The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Read online

  Not only was I aghast at this outpouring of enraged frustration, it seemed to me he was venting it on the wrong target. “No one forced you to be the executor of the estate, Mr. Ramsay. If anyone is to blame, perhaps it is yourself.”

  He rose from his chair. His fingers bit deeper into my wrist, and I whimpered with the pain of it. Abruptly he loosed me. He stared at the darkening imprint of his grip on my white skin and then into my eyes. I could see no trace of remorse in the smouldering depths of his.

  “Go to bed, Miss Mackenzie,” he commanded in a sneering tone of dismissal. “Go to bed, and try to restrain yourself from meddling further in affairs that are no concern of yours.”

  At that, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room. I waited, holding onto the back of my chair for support, my wrist throbbing dully, as his steps retreated upstairs. Mary Rose, who came in to clear away the dishes, hastened to my side.

  “Oh, miss! Are you ill? It’s that pale you are!”

  “No, Mary Rose, I just….” I forced a smile. “I’ve had a tiring day, and I believe I drank a bit too much wine. But thank you for your kind concern.”

  I walked into the court hall and slowly climbed the stairs, my way feebly lit by long tapers that guttered and smoked in the peacocks’ beaks. As I passed Roxelana’s portrait, a rivulet of wax flared up briefly. A gleam of malicious glee appeared to flicker in the varnished, heavy-lidded dark eyes, and the full lips seemed to quiver with imminent speech. A moment later, the flame died and the painted face retreated into the shadows.

  The corridor was very still. The wintry sound of wind-driven sleet was muffled by the rooms which opened off it, and as I walked down the long carpeted hall toward my room, I heard only the heavy sibilant whisper of my velvet skirt. I paused with my hand on the glass knob of my door and stared at the elaborately carved double doors facing me at the end of the corridor. The intricate interlaced pattern was Ottoman in style, more suited to a sultan’s seraglio than a bedroom in a country house on the Hudson, but then the room beyond, Roxelana’s room, was unlikely to be in any way usual.

  I stepped closer and slowly traced the incised patterns with my hands. His last mistress. I wondered what it was like, to be a man’s mistress. I curled my fingers around the curved brass handles. My hands tightened, and then, without conscious direction, pulled down. .

  No!

  I was, I sternly reminded myself, only a passing and reluctant player in this drama. I was no heroine and surely there was no hero here for me. Yet I sensed that Roxelana’s role was not yet played out, and in my heart of hearts I found her as fascinating as the forbidden amulets I had long ago secretly bought, one by sinful one, and hidden away in my little cedar box.

  Secrets. We all have them. I could sense them rustling in the shadows of this strange, exotic house. I could hear them whispering to me behind these closed doors. Who was she, really, this woman who called herself Roxelana? How had the mistress become the master, and where had she gone?

  My musings followed me into my dreams. I found myself again in the corridor outside Roxelana’s room with my hands once more on the engraved brass handles. It was very hot, and as I pulled at the satin bows which modestly secured my nightdress across my throat and breast, I heard a woman’s throaty chuckle. Roxelana! The handles twisted in my fingers, and the doors swung open. I seemed to float across the threshold into a saffron-colored mist scented with cedarwood and roses.

  At first I could see nothing else. Then, impelled by the illogic of dreams, I slowly revolved, like a music box ballerina, and when I had completed the turn I saw in front of me a low couch draped in fine shawls and silk embroideries. Next to it stood a man, standing at ease, one knee slightly bent, as if he had all the time in the world. He was turned away from me, clad only in pale, skin-tight breeches that molded his firm buttocks and muscular calves. He wore soft, lustrous black leather boots, and in his hand he carried a small, intricately braided whip. His back was long and strongly tapered from breadth of shoulder to trim waist. His skin had the satiny glow of virile good health, and the elegant curve of his spine invited the touch of my fingers.

  As I glided slowly forward, my eager hands outstretched, the man turned, and as he waited, he impatiently tapped the little whip into the palm of his hand. The mists swirled and cleared, and I met his provocative smile and heated eyes. Green eyes. Thornton Ramsay’s eyes.

  “Harlot!” he thundered. But it was my father’s voice, and the smile became my father’s disapproving glare. Icy blue eyes replaced the glinting green, and I gasped with horror and shame and it was so hot.

  I woke trembling and breathless, and as I clawed at the bedding which threatened to suffocate me I could still hear that low, mocking laughter. Pushing damp tendrils of hair from my forehead, I rose to fling open the window. As the fresh breeze poured in to cool my brow, I realized the temperature had risen sharply, melting the sleet and sending water spiraling through the gutters and down the leaders in an erratic chuckling flow that mocked my fevered dreams and the altogether unsuspected self, the secret me, that inhabited them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I awoke reluctantly, wrenched from a deep and dreamless second sleep by a muffled thudding sound, erratic in nature, as if a giant woodpecker were prying a meal out of the masonry with a beak wrought of iron. I raised my aching head—a memento of too much wine and too little sleep—and shielded my eyes against the light that streamed through my window, alternating inexplicably with shadow.

  It was the shutter. Unable to find the hook for its eye when I flung it open during the night, I had abandoned it to the wayward wind. As I rose now to rescue it from the fresh breeze that had chased the rainclouds east to the sea, I breathed in the air that tumbled in over the sill. It was as fragrant as linen laid out to dry in a summer meadow. I leaned out and sniffed appreciatively. As I did so, the night vision that had possessed me seemed to melt away like hoarfrost, its chilling grip no match for the sun’s warming rays.

  Below me was a courtyard, enclosed on three sides, banded by espaliered fruit trees and crisscrossed with an elaborately knotted pattern of clipped boxwood, each knot tufted with the stalks of frost-blanched herbs. The garden’s centerpiece was a graceful tiered fountain of pink, white-veined marble bordered by roses from whose thorny stems still fluttered brave remnants of pink and crimson and coral. They reminded me of my childhood home.

  Resting against the sill, I cupped my chin in my palms, closed my eyes, and allowed full reign to the memories conjured up by rose petals and fountains and the unseasonable, welcome warmth of Indian summer.

  When I next looked down I saw Cora in the garden, bending over the rose bushes, cradling a tattered blossom in her hand. The tenderness of her gesture moved me. I remembered what Thornton Ramsay had said of her talent as a botanical artist—was this her garden, then? Somehow, I doubted that the exotic woman Charles Quintus Ramsay had painted ever risked blemishing those smooth, plump arms with thorns.

  The errant shutter, which I had not yet secured, thumped smartly against the stuccoed wall, attracting the attention of the woman below. She peered up at me, her hand tented above her eyes, and on impulse I waved. Cora stiffened, then nodded her head in recognition of my greeting. I smiled. To be sure, her response was grudging, but victory is often won through a series of small, patiently achieved successes. I watched as she turned and walked briskly out of the courtyard and down a gentle slope where a steep little mansard roof peeked above a high yew hedge. That must be the cottage to which Roxelana had banished her. I could think of worse fates.

  Walking down? Good heavens. Cora was returning to her cottage, and I was due to meet Philo Ramsay after a breakfast I feared was long since past. My face burned and my fingers seemed as clumsy as thumbs as I hastened to dress. To be late on my very first day!

  I snatched up the small carpetbag that held the few tools of my trade, and as I opened the door I heard another door opening nearby. I peered out cautiously and saw a tall, lithe figur
e enter the room at the far end of the corridor. It was Thornton Ramsay. My hand flew to my throat as I recalled my dreams. Flustered by my recollection, and unwilling to risk crossing Thorn Ramsay’s path so soon after our dinner-table crossing of swords, I tiptoed down the carpeted hall and stairs as if I were a truant eluding a stem schoolmaster.

  As I descended into the court hall, my eye was drawn across it to an airy tile-floored room filled with a variety of conservatory plants. The closely arrayed mass of windows, virtually a wall of glass, commanded a view of the river winding through the valley far below and the hills which rolled grandly beyond it to the western horizon.

  “Splendid, isn’t it?” It was Philo Ramsay. He looked chipper, as befitted the bright morning, and well fed. Last night’s confrontation with his cousin was apparently the last thing on his mind. I decided to follow his lead.

  “Oh, yes!” I exclaimed. I smiled up into his gray eyes. “It’s the scene in the painting on the studio easel, isn’t it?”

  “Right you are.” He dabbed a crumb from the corner of his trim blond mustache, then rubbed his hands briskly. “Ready to begin, I see. I’m glad to find that punctuality is another trait we share.”

  My heart sank. Then, putting the thought of breakfast firmly behind me, I told myself that if I could survive my father’s obligatory fasts in my childhood, surely I could last until lunch.

  “I’m at your service, Miss Mackenzie—where do you suggest we start?”

  “With a listing of all the carpets in the house, then their measurements and an examination of the weaving hallmarks—the knotting and the finishing of the edges and ends. The colors, too, contribute to the determination of age and provenance, so unless natural light is available wherever there are carpets—”

  “Well, now, we may have to organize an expedition to explore the unknown territories.”

  I laughed. “Then we may be forced to hire native bearers to carry rugs to the light. A large carpet is a heavy load, Mr. Ramsay.”

  “Harry Braunfels will be more than equal to the task. He would like nothing better than to demonstrate how much stronger he is than I.”

  I was startled by the bitterness of his tone.

  “Perhaps even Thorn could be persuaded to lend a hand,” he continued, “although. I suspect that since I failed to consult him about this commission, he would decline to help me solve any problems arising from it.”

  “That seems rather mean-spirited.”

  My heated tone made him smile wryly. “I’m sometimes tempted to come to the same conclusion, but seven years is a long time to wait for a resolution to an impossible....” He stopped abruptly. “It’s been hard on all of us,” he concluded simply.

  “Maybe it won’t be necessary to move the carpets at all,” I offered soothingly. “The cheap chemical dyes that are causing such havoc in the market have only been available in the East since the seventies, and the carpets chosen by your uncle and mine were woven long before that.”

  The morning sped by, its passage spurred by the discovery of marvelous rugs partly hidden under tables and chairs and unearthed in dim corners. It was like opening a treasure chest. Part of the pleasure was due to Philo Ramsay’s presence: he was a conscientious helper and a charming companion.

  “What a clever notion. Miss Mackenzie,” he said, as I inserted large pearl-headed hat pins to mark the measurements along the edge of a carpet several times the length of my little folding yardstick. “One that no man would have thought of, I reckon.”

  I turned my head to smile at him as we knelt side by side on the elegant multiple-niched prayer rug, for all the world like two Muslims at prayer. I was proud of my ingenuity and pleased he had noticed.

  “And what a handsome satchel to keep your pins in!” He picked up my leather-trimmed carpetbag and stroked the velvety pile. “Surprisingly light in weight, too.”

  “My uncle gave it to me on my twenty-first birthday to mark the official beginning of our partnership.”

  Philo Ramsay sat back on his heels and regarded me gravely. “I have a dear friend who is quite ill and, as a consequence, lacking in strength. Something like this would be the very thing for a shawl and a book. Do you suppose...I mean, I wonder where ....”

  I decided to rescue him. “I could have something similar made for you by one of my carpet repairers. We always have suitable fragments on hand, but the workmanship...it might be rather expensive.”

  “Hang the expense, Miss Mackenzie!”

  His high spirits were infectious. I wondered who the friend was—a favored lady, perhaps? I masked a twinge of regret with a smile and held out my hand. “Please. Do call me Kate.”

  He grasped my hand in one of his and covered it with the other. “Done and done, Kate!”

  “Well, well, well…isn’t this a cozy scene?” a lazily mocking voice broke in. “If Philo alone were on his knees, I might suspect him of proposing.”

  It was Thornton Ramsay, standing above us, legs astride the carpetbag Philo had just relinquished, hands thrust into the pockets of his tweed shooting jacket. “But if I were you, Kate,” he confided in a loud aside, “I wouldn’t expect him to kiss me.”

  Was I to infer I was a shrew in need of taming? How dare he! I turned toward Philo, but the words I might have said died aborning. His pallor was alarming, reminding me of the waxwork figures Uncle Vartan had taken me to see at the Eden Musee in New York, mistakenly thinking they would amuse me.

  I rose to my feet in the smooth flow of movement that years of plying my trade had perfected. “Miss Mackenzie, please,” I corrected quietly, determined to display no outward sign of my anger.

  Thornton Ramsay’s eyes as they looked searchingly into mine were as cool and green as moss. I found myself snared in the web of his penetrating gaze which, as it widened, brushed across my face as softly, as warmly, as a caress. When I lowered my head to break the spell—and hide the sudden tremble of my lips—he stepped back, forearms up, palms out, in a gesture of silent surrender.

  “Philo....” He paused, for once at a loss for words. Then, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, he added, “I’m sorry. That was quite uncalled for.” He nodded his head toward me in a gesture of leavetaking, and then, in a few swift, long strides, he was gone.

  I turned to Philo Ramsay. He too had risen to his feet, and averting his eyes from mine, sought to hide his discomfiture by brushing the dust from the knees of his impeccably cut trousers.

  “Let it go,” he said at length. “As you have gathered by now, Thorn has a way of bulling himself through my china shop. I don’t think he means any real harm by it.”

  What an odd way to put it, I thought. It was clear to me that no matter what the intent, harm had indeed been done. My companion’s gaiety had been driven into hiding, dulling his fine gray eyes and robbing his smile of its warmth. I was even Miss Mackenzie again, but as I opened my lips to protest his return to formality, I realized it was probably for the best.

  The clock in the great hall bonged sonorously. Twelve-thirty. “Lunch is served promptly at one, Miss Mackenzie. What would you say to calling a halt?”

  I assented eagerly. My poor stomach was beginning to protest the lack of anything to digest. “We’ve done more than enough groundwork to keep me out of mischief for the rest of the afternoon.” I smiled. “Thank you for your help. If you are ever in need of a position, Avakian’s is at your service,” I added lightly.

  * * * *

  Bewildered by the morning’s recent events, I prayed that lunch would involve me in nothing more controversial than an exchange of comments about the weather and an occasional request to pass the butter.

  In fact, lunch was an unexceptional event. Thornton Ramsay had gone to New York to attend to an urgent matter regarding his law practice, and Cora, who was engaged in totting up household accounts, took lunch in her cottage. This left only Philo and me to invent innocuous topics for conversation, so I was unprepared for his surprising reply to my last in a series of bland q
uestions.

  The subject was the decoration of the dining room. The paintings were revealed by daylight to be densely populated allegoricals of a religious or historical nature. I found the themes trite.

  “There are so many of them,” I exclaimed. “Why, there must be a small fortune hanging on these walls.”

  “A very small fortune,” Philo said, “because every last one of them is a forgery.”

  At first I thought he must be joking, but the wry twist of his mouth alerted me to the fact that although his tone was light, he found no humor in the situation.

  I decided to take a bold line. “Will it shock you very much if I say I’m not surprised? I really don’t care for them very much.”

  To my relief, Philo laughed. “My dear Miss Mackenzie, that is something very few visitors to Hawkscliffe admitted to during my uncle’s lifetime. You see, it was by way of being a leg pull: Uncle Charles knew that most people would assume that a famous artist would be unlikely to surround himself with anything but the best. He found their awed praise of this trash very amusing.” He sighed, “Nevertheless, I hoped against hope. Even a third-rate old master has some value after all, but these?” He surveyed them contemptuously. “These are hardly worth the canvas they’re painted on. The frames alone would fetch more at auction....”

  As his voice trailed off into thoughtful silence I realized it wasn’t just the fact of the paintings being bad art that bothered Philo. The monetary value, too, was important to him. I wondered why. Surely his position at the Philadelphia Museum must be well remunerated, and Hawkscliffe itself should bring him a tidy sum despite its neglect.