The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

never misplaced the harmonies or lyrics she sang.
    Yet the lullaby I’d heard was in a language I could not decipher. How could I have imagined a man’s voice so sensual, so filled with emotion and depth, singing a melody I’d never known?
    The flower’s scent mingled with the charred wood. Overwhelmed by an urge to hear the music once more—on the chance it was even possible—I reached out, drizzling water across the floor to clasp a silvery petal between my fingers. I stiffened as the song was reborn, instantly.
    The man—or mirage—emerged slowly in the corner, propped against the cupboard, his palms covering his ears again. He wasn’t fully substantive, had only a hint of color to his image. Even the wrinkles of the creamy wall hangings shone through him. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was dressed in a black waistcoat and striped trousers that draped strong thighs and long legs. A cravat was knotted above his muscular chest.
    Though my arm weakened with curiosity and shock, I kept my contact with the flower. The moment he noticed me, the notes broke in his throat, hands dropping in one graceful motion from his ears.
    Silence wreathed us, all but for his labored breath.
    I debated speaking, but what does one say to a hallucination?
    “Well, Miss.” He tapped one of the button boots donning his feet, blatant in his appraisal of my body. “You might consider more what you should wear, than what you should say. Not that I’m complaining of your choice thus far.”
    I gasped and released the flower. He vanished.
    Scrambling from the tub, I covered myself with a woolen throw and slumped next to the planter. I arranged my necklace so the locket fell again between my breasts. My erratic pulse hammered my sternum beneath it.
    A man had seen me naked in my bath.
    But no. It was merely an apparition.
    I studied the corner where he had stood. He’d seemed so real.
    He even heard my thoughts , as if I had spoken them directly to him.
    That had been wonderful—no straining to read his lips, no struggling to form answers without sounding deaf to him. I rarely engaged in conversation with anyone other than Uncle, Enya, Mama, or our female clientage. Communication was laborious, and in the past, the effort had yielded painful results. Most especially with men.
    I’d inherited Mama’s long, golden hair and soft brown eyes, and lashes uncharacteristically dark for one of my porcelain coloring. Paired with Papa’s shapely lips and a small nose that earned me the nickname of China Rose—the nymph of all blossoms—my appearance garnered more attention than I desired. But I’d learned men could not be trusted once they discovered my “abnormality.” So even had I been eligible for a coming out season to meet a suitable mate, I would have refused it. Something I’d made very clear to Mama and Uncle.
    That didn’t mean I was immune to curiosities or loneliness.
    I flushed, thinking of how Lord Thornton touched my ankle at the cemetery. Society said it was wrong to have such stirrings. Enya constantly catechized me on proper codes of conduct. Only familial affection and the goal to one day be a mother were acceptable feelings for a lady to have. Heaven forbid we put any intellectual consideration into how those things came about.
    Yet earlier, when I saw the viscount mourning at the gate, what I first noticed was his masculinity. I thought him attractive, and wounded. I was drawn to him, beyond my empathy for his loss. I knew better than to reach out. Not only because it would be improper with no chaperone between us … but because I dared not step from the veil of diffidence that had cloaked me for so long. Being vulnerable was far more discomforting than being reprimanded by society.
    Yet if there were someone who only I could see … someone who could hear me without my tongue, and that I could hear without my ears, we wouldn’t have those boundaries. We wouldn’t have any boundaries.
    And my solitude would be no