The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Page 3

  “I hope not with good reason,” I retorted. “They are amulets to ward off the evil eye. Versions of them are to be found throughout the Middle East. These are contemporary, but I have seen some too old to date.”

  “Religions come and go, but evil is never vanquished, eh?”

  I nodded. I had a small collection, both old and new, bought covertly during my childhood. My father, who fervently believed evil would one day be vanquished by the church that commanded his heart and soul, would not have tolerated the heathen objects under his roof. I hid them in an ingeniously crafted cedar box I found one day in a dusty Stamboul shop, and they lay there still. Once, shortly after my parents’ fiery deaths, and troubled by any sins on my part that might have accounted for such a horror, I confided in Uncle Vartan. He had looked at me searchingly in a way I had found unsettling,

  “It was no fault of yours, dear child, or of your pretty keepsakes. The evil lay elsewhere, in the minds and hearts of people bent on destruction. Only faith and courage can ward off evil such as that.” Then, sensing my childish dismay—for I had been thinking in terms of guarding against evil imps and fairies, not people—he advised me to keep my amulets. “Because,” he added in a reassuring whisper, “one never knows!”

  I stepped forward to examine the amulets more closely—cheap bazaar trinkets, as I suspected—and noticed, for the first time, a striking portrait hanging on the wall to my right. It was of a woman: young, but without a trace of girlishness and although she was no beauty, with looks so compelling as to render prettiness, even beauty, trivial.

  Her white dress was high-waisted and flowing, conveying an impression of virginal sweetness mocked by the wearer’s bold, fleshy face. Her slightly protuberant dark eyes were very large; her nose, aquiline; her skin, dusky. Sculptured, sensual lips curved in a smile which the smoldering challenge in the heavy-lidded eyes invested with seductive promise. Abundant long dark hair fell in ringlets on shoulders carelessly swathed in a length of fine muslin gorgeously embellished with tulips and carnations embroidered in silk.

  One of her hands clasped the finely worked shawl to her full breasts, and on her gently curved index finger she wore a ring striking because of its size and simplicity. It was a flat disk of gold about the diameter of a silver dollar, engraved with archaic calligraphy in a style which, like the embroidered floral motifs, was unmistakably Ottoman. Perhaps that explained the curious, haunting familiarity of this face I had never before seen.

  “‘That’s his last mistress painted on the wall,’“ Thorn Ramsay intoned, ‘“looking as if she were alive....’”

  It was a line of poetry, of that I was sure, but there was something not quite right about it.

  Ah! Of course! “‘I call that piece a wonder....’“ I quoted in turn, “and it is wonderful, but who is she? I didn’t realize Charles Quintus Ramsay did portraiture.”

  “He didn’t—unless, of course, you count Harry Braunfels inserted into landscapes to lend scale to the elms. Roxelana was unique. In more ways than one,” he added wryly.

  “Roxelana,” I repeated in a musing tone. “Seems an unlikely name for either a duchess or an American mistress,” I said pertly, referring to his misquotation of Browning.

  “As well as too humble a rank by far. Roxelana was neither American nor a duchess: she claimed to be an Ottoman princess. Be that as it may, they met in Constantinople near the end of C.Q.’s pilgrimage in search of exotic scenes to capture with his brush and recapture the attention of the art world, and for the first time in his life C.Q. was too smitten to be wary of a woman’s wiles. In addition to her exalted rank, Roxelana further claimed to have been warned by persons loyal to her royal self that the sultan—or was it the sultan’s chief wife?—was planning to tie her up in a sack and drop her in the Bosphorus.

  “So Charles Quintus Ramsay, according to his often repealed and variously embellished account of it, proceeded to smuggle the doomed princess out of the Dolmabahce Palace and into his cabin on his homeward-bound ship just before it weighed anchor. Quite a feat of derring-do for an aging Lothario and a co-conspirator, rumored at the time to be a certain Vartan Avakian.”

  I smiled. Roxelana was the Western name for the scheming, influential favorite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire at the fifteenth-century peak of its fortunes. It was the perfect choice of a name for an ambitious imposter. The notion of Uncle Vartan being a party to such a scheme was preposterous.

  “Smuggled her out how?” I asked. “Rolled up in a carpet, like Cleopatra?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “I said it was rumored; I didn’t say I believed it.” His smile faded. He looked at me intently for a long moment, as if searching for words. When he finally spoke he did so hesitantly, with his face angled away. “I meant to say earlier that I’m sorry about your uncle. He was a good man.”

  I was touched by his awkward sincerity. It was difficult for this man to sheathe his verbal knives.

  “You knew him, then?”

  “Not well. His last visit here coincided with the house-warming. All the Ramsays were here; Roxelana was queening it even more than usual, and Cora was beside herself. As was your uncle, now that I think of it. Something was definitely amiss.” .

  Thorn Ramsay gave what I was beginning to think of as a characteristic shrug. “We clung together during those few days. Maybe it was just that he felt an outsider here, as I always did. He and C.Q. had a falling out soon after that. I never knew why, but I had the feeling your uncle disapproved of Roxelana. Curious. One would have thought they might find something in common.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “An elderly Armenian and a young Turkish woman? Not likely! Especially if she was highborn, as she claimed.” I looked again at the arresting likeness. “She has a certain...appeal,” I admitted grudgingly.

  Thorn Ramsay smiled knowingly. “Yes, I guess you could say that,” he said in an aroused drawl. “Lord knows she affected everyone at Hawkscliffe in one way or another. Sometimes I fancy I can hear her still—that distinctive husky laugh, late at night, from behind closed doors.”

  Thornton Ramsay paused. The amused smile on his wide, mobile mouth faded, and he turned his dark, shaggy head back toward the portrait. The silence lengthened. When he turned back to stare at me broodingly from under lowered brows, his shadowed eyes seemed more black than green, as darkly somber as the firs of northern forests.

  “Oh, yes, Miss Mackenzie. My uncle’s last and long-lost mistress did indeed have a certain appeal.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I trust your room is satisfactory.”

  It was not a question. Cora Banks’s bright brown eyes as they met mine across the massive dining table held neither challenge nor inquiry. Her gray-streaked brown hair was pulled back into a bun in a severe style which emphasized the housekeeper’s high forehead and narrow beak of a nose. A small beak, like that of a small, neat bird—a sparrow, perhaps. Her old-fashioned, trim-fitting brown woolen dress and alert, emotionless gaze underscored the comparison, and for the merest fraction of a moment I felt uncomfortably like a plump worm about to be skewered and gobbled down without the slightest remorse. Then she smiled, and the image skittered away.

  “Perfectly satisfactory. Miss Banks,” I replied. It was, in fact, a rather cheerless room—the colorful Orient appeared to have stopped at its threshold—but it was neat and clean and to my surprised delight had access to a modern water closet

  “Roxelana’s personal maid occupied that room,” she amplified unnecessarily. “That was some time ago, though. You can rest assured the linen has been changed since.”

  Well! That certainly put me in my place. I smiled, nodded, and silently addressed the consommé. Although a wisp of a woman in comparison with the tall Ramsay men. Miss Banks’s presentation of herself as more doyenne than housekeeper went unchallenged. I gazed covertly through my lashes at the Ramsay men: Philo looked embarrassed by her slighting remarks; Thornton seemed amused.

  “I c
hanged it myself, miss. Just last week, I did.”

  Startled by the sibilant whisper in my ear I turned my head, nearly bumping the brow of the harried young girl serving us. She offered a basket of warm rolls redolent of yeast and butter. Her guileless blue eyes met mine in earnest apology; her cheeks flamed with color. The well-meant protestation touched me, confirming my opinion that the best manners were instinctive.

  “I’ll help you unpack after dinner,” she offered impulsively, encouraged by my grateful smile.

  “Mary Rose,” Miss Banks said sharply, “I believe the rest of us would also enjoy Agnes’s rolls with our first course.”

  “I’ve already unpacked, Mary Rose,” I returned softly, “but I do appreciate your offer.”

  “Mary Rose!”

  “The fault is mine Miss Banks,” I protested, “and I am sorry, for the rolls are very good indeed.”

  As she turned away, the chastised girl’s bob of a curtsy in acknowledgment of my defense rustled her long, starched white apron. Her eyes sought mine conspiratorially as Philo’s hands, slim and as elegantly attenuated as an El Greco saint’s, paused uncertainly above the rolls she offered him.

  Mary Rose’s quiet sigh as she awaited Philo Ramsay’s choice caused the streamers of her little white cap to flutter. Her somber black and white garb contrasted interestingly with the rich olive green of walls ringed by an intricately detailed dado of pseudo-Arabic calligraphy traced in copper and gold. Dark canvases framed ornately in carved and gilded wood punctuated the long, narrow room like portholes in a ship; the flames in the fireplace cast shifting shadows over all. It was a scene Rembrandt might have painted.

  “Tell me, Philo, are you planning to eat a roll or acquire one for that museum of yours? They look as alike as peas in a pod to me, but then I don’t pretend any connoisseurship of the culinary arts.”

  As Thornton Ramsay’s teasing darts reached their unsuspecting target, Philo colored, Mary Rose tittered, and Cora Banks’s mouth tightened.

  “Nor I, Thorn,” Philo said, “but I was unwilling to settle for something half-baked,” he added lightly.

  The two men were even more of a contrast at dinner, now that Thornton Ramsay was dressed in more conventional attire. Both wore well-tailored suits of a rather similar gray-shaded tweed, but Philo had chosen to augment his with an elegant paisley waistcoat enhanced by a gold swag of watch chain and fob. Thornton wore a waistcoat of the same conservative tweed as his suit, but his gleaming white collar was softened by a length of dark red silk tied in a soft, careless bow. The one effect seemed calculated; the other, the first thing that came to hand, yet the more I thought about it, the less sure I became about which was which.

  “Thornton tells me you are Vartan Avakian’s niece, Miss Mackenzie.” Cora Banks arched her thin eyebrows. “I must say you don’t look like one.”

  “I beg your pardon. Miss Banks?” I was honestly perplexed: aside from being female, what quality was necessary to earmark one as a niece?

  “One of them, like your uncle.” Then, as I continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly, she finally got to the point. “An Armenian rug merchant, my dear. But,I suppose with a name like Mackenzie—”

  “Miss Mackenzie has already been put through this once today, Cora,” Thorn interjected in a tone of mild reproach.

  Put through by you, I accused silently. “I’m willing to go through it again, if necessary,” I said evenly, hoping my annoyance wasn’t as apparent as it felt. “In Turkey, my birthplace, and throughout the East, the making and selling of rugs is an honorable profession, Miss Banks. I am proud to be following in my late uncle’s footsteps.”

  “And are you clever at bargaining, my dear?”

  Her sweet tone, no doubt intended to sugar-coat the implied snub, failed to make it more palatable.

  “I do not know. Uncle Vartan advised me against it. He told me Americans were not very good at the game—except, of course, for Charles Quintus Ramsay who, he said, sometimes got the better of the deal.”

  Philo hid a smile, but Thornton threw back his shaggy dark head and hooted with delight. “He would, the old reprobate!”

  Spots of red burned in Cora Banks’s cheeks. “Do I gather, then, that he usually got the worst of it?”

  “Not at all,” I retorted defensively. “All I meant was that Easterners assume that buyers know the value of the item sought, in which case the bargaining process assures a fair price for the buyer and a reasonable profit for the seller. Uncle Vartan said Mr. Ramsay knew well the value of all the goods he bought.”

  Cora Banks rose abruptly, toppling her bentwood chair off the carpet to clatter on die parquet floor beyond.

  “How dare you. Miss Mackenzie!” The crystal prisms on the huge brass lamp suspended above the table tinkled in seeming protest of her shrill outburst. Her small hands, fisted with agitation, swung wildly. The cut-glass water pitcher overturned, loosing a gush of icy rivulets among the place settings.

  What had I said to provoke such fury? I looked from one cousin to the other, hoping for enlightenment, but they sat transfixed. For a brief, frozen moment the only sound was Miss Banks’s labored breathing accompanied by the muffled dripping of water from the damask cloth to the Heriz carpet below.

  “Charles Quintus never saw through that woman’s self-inflated value to the base metal below,” she hissed, fixing me with a baleful stare. “He saw gold where there was only lead—dark, cold, and poisonous. He was bewitched by that Turkish harlot in the stews of Stamboul—and Vartan Avakian was the go-between!”

  Philo retrieved Cora’s chair, but although she made a conscious effort to compose herself, she resisted his effort to reseat her. “Tell me, Miss Mackenzie, what ‘reasonable profit’ did your precious uncle make on that transaction, I wonder? And what is your real purpose in being here?” Her false smile transformed the open challenge into an insinuating taunt.

  “You go too far, Cora!” It was Thornton Ramsay, his voice a low rumble of reproving thunder. “Miss Mackenzie is a guest in this house. Until she and Philo accomplish what he has commissioned her to do, kindly keep your reservations about her, her uncle, and her heritage to yourself.” He then turned to me, his green eyes shadowed and haunting under darkly frowning brows. “I apologize for Cora, Miss Mackenzie. She sometimes forgets her place.”

  Miss Banks’s sharp gasp made me tear my gaze from those mesmerizing eyes.’ With one hand pressed to pale, thin lips that Thornton’s harsh reproof had rounded into a quivering circle of anguish, she whirled from the table and out of the room.

  Philo sighed. “Cora’s not the only one who goes too far, Thorn,” he said in a weary tone. He passed a long, slender hand over his blond head as if attempting to erase the unpleasant exchange from his mind. “I had better go see if I can mend fences. I am sorry, Miss Mackenzie. I’m afraid you’ve been offered little in the way of welcome.”

  I wordlessly inclined my head, both in acknowledgment of his statement and to convey my indecision about the advisability of my continued presence in this troubled house.

  We sat in silence, Thornton Ramsay and I, at a table that seemed too long in a room too? big for two diners paired by chance rather than choice. Reluctant to meet his penetrating gaze, I looked above the centerpiece between us, an elaborately chased silver epergne filled with ferns and orange-berried bittersweet, as if fascinated by the artworks hanging on the wall beyond him.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him smile, for it was a pointless ruse. I could not tell if the gilt-framed oils on the green leather-textured walls were landscapes, portraits, en-scenes of conquest. The shadows beyond the circle of lamplight lent them all an air of brooding mystery.

  A shudder of wind rattled the high windows and sent sleet slithering across die painted panes. I shivered. The only sources of warmth were the flames flickering in die brass-framed Mooresque fireplace and the flush which washed over my cheeks as Thornton Ramsay continued to assess me. The orange tongues of fire lighting his craggy featu
res from below lent his face a wolfish aspect. His strong, even teeth gleamed white as his mouth curved in a slow, insinuating smile which aroused in me an unfamiliar swirl of emotions. Fright? Yes, but excitement? Even as I denied the possibility, I was forced, to my shame, to admit the truth of it.

  “You were right to change,” he said at length. “Russet velvet becomes you.”

  The unexpected compliment unsettled me. “I fear it is sadly out of fashion, and I appear to have lost a button—”

  “A simple thank-you would have sufficed.”

  Although his cone indicated a gentle tease rather than a rebuke, I bent my head to hide my confusion and gain time to gather my scattered wits. When I looked up, I was able to speak without a betraying tremor. “Might it be possible, please, for me to be driven down to Hendryk tomorrow to take an early train back to New York?”

  My stiffly phrased question surprised him. “Giving up so soon, Miss Mackenzie?”

  I rose angrily. “My business here is—was—straightforward, and my conduct has, I think, been professional. I do not understand why I should be subject to insult and innuendo, Mr. Ramsay—truly I do not. I grant you my notion to arrive without proper notice was ill conceived, but—”

  “Hush, Miss Mackenzie, and do sit down. You are quite right. I have behaved churlishly—expecting, I guess, that those soulful Eastern brown eyes of yours would penetrate our hearts and read all our secrets, when all you are, really, is the person from Porlock, come on business.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at his reference to the commercial visitor who arrived unannounced on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s doorstep, fatally interrupting the poet’s flow of poetic fancy.

  “Ah, but Charles Quintus’s pleasure dome, unlike Coleridge’s creation for Kubla Khan, has endured. A little the worse for wear, of course,” I added slyly. “I wish I had seen it in its heyday.”