The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Read online

  He stopped before a bank of French windows and turned. His saturnine face remained unsmiling, but a glint in his eyes—perhaps a mere reflection of the warm light spilling out from within—seemed to mock my earnest thoughts. I swept by him, under the arch of his tweedy arm, through the pair of windows he opened for me. As I did so, a slight exhalation escaped my lips that, I must confess, sounded uncommonly like a sigh.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I understand you have come to catalog my late uncle’s rugs in your late uncle’s place, Miss Mackenzie.”

  Despite his dry tone and faintly skeptical expression, Philo Ramsay extended his hand in greeting. It was a simple, friendly gesture, one that under the circumstances I had not expected. He was a tall man, slim, fair, and elegantly turned out, but although the gaze he bent upon me was kindly, there was a hooded watchfulness in his gray eyes.

  “My cousin tells me you brought my letter to Mr. Avakian with you. May I see it?” Then, as if to soften the implied challenge, “To refresh my memory?”

  “Your cousin?”

  Covered with confusion, I turned my eyes uncertainly from one man to the other. Aside from their commanding height, there was no family resemblance whatsoever. The clean, classic lines of Philo Ramsay’s face contrasted markedly with his darker cousin’s rugged features. At first he seemed little more than twenty-five, but a slight pouching of his jowls—apparent only when he turned in profile against, the light—caused me to amend my estimate. Late thirties was more like it, I decided; and a gentleman, unlike his hawk-nosed gypsyish cousin, nameless still, who appeared to relish my embarrassment.

  “Miss Mackenzie took me for a gatekeeper,” he said with evident amusement.

  “And you, of course, said nothing to enlighten her,” Philo Ramsay said, all but wagging an admonishing finger at his cousin. “Really, Thorn.”

  “She’s a ready jumper to conclusions, I fear.”

  “Not gatekeeper,” I corrected perversely, as I handed the requested letter to Philo Ramsay. “Groundskeeper.”

  Both men laughed at that.

  “Would that he were!” Philo Ramsay exclaimed. “Allow me to introduce you, Miss Mackenzie. Thornton Ramsay is also a nephew of my late—”

  “But unlamented—”

  “Lamented by some,” Philo corrected sharply. “As I was saying,” he continued, “Thorn is my late uncle’s other nephew, the stepson of my uncle’s next-to-oldest brother—”

  “Who was also your uncle, as were the other two—”

  “Yes, yes, but do stop interrupting. Thorn. Our family is confusing enough as it is.”

  “Which is good reason to spare Miss Mackenzie the tedious details. Suffice it to say, thanks to mortality’s fearful toll of C.Q.’s siblings and their offspring, Philo appears to be the only surviving heir to Charles Quintus’s estate, and I am the executor.”

  Appears to be? As executor, surely he must know, I thought; and, just as surely, the conservation of the estate until its distribution was his responsibility. “Am I to understand, then,” I blurted, “that you are responsible for the sorry state of Hawkscliffe?”

  Philo smiled: “Ah! What a clever girl! She’s only just arrived and has already put her dainty finger right on it.”

  Thornton Ramsay’s answering scowl was gratifying proof that I had drawn blood at last. “My dear young lady, since Hawkscliffe is none of your business, there is nothing for you to understand. You would have done well to absorb some of your uncle’s tact along with his rug lore. Now, if you will excuse me, I’ll leave you to discuss what is your business while I acquaint Cora with the news of Miss Mackenzie’s unheralded arrival.”

  “And put Zuleika out,” Philo called after him. “You know how Cora feels about those dogs in the house.”

  The big dog lumbered to her feet in response to Thorn Ramsay’s whistle. Just before leaving the room, he turned back to give me a wink as if to prove he had recovered his balance sooner than I.

  Suppressing a very strong, very childish urge to stick out my tongue at the closing door, I turned back to make my apologies as best I could.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Ramsay, I know I should have acquainted you with my intention to assume my uncle’s mantle, as it were, but....” My words trailed off. I was uncertain how to continue without sounding either accusatory or self-pitying.

  “You thought I would reject you either because of your sex or your unlikely name,” he completed for me.

  “Good heavens. How did you ever guess?”

  “I’ve had my own experiences with unwarranted judgments,” he said dryly. “Actually, if anything would put me off, it is your youthful appearance. How can anyone so young be knowledgeable enough to assess what is considered to be the finest collection of oriental carpets in America?” He tapped the letter with long, well-cared-for fingers.

  It was a fair question, one that deserved a considered answer. As I gathered my thoughts, he spoke again.

  “I should tell you that my present position as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts affords me a certain, ah, sophistication in matters of this sort. What that means is that I am rather good at spotting weaknesses in claims of expertise—including my own,” he added disarmingly. “My field happens to be European art, and I’m considered to have a good eye—but carpets?” He opened his arms wide, as if to expose himself to my scorn. “I am a Philistine, a veritable Caliban—in short, Miss Mackenzie, I know nothing about carpets, but I can soon tell whether or not you know something. Do I make myself dear?”

  I nodded briskly. “Very. It is refreshing to know at the outset where I stand, unlike—” I paused. Thornton Ramsay was his cousin, after all.

  He raised his fine eyebrows. A fleeting smile curved his lips, which were pleasantly accentuated by a mustache so blond it seemed more a suggestion than a reality. How handsome he was!

  “Thorn can be trying,” he admitted, “but he is very good at what he does—although we do not always agree on what it is he should do,” he added, more to himself than to me. He cleared his throat. “Please be seated. Miss Mackenzie, and think of this not as an interview, but a conversation between friends.” He returned to the large, ornately carved desk from which he had risen to greet me. He sat, neatly aligned the papers on the embossed leather top, then leaned back and crossed his legs. His gray eyes regarded me with keen interest.

  “My earliest qualification,” I began, “was an accident of birth. I was born in Constantinople, and I traveled the length and breadth of Anatolia during the first twelve years of my life. My father, a Scot, was a lay Catholic missionary, and although converting the Muslim and adherents of the Oriental Catholic churches to Rome was his passion, Eastern art was his avocation. I absorbed it—and Latin and Greek—in spite of myself. My father was nothing if not determined.”

  “Latin and Greek, eh?” Philo Ramsay nodded approvingly. “Impossible to be a genuine scholar without them. I am impressed. Please go on.”

  Hastily, I mentally reviewed my biography. Surely Mr. Ramsay was not interested in the conflicts that warred within a girl torn between East and West—conflicts I was only now beginning to recognize myself, and that men like Thornton Ramsay seemed, inexplicably, to fan into flame. I continued with an edited version.

  “My mother was Armenian. Her family had for generations been carpet weavers and sellers, as well as leaders in whatever community they found themselves—you see, the Armenians in Turkey, the passionate ones at least, are always on the move. It is not wise to be a nationalist under Ottoman rule.”

  I paused. “That is what killed my parents. We were staying for a few days in a village with relatives, some of whom were suspected of fomenting rebellion. One afternoon, while I was taking bread and cheese up to the shepherds, soldiers came. The village was torched—we could see the smoke from the high pastures—and my parents died in the flames. My Uncle Vartan, who had emigrated to America to escape persecution, was at home in New York between rug-buying trips, and as soon as the sad
news reached him he arranged for my passage. It was not safe for him to return to Turkey while feelings still ran high.

  “So there I was, a little girl with an inquiring mind in the home of an aging, childless widower who yearned to pass on the knowledge he had acquired over so many years. ‘This is my legacy to you, dear child,’ he would tell me, for although his business was profitable, much of the profit went back into more rugs, finer rugs. In truth, his livelihood was in his hands, his eyes, and above all, his heart.”

  “And that man was your teacher,” Philo Ramsay mused.

  I nodded. “For twelve wonderful years.” I fell silent for a moment, remembering; then I laughed. “Uncle Vartan had all these sayings. ‘See with your hands, dear child,’ he would admonish me, or ‘the front is the glory, but the back tells the story.’ That one was his favorite; I must have heard it a hundred—no, two hundred times.”

  “What does it mean?”

  I stared at the blond man. His gaze was guileless. He wasn’t testing me; he really was ignorant about rugs. “Simply that anyone can copy a design, but a weaving style learned in childhood flows through the fingertips onto the loom as naturally as breathing. The design tells us something; the colors and wool tell us something more, but if we want to know for sure where a carpet was woven we look at the pattern of the weave on the back.”

  “Like brush strokes in painting.”

  “Exactly!”

  We smiled at each other, and I sensed a kinship that eluded words. It wasn’t friendship—we didn’t know each other well enough yet for that—but whatever it was, his lack of condescension, the attention paid to what I had to say, was cheering. For the first time in months I no longer felt completely alone.

  I rose to my feet, the better to take in my surroundings. The room was dominated by tall windows whose borders were painted representations of the arched, columned mihrab found on Ottoman prayer rugs. A majestic, beautifully crafted mahogany easel, angled to catch the north light, defined the room’s function.

  “So this was Charles Quintus Ramsay’s studio,” I said in an awed tone. I stepped closer to the easel. On it, a large luminous oil depicting a grand and romantic view of the Hudson commanded my attention. The river, winding sinuously below tree-crested, craggy heights, was divided by small islands into glittering ribbons that met and parted in a coruscating dance of sunlight and water. In the lower righthand comer, C. Q. Ramsay had signed and dated it in a bold slash of black.

  “1862!” I exclaimed. “That’s the year I was born.”

  “Uncle Charles’s fame was at its height then.” Philo Ramsay shook his fair head regretfully. “Before long, die critics’ taste began to turn toward the moody Impressionist works which are now all the rage.”

  As I studied the impressive landscape I wondered if Uncle Vartan had seen it in progress. I knew that it was during the sixties and early seventies that he must have sold C Q. Ramsay the rugs that constituted his collection, some of which were scattered here beneath my feet like a splash of jewels.

  “What a wonderful room!” I exclaimed.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Philo Ramsay agreed. “I’ve appropriated it as my own,” he added with a smile, indicating a low sleeping couch covered with a fine Kirman shawl and flanked by a large wardrobe in the Dutch style. “C.Q, was at his best here; he was, as my cousin intimated, a difficult man in many respects: arrogant, selfish and insensitive. But when he crossed ‘this threshold,” he said, pointing toward the iron-strapped door which had barricaded the artist from the prosaic world of his household, “he was a different person altogether, serious and dedicated.

  “Before my uncle built Hawkscliffe, I was the only one permitted in his Manhattan studio while he worked, much to my Aunt Louise’s very vocal annoyance. I suppose it was because of my ability to maintain silence for long periods even at a young age. How I treasured those visits 1 He was a superb craftsman as well as an inspired artist, you know. Just watching C.Q. work taught me more than thousands of words from a lesser teacher. It was like being allowed into the presence of a high priest.”

  “With you as the worshipping acolyte,”

  It was Thornton Ramsay, returned to plague us. His sardonic tone caused my insides to roil.

  “A willing servant. Thorn.”

  “Because you were never a threat, Philo. Charles Quintus saw to that early on. What is it the Jesuits say?”

  Ah! I knew that one well. “Give me the child before he is seven—”

  “And he’s mine the rest of his life,” Philo finished in my stead. “I don’t see how it applies, cousin.”

  “Have you forgotten what he said about your boyhood sketches? There’s no fire, no muscle in your hand, toy. Try again when you no longer sing soprano.’ Considering your voice had already changed to tenor by then, I would hardly call that encouragement.”

  Philo Ramsay colored deeply. “He merely meant my work lacked maturity. Besides, I was never serious about becoming an artist. Early on, I decided my mission was to preserve art, not create it. It’s not as if I were Cora...”

  His voice trailed off, but whatever he meant was fully understood by his dark-haired cousin, whose curl of lip tightened into a grim line. “Yes, Cora. But here we are, burdening Miss Mackenzie with bits and pieces of the family skeletons again. I’m sure she would much rather go to her room to unpack and change out of that fusty serge in time for dinner, which Cora tells me will be at eight o’clock, or,” he extracted a large gold watch from the pocket of his breeches, “about an hour from now,”

  Good heavens, I thought. I haven’t even seen my room yet My expression must have betrayed my dismay.

  “No need to primp for a family dinner. Miss Mackenzie. Just brush out that pretty hair and pinch your cheeks and we won’t even notice the serge.”

  “Mr. Ramsay!”

  “And do call me Thorn, Miss Mackenzie, otherwise we won’t know to which Mr. Ramsay you’re referring—except, of course, when you employ that indignant tone of voice.” He smiled and winked, and the calculated charm of it vexed me even more. “Come along, then. Time’s a-wasting.”

  I glanced imploringly at Philo, but he merely smiled resignedly and waved me on. “At dinner, then, Miss Mackenzie.”

  “Harry has already taken your bags to your room,” Thorn Ramsay offered as we walked side by side down the long corridor hung with stunning examples of Charles Quintus Ramsay’s work, and wide enough to accommodate two very beautiful old Caucasian main carpets laid end to end.

  “Harry Braunfels is the genuine Hawkscliffe groundsman,” he added. “He is also the gatekeeper I thought you had mistaken me for, as well as kennelman, head groom-the only groom now, for that matter—and falconer. Vicious creatures, those hawks. I would have gotten rid of them long ago, but Harry said ‘They go; I go.’ A man of few words is our Harry, and he never minces them. He was the model for the few figures C.Q. put in his landscapes. They got on very well, those two. He was the natural man that C.Q. could only play at being. Poor Charles Quintus. All bluff and boast and swagger. Harry’s the real thing. You’ll see when you meet him.”

  Despite myself, I was interested. Thornton Ramsay’s breezy, anecdotal style had a perceptive quality that lifted it out of gossip into the realm of wry comment on the human condition. As we came to the end of the corridor, however, the scene that greeted me as we turned into the main entrance hall captured my entire attention.

  I hardly knew where to look first. Even at a time when a Turkish corner was de rigueur in fashionable homes, the effect was so calculatedly exotic as to be bizarre.

  A pair of Persian bronze peacocks, larger than life, stood in front of a pair of intricately patterned Anatolian tribal kilims which served as portieres. In their beaks they clutched tall, flaring candleholders which in real life would surely have broken their slender necks. Beyond lay a central hall chockablock with small inlaid tables, carved stands, and wrought-iron racks upon which tribal artifacts, finely woven bags, and trappings of all kin
ds lay carelessly strewn. I half expected the arrival in a flurry of dust and curvetting hooves, of a horde of tribal chieftains come from Turkey and Persia and even far Turkestan to lay claim to their belongings.

  At the end of the hall, a short, broad flight of brightly colored, kilim-carpeted steps directed the eye to the main staircase, an impressive amalgam of gleaming mahogany and brass-fitted balusters, each of a different design. A glossy Kurdish rug flowed up the shallow risers to the first landing. Displayed upon it, below an elaborately shuttered, amber-painted window, was the piece de resistance: a dramatic composition of crossed spears and shields whose unblemished surfaces betrayed them as unlikely to be genuine trophies of tribal clashes or bloody border skirmishes.

  “Cat got your tongue, Miss Mackenzie?”

  Despite my determination not to react to his mocking tone, I could feel my shoulders tighten and my nose elevate to a haughty tilt. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You readily voiced your opinion of Hawkscliffe’s exterior—have you nothing to say about this?” He gave a grand sweep of his hand denoting the motley array of furnishings. His green eyes glinted challengingly.

  “For an artist, your late uncle had a remarkably catholic taste in decoration,” I ventured cautiously. There was scarce a style of Eastern art, ancient or modern, which was not represented. “Draping an ancient Hittite stone lion with strings of the blue-and-white glass eyes hawked in every market in Anatolia is a very...original concept.”

  He laughed. The flash of strong white teeth against nutbrown skin was, I admit, attractive. “Your talent at faintly praised damnations rivals that of the great C.Q. himself.”

  “Surely not, Mr. Ramsay.” It was a talent I did not covet.

  “Perhaps not.” His smile was softer now, and to my surprise he did not call me to task for ignoring his request to address him by his given name. “Perhaps you are merely employing the tact I accused you earlier of lacking. But tell me, just what are those glass eyes? I find them rather repellent.”