Ah. And judging by the way Aria reacts to me …”
“A dog would be even harder to contain. I could wear my locket outside of my dress until I make it out the door.” I hated to suggest it, knowing how he dreaded returning to his dark oblivion.
Last night, after he and I discovered we could connect via a petal within the locket, I learned to keep the necklace tucked beneath my corset so it would be held snug against my flesh. Otherwise, he faded from my vision and returned to his dark gloom until it touched my skin again.
We also realized we had to stay within fifteen feet or so of one another while I was wearing the necklace pressed to my skin, with nothing solid—such as a wall or closed door—standing between us. Otherwise, the petal would wither and have to be replaced with another.
Together, we chose never to be separated, except upon the most personal moments when I required privacy.
“Well thankfully,” Hawk said from his post at the window, “separation won’t be necessary this morn. I see the dog around the corner, secured beside your greenhouse out back.”
Relieved, I smoothed my dress into place. The princess panels hugged my small waist and hips,
eliminating the need for my nemesis crinoline. Better we were sneaking out. Enya would never let me leave the house otherwise. She would insist my dress was too form-fitting without the attachable long train connected by its hooks … the one I’d left hanging in my wardrobe to make for ease in walking about.
“You may turn around now,” I said.
Hawk did, and then whistled. The sound tickled my ears and made me feel desirable—a most welcome rarity.
“You are exquisite, Juliet. Surely men have told you that.”
Before Hawk could see into my thoughts, I suppressed the memory of the two suitors from my past. It was a pain too demeaning to share. With my mind a blank slate, I led the way downstairs to the dining room, focused only on our plan for escape.
Seated at the head of the table, I sorted through my milliner materials.
Just minutes earlier, Enya had peeled the cloth off Aria’s cage. The bird fluttered impotently behind the bars, screaming at Hawk. I convinced my maid to cover her up again, that the bird missed Mama and needed a quiet space so she wouldn’t be reminded of her absence, much like Uncle had been avoiding going upstairs in fear of crossing her room.
None of us wished to entertain nostalgia today.
I worked to cover a straw bonnet with periwinkle taffeta, wincing when the needle shoved into my tender thumb pad. I had already pricked that place four times.
Pleats were difficult. The tediousness of their construction bored me. This morning, though, I fought a new battle that had nothing to do with boredom. For one thing, the dusty brown of the ribbons waiting to trim my bonnet reminded me of Mama’s eyes. And each time I thought on it, Hawk comforted me from over my shoulder where he stood to observe my work.
It was strange enough—to not even be safe in my own head with my musings. But even more unsettling was the fact that Enya and my uncle were bustling about like nervous mice. Each time one of them came close to Hawk, I jumped and pricked my finger once more.
I worried they might step on him, or walk through him, or somehow feel his presence. Or worse, cause him to disappear—still unsure of the rules of the dead. In fact, in regard to the unusual flower now occupying the left bay window, I had forbidden either of them to touch it.