The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Page 6

  “I have some letters to write this afternoon, Miss Mackenzie, so the library will be at your disposal. I believe that’s the only room on the ground floor we did not inspect this morning. It has some handsome Bokharas that may please you.”

  The four library rugs did indeed please me. All were red, each shade characteristic of a particular tribe. All displayed rows of distinctive tribal motifs, elegantly spaced, and all had the desirable patina bestowed by the to-and-fro of slippered feet over many years. They glowed like rubies in the light of the shaded lamps. My uncle had served Charles Quintus Ramsay well.

  By mid-afternoon, the neatly filled pages in my notebook convinced me I was entitled to a pause in my day’s occupations. I had yet to set a foot outdoors on this bright, blustery day—only my nose had ventured out beyond the windowsill this morning—and the memory of the grand prospect I had viewed through the conservatory windows kept returning to distract me.

  Revisiting my room just long enough to stow my carpetbag and snatch up a light shawl, I hastened downstairs, through the silent corridors, and out onto the front terrace, for all the world like a child released from school.

  I wrapped the shawl closer as the breeze tugged at my skirt and loosed strands of my hair to tickle my ears and dance before my eyes. Invigorated, I scuffed through drifts of bronze and crimson leaves abandoned to the quixotic winds of autumn. Loosened by my toes, they sailed up like small, bright kites to shower down about my shoulders. It was a day to ramble!

  My eager feet led me down a path curving sharply into a dense, mazelike stand of Norway spruce. My footsteps slowed, then halted. It was very still inside. The low sweeping branches, so dark as to be almost black, kept both the sun and the wind at bay. I could hear only a sighing chuff as the tall crowns swaying above me divided the light into uneasy flickers. Smothered by the shadowed, stagnant air, I turned and turned again, breathlessly seeking an exit. Then, spying a few slender rays of sun fingering in from the western end of the long green tunnel, I made my escape.

  My relief was short lived. Though once again under blue skies and full sun, the path I had chosen rose steeply, narrowing as it skirted rocky crags on the uphill side, falling off abruptly on the other in a descent to the river broken only by precariously balanced boulders and sparse clumps of scrub oaks.

  I clung to the cliff as I inched along the ledge, seeking grassy strips to avoid the loose pebbles which rolled beneath my shoes like tiny marbles, threatening to catapult me into the sparkling water below.

  As I paused to catch my breath and pluck burrs from my green tweed skirt, I was startled by a keening cry close over my head. I looked up to see a bird—a hawk, actually, very large and fierce-looking—glide down to land on the outstretched, leather-gauntleted wrist of a man so rough-hewn in appearance he looked carved from the trunk of an ancient storm-battered oak. He stood on a crudely cobbled narrow wooden platform which overhung, somewhat atilt, the broken edge of the cliff top. One arm lay carelessly along a rustic cedar railing that was all that stood between him and a plunge into the valley far below.

  Seated by his side, equally oblivious to the danger so terrifyingly apparent to me, was a sheepdog, but I doubted it was Zuleika. The head was more massive, the muzzle blunter, and the intensity in its gold eyes unnerved me even more than Zulu’s rackety greeting had. The dog’s unrelenting scrutiny was shared by the bird and the man. As the silence lengthened, my vexation grew.

  “You must be Harry Braunfels,” I finally said, my dry mouth transforming my words into a hoarse croak.

  “You’re Avakian’s girl, then.” His expression was unreadable. His small eyes, bright blue under a bushy overhang of grizzled eyebrows, held the shrewd knowingness of unschooled intelligence. It was hard to tell how old he was--no less than fifty, I guessed--but his gnarled and knotty look could be the result of either age or a hard life, most likely both.

  “I’m his niece. I’ve come—”

  “I know what you come for. Cora told me.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what Cora had said, but I had no wish to betray my uncertainty.

  “Afraid of high places, are you?”

  It was true enough, but I didn’t care for his contemptuous tone. “I didn’t expect—”

  “Most females are. ‘Cept Cora, of course.”

  “And Roxelana,” I said firmly, not knowing why. I certainly had nothing to base my opinion on, other than that painted face. Somehow she didn’t look like a woman afraid of many things—of anything.

  Harry shrugged. If he was surprised by my comment, he hid it well. “She never came this way.”

  “You mean there’s another way back?” I was relieved at the prospect. I had no wish to retrace that precarious route in the fading light of approaching dark.

  He laughed. “0’ course. Can you see Master Philo eelin’ his way up along those rocks? Thorn and me’re the only ones who choose it.”

  Thorn and him? Were the two men friends? I found the thought disquieting. Thornton Ramsay’s forceful, virile nature held no trace of coarseness; this man, approaching me as though he walked thickly on hooves, seemed almost. . . goatish.

  He reached out grimy fingers to snare a lock of my hair. “Nice stuff,” he said, the fine strands seeming more gold than red as he drew them across his creased, work-blackened palm.

  Involuntarily, I inhaled sharply and stepped back. As I did so, he tightened his callused grip, laughing as I cried out shrilly.

  “ ‘Squeak, squeak,’“ he mocked, “like a little mouse in a trap. Pretty little mouse...come little mouse....”

  He tugged cruelly at my imprisoned hair, and to ease the sharp pain of it I surrendered to the pressure. More humiliated than frightened—although the nearness of the hook-beaked bird on his other wrist unnerved me—I could feel tears well up in my eyes.

  Sensing his little game had gone too far, the man abruptly loosed me. “Harry Braunfels has no need for unwilling playmates, missy,” he said in a contemptuous tone, as though I were the one at fault. “I’ve enjoyed tastier sport with your betters. When you change your mind—”

  I cut in sharply. “The only thing I intend to change is my present company, so please be good enough to point out the alternate route to Hawkscliffe. These lower animals seem more suited to you than civilized human beings.”

  After a startled moment. Harry threw back his head and guffawed. The sudden movement of his body unbalanced the bird on his wrist. Squawking a surly protest, it unfurled its great dark wings and lunged forward.

  “Now, now, Jessie, I never said you was a lower animal, milady here did. And you, Pasha,” he continued, addressing the huge dog who, disturbed by the hawk’s excitement, had risen restlessly to its feet, “are you, too, a lesser beast?”

  The dog, as if sensing the man’s sly hostility toward me, fixed me with an unblinking stare and growled softly. It was a sound hardly worth remarking unless, like me, one had been raised in an uneasy landscape where quaking shifts of the earth’s crust were foretold by no less gentle rumbles, hardly more than murmurs, that whispered of menace.

  Sensing my fear, Harry knitted his shaggy eyebrows and eyed me balefully. “Harsh words turneth on wrath,” he intoned, mocking my distress. He guffawed again, then pointed out the direction I should take. As I scurried by him in the gathering dusk, he warned me to hurry. “The dogs are set loose after dark, miss, and Pasha here tends to nurse a grudge, he does.”

  His taunting laughter followed me down the wide, grassy slope, booming and echoing like a strike of ninepins. Three enemies in two days—first Cora, then Thornton Ramsay, and now Harry Braunfels. I didn’t know how I could have avoided this unhappy state of affairs; I wasn’t even quite sure what I had done to bring it about. It was certainly not deliberate.

  I am not a difficult person.

  I have no more odd quirks or chips on my shoulder than most. Until now, most people I’ve met have liked me; the worst I have had to contend with is indifference. I have never before been th
e cause of scenes at dinner tables nor provoked men to abuse me physically.

  I could see the lights in the great house as I flew down to meet it, aware of the irony in seeking shelter in a household that would be better pleased to speed me on my way. What was it about Hawkscliffe that brought out the worst in its inhabitants? At least Philo had not turned on me.

  Alas, his exception was short-lived.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It is my habit, when preoccupied, to follow the lead of my restless feet, an inclination which occasionally leads to unexpected consequences. My unsettling encounter with Harry Braunfels was proof enough of that.

  The next afternoon, confined to the house by a change in the weather, I adjusted my stride to the dimensions of Hawkscliffe’s library. Yesterday’s fresh breeze had strengthened to a gusting wind that wailed through the chimney pots and rattled the painted windowpanes in their frames, but my conscious mind took only intermittent notice of it, taken up as it was with the puzzle presented by the so-called Damascus Gothic carpet upstairs in Charles Quintus’s Napoleonic suite, with its ponderous black-laquered, gilt-lined furnishings set against dark red walls relieved only by an ivory band embellished with gold fleurs-de-lis. Thorn Ramsay thought its imperial ostentation amusing; I found it oppressive, except for the carpet, which I coveted. The iridescent blues, greens, and reds seemed to float above the floor. A curious, almost mesmerizing effect.

  I paced aimlessly, occasionally pausing to riffle through a book or periodical that caught my eye, if not my entire attention. I stooped to pluck out a portfolio whose gorgeously marbled cover winked at me from an assortment of papers piled askew and forgotten on a shelf largely hidden by an elaborately mounted antique globe. I blew off the dust, revealing a faded label identifying it as a gift “to the master artist Charles Quintus Ramsay, who has allowed me to bask in the light of his presence, and who inspired these modest sketches.” It was signed “Cora Banks.”

  This must be the portfolio Thornton Ramsay had mentioned. As I turned the pages, my sympathy turned to indignation. Thorn Ramsay’s high opinion of Cora’s botanical drawings was justified: her composition was unerring, the detail sensitively rendered, and the application of watercolor proved her mastery of a demanding technique. To dismiss this talent as no more than a knack for painting pretty posies had been an act of deliberate cruelty, just the ticket to undermine a fragile ego. Cora had indeed been badly used by the man she’d served so loyally.

  I wondered, not for the first time, why women were expected to accept such treatment without complaint. Was it because we had so few choices? I frowned. More likely it was because so few choices were permitted us. More than one of Uncle Vartan’s competitors had, after all, expressed astonishment at my determination to carry on the business by myself.

  I lost count of the number of eligible sons paraded before me after my uncle’s death in an unsuccessful effort to persuade me to settle for having babies and making shish kebab. I was told that I was unrealistic, unknowing, and unfeminine. I may have been unrealistic, but I knew more about carpets than most of the sons, and being accused of a lack of femininity made the prospect of sharing a marriage bed with those patronizing young predators even less appealing. Never had I appreciated Uncle Vartan more. Had it been our unusual closeness or my eager response to his teaching that had influenced him? I would never know for sure, but he had encouraged me to set my own course, and I was not about to defame his memory by departing from it.

  All in all, it was a wonder Cora Banks wasn’t even more pinched and sour than she was. She was fast approaching the end of her work life with nothing to show for it. And then it came to me. Although the prestige associated with cataloging the Hawkscliffe collection was assured within a small circle of collectors and dealers, what if that catalog were illustrated and published by a commercial firm? Cora’s talent was eminently suited to such a project, and Philo and I between us could accomplish the historical, artistic, and structural analyses.

  “Miss Cora always takes tea in her cottage,” Mary Rose informed me when I invaded the kitchen in search of the housekeeper. “And she doesn’t much like being disturbed,” she added. “Isn’t that so, Aggie?”

  The cook, who was up to her plump elbows in flour, nodded her agreement. “Especially by outsiders,” she threw in over her shoulder. “No offense meant, miss,” she added, turning to me apologetically. “It’s just that…what I mean to say is….” Unable to find a tactful way to express her thought, the cook eyed me helplessly.

  “Miss Cora has her ways?” I suggested. “Nevertheless, I think I’ll chance bearding the lioness in her den, but if I’m not back within the hour, perhaps you’d better send in the cavalry. I wouldn’t want to miss dinner if that’s a batch of your delicious rolls in the making.”

  Agnes and Mary Rose promised that they would save out a generous portion for me. “For bravery,” Mary Rose said.

  Cora Banks’s reception of me at the door of her pretty little cottage was less than welcoming. “Even housekeepers are entitled to some privacy, Miss Mackenzie. If you have a complaint, I will be glad to meet with you in the library at half past four to discuss it.”

  “I have no complaints, Miss Banks. My errand is of a private nature, one that may prove of advantage to you, but if you prefer....”

  I began to turn away, but as I hoped, I had succeeded in arousing her curiosity.

  “Oh, very well. Come in, come in.”

  As I squeezed by her rigid figure—her invitation was halfhearted at best—I was struck by how worn she looked. Her sparrow-like alertness had temporarily deserted her, leaving in its place just a tired old bird, her grayed-blue dress no less drab than the dusty brown she usually wore. But, oh my, what a charming nest this bird had made for herself. The furniture was of an earlier, simpler, more graceful design than the dark, ornately carved pieces that overburdened many fashionable parlors, and the flowered chintzes at the windows invested the crisp November day with the warmth and light of spring.

  “May I offer you some tea, Miss Mackenzie?” Her voice was sharply edged, challenging me to accept.

  “How kind,” I murmured, smiling blandly as she rose grudgingly to prepare a fresh pot.

  She disappeared into a curtained alcove whence the clink of silver and porcelain told of the setting of a tray. As I waited for the hiss of escaping steam from a kettle, I idly explored the pleasing room, pausing at a half-opened door. Her bedroom? Curiosity impelled me to widen the opening with a gentle push of my fingertips. It was a small room. Ahead of me, between two simply curtained windows, was a painted bureau charmingly decorated with flowers and butterflies—Cora’s handiwork? A narrow, blue-and-white homespun-covered bed stood against the wall; across from it was a rush-seated rocker and a low cupboard on top of which, along with a serviceable lamp, stood three framed photographs. Did this prim, bloodless little person actually have a family?

  I moved a step closer. In the first photograph, a uniformed young man, a Union soldier, postured jauntily against a huge tree, his elbow resting on the butt of his long rifle, his chin on the knuckles of his hand. His faded features radiated mischief. A brother, perhaps? In the second stood a solemn young couple stiffly posed for their wedding picture, and in the third a slim woman, hardly more than a girl, smiled down at the sailor-suited blond boy whose hand she was holding.

  “Miss Mackenzie! If you please!”

  I whirled guiltily to find Cora standing behind me, the tea tray in her hands.

  “I’m very sorry if I have offended you, Miss Banks, but having lost my own family, I am always drawn to those of others. Your parents?” I said, pointing to the bride and groom.

  She shook her head as she conducted me hack into her parlor. “My sister and her husband. Lost in a fire. That is their boy with me,” she volunteered.

  “Oh, Miss Banks,” I cried, reaching out for the cup she offered. “What a tragedy! And how sad for the boy…I know how he must have felt. You see, my parents too were lost in
a fire—”

  “You seem to have landed on your feet,” she interrupted coldly, “but my poor....”

  Her face seemed to collapse. What little color she possessed fled, leaving mottled whitish-gray patches. Alarmed, I decided a change of subject was in order.

  “What a lovely home you have, Miss Banks,” I burbled. “You certainly have an artist’s eye for style and color.”

  Startled out of her dazed state by my non sequitur, Cora rattled her fragile porcelain cup on its saucer. She looked at me penetratingly. “What on earth would make you say that?”

  “Your choice of furnishings—”

  “Leftovers from the New York house.”

  “These fabrics—”

  “Discarded by Roxelana. She had the taste of a pack rat,” she added in a mutter, her mouth twisting with disdain. “All gauze and glitter.”

  “—and these beautiful watercolors, which of course are yours.”

  “Those watercolors were done many years ago. Miss Mackenzie. They are the artless dabbings of a silly girl, nothing more. Now, if you don’t mind....”

  Ignoring the cup I held out to be refilled, Cora returned the teapot to its tray. Politesse had its limits after all.

  “But they are the reason for my visit, Miss Banks. I found a portfolio of yours in the library, and it gave me the most wonderful idea.”

  As I outlined my proposition, I could see her becoming interested in spite of herself.

  “I lack the talent—”

  “I beg to differ, Miss Banks. Your talent is exactly suited to the fine detail the project requires.”

  “I know nothing about rugs—”

  “It is not necessary that you do. What you do know is which rugs Charles Quintus liked best, am I correct?”

  “Yes…yes, with a little thought I could…. But I cannot give you an answer yet. It’s been so long. My hands....”

  As she held them out, my heart ached for her. The knuckles were enlarged, and her fingers had begun to assume the ugly twist characteristic of rheumatism. What a cruel affliction for an artist.