The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe

by Joyce C. Ware

  “Charles Quintus held her in the highest regard. In fact,” she continued, cocking her dark auburn head to one side, “I do believe she is the only woman he unfailingly held at arm’s length. Quite a tribute, wouldn’t you say?”

  I could tell from Cora’s expression that she took it for the cruel taunt meant. She departed in outraged silence, and Louise, pleased to have at last hit an intended target, smiled cheerily.

  “Speaking of social niceties, I would so enjoy a tour of Hawkscliffe’s every little nook and cranny, for belated as our visit is, one never knows—or so they say.” Her smile quirked coyly as she looked first at Philo, who paled, then at Thorn, who got up from the table, pulled back her chair, and crooked his arm for her to grasp.

  “Come along, then. Lulu, for as they also say, better late than never.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lance, too, rose from the table. He looked first at me, then at Philo, opened his mouth as if to speak, then shrugged and trailed out of the room.

  Philo, meanwhile, stared after his aunt and his cousin, his face expressionless. Then, as a contralto lilt of laughter floated up to us from the terrace through an open window, his gray eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted and hardened into a sneer that slightly bared his teeth. The very air seemed charged with his hostility. Involuntarily, I shivered, and as I did so the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickled with an uneasiness that underscored the irony of the situation.

  When I was thirteen, Hawkscliffe had seemed such a magical place! It never occurred to my young mind then— nor through the years I yearned to visit here—that golden spires could have dangerously sharp points; that fairy castles could be besieged by foes, or that the magic might be black.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As his aunt’s and cousin’s voices faded into the distance, Philo turned back to me. If judged solely by the ensuing businesslike exchange the bizarre dialogue in the recently vacated dining room might never have taken place.

  “Miss Mackenzie…uh…Kate? Have you any notion of when you will complete your notes for the carpet catalog?”

  Philo and I had, it seemed, returned to a first-name basis.

  “It’s largely done already, except for some small rugs on the top floor—”

  “Which are unlikely to be important ones, I imagine.”

  I decided to let that pass without comment, despite the stirrings of my conscience. “But,” I continued, “I will need to check some of my notes against my uncle’s journals in New York.”

  “Hmmm, that will be all right, I guess. The important thing is to have all the work at Hawkscliffe completed before the hearing. There is no way of knowing, you see.” The corners of his mouth drooped.

  “I understand,” I said gently. “I assure you I will have everything accomplished in time.”

  He shook his head slowly. “All we can do then is hope.”

  “Hope for what. Cousin Philo?” Young Lance, obviously at loose ends, spoke from the doorway.

  “Why, that all our wishes come true,” Philo answered with a smile.

  “So that beggars may ride?”

  “Just so. Abandoned the sightseeing tour, did you?”

  “I wasn’t asked to join it. Two’s company, and all that sort of thing. Probably just as well. I’m more interested in architecture than Mother is, anyway. My questions would have bored her.” He looked expectantly at Philo.

  “Then come along with me, Lance,” I offered impulsively. “I have work to do on the top floor, and if you’ll lend me a hand, you may ask me all the questions you like. I was raised in Turkey, you see, and I have a pretty good idea of what Charles Quintus Ramsay was about when he built Hawkscliffe.”

  “What a splendid offer!” Philo exclaimed. Then, when Lance politely asked him to accompany us, he added, “As you yourself said, two’s company,” and advised us to run along as if we were children being sent off to play.

  As Lance turned to mount the stairs, Philo grasped my arm. His fine gray eyes glistened with gratitude. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Your kindness is more than I deserve.”

  I inclined my head in silent acknowledgment and hurried to join my youthful companion. As we climbed the stairs, exclaiming over the decoration and discussing the Hawkscliffe distortions of the true Ottoman style, I found myself chattering away with a lighthearted fervency quite unlike my usual cautious self.

  What fun we had that afternoon! I discovered that Lance, thanks to his interest in architecture, could turn out quite an accomplished sketch in jig time, so while I recorded the rugs’ measurements and structural descriptions in my journals, I set him to making drawings of them on the facing pages.

  “I suppose I take after my father,” he said, when I complimented him. “Did you know him?”

  I was nonplussed. Fortunately, the only answer I wanted to give was also truthful. “No.”

  “Nor I. I guess he was an odd duck. Of course, he and Mother were divorced, and I’ve heard that last mistress of his—what was her name again?”

  “Roxelana,” I supplied in a muffled voice. I was not accustomed to discussing mistresses with anyone, much less with the purported son of the man who’d had them.

  “I’ve heard she was a stunner. She must have been, if he built this place for her. Jolly good place, too.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Philo and his hopes. “If Hawkscliffe should become yours, Lance, what will you do with it?”

  “Don’t know, really. Never thought about it much, until we actually came, of course.” He looked thoughtful and a bit troubled. His visit had apparently presented him with unsettling wonderings and yearnings. Then his face brightened. “Tell you what, though…if I lived here I’d buy myself a velvet smoking jacket with brocaded facings—”

  “—and tooled leather slippers with turned-up toes,” I added, falling in with his new mood.

  “Exactly! And a red felt fez with one of those…those…” He pointed to the top of his dark head and twirled his finger.

  “Tassels,” I supplied. “A gold tassel falling down over the edge to meet the twirled-up end of your black moustache. Oh! What a fine Terrible Turk you’ll make.”

  “And I’ll sit cross-legged on this prayer rug here,” he said, immediately taking up the position, “smoking my whatchamacallit—”

  “Hubble-bubble. That’s what that water pipe contraption is called, you know.”

  “‘Pon my word,” he drawled, eyeing me through an imaginary monocle. “Smoking my hubble-bubble,” he continued with a delighted grin, “whilst you, me Turkish delight, dance for me and send my jaded senses reeling.”

  He looked up at me, his young face alight with expectation, and all at once I was aware of the possibility of my own allure. I whippped a lace-trimmed handkerchief from my pocket and, holding its ends against my temples with my fingers, allowed it to drape below seductively narrowed eyes.

  “Lance? Lance, where are you?”

  “My God, it’s Mother!” Lance scrambled to his feet. Then, suddenly overcome with the sense of being naughty children caught out, we collapsed in a fit of giggles.

  “What on earth is going on here?”

  Louise Ramsay stood in the doorway, the very picture of a starchy matron. Behind her I glimpsed Thornton Ramsay’s frowning face. Too late I became aware of the dust on my skirt and my hair’s disarray.

  “I was helping Kate—Miss Mackenzie—with her rug catalog. Dashed off a few sketches for her.”

  “Your son is quite talented, Mrs. Ramsay,” I said primly. “You should see to it that he has proper instruction.”

  Louise Ramsay raised her eyebrows, amazed that a little chit of a tradesperson should presume to instruct her about her son’s talent. “May I see, please.” It was not a request.

  “Of course.” I obediently proffered for her inspection the journals Lance had adorned.

  “Why, he does show promise, doesn’t he?” she agreed. “But then blood tells, wouldn’t you say so, Thorn?”

  Thornton�
�s frown became a scowl. Although relieved that I was not the only cause for his displeasure, I was troubled that Louise Ramsay was apparently determined to establish Lance’s claim upon the estate by every means possible, fair or foul.

  I squeezed by Thorn, precious journals in hand, to return to my room to freshen up for supper, and as I did so he wiped his thumb across my cheek with a slow, caressing deliberateness that made my breath catch in my throat.

  “Just a smudge, Miss Mackenzie. From messing about in the carpets with your young helper, I expect.”

  I expelled my breath in an angry whuff as his lips quirked in that familiar, altogether disquieting, sardonic grin. I hate you, Thorn Ramsay, I silently raged. I hated him, and yet I knew that more than anything else I wanted his lips, those hateful, exciting lips, twisting demandingly again on mine.

  I retreated to my room, to Roxelana’s exotic domain, as if to a haven, but as I restlessly paced, it began to seem more like a cage. The bars of my cage were ghosts—hers? mine?—dark ghosts from the past that clamored and clashed and yet, oddly, were not as fearsome as the pale ghosts from the colorless future I sensed would be mine if I failed to come to terms with what was happening to me at Hawkscliffe. Wherever I went and whatever I did here presented me with a challenge as sharp as the talons of the hawk I had seen clutching Harry Braunfels’ gauntleted wrist.

  Except when I was with Lance. I reviewed the easy afternoon I had spent with him. No challenges there. Unlike Cora, Philo, Harry, or even his mother, Lance accepted me as a person from whom he wanted nothing and expected to be anything other than what I was. And what about Thorn? I stopped my pacing. Ah, Thorn.

  For all his taunts and sardonic smiles, I knew—and it pleased me to know—that he respected Katherine Mackenzie, carpet connoisseur and rug dealer, and yet, and yet…oh, I knew it was foolish, but I also suspected him of stalking me, for reasons that utterly escaped me. What on earth could a man of the world find of more than passing interest in a dark-eyed little wisp of a Scot who smelled of violets, a scent more suited to girls and maiden aunts than femmes fatales?

  I strode to the larger of Roxelana’s wardrobes and flung open the rosewood doors with such violence that the whispered chorus of its silken contents, set asway, seemed to chide me for my misdirected anger, and a leather-bound volume, dislodged by my vehemence, tumbled from a hitherto unseen shelf, barely missing my head. I picked it up, intending to replace it, but a casual riffle of the beautifully illustrated, minutely detailed pages soon changed my mind.

  Enrapt by the astonishing scenes depicted, I made my way to the peach satin-covered chaise. As I slowly turned the book’s pages, I’m sure my blushing cheeks rivaled the roses on the shaded lamp at my elbow. It was an erotic book, and in it men and women disported with carefree abandon in a variety of postures my untutored mind could never have imagined. Yes, a highly erotic book, and yet as I leafed through the pages, a radical notion entered my mind: how could anything so obviously enjoyed by its participants be thought sinful?

  I closed the book, laid it on the chaise, and began again to pace. A long-forgotten memory struggled to the surface of my consciousness. Something about Halide, the serving girl who had smuggled in the finger cymbals to entertain a roomful of restless girls. A year or two after that incident she was dismissed from my parents’ employ and sent off to a forced marriage in the hills of Anatolia. I recalled her pleading to be allowed to stay, but my father refused. “Harlot!” he had thundered. “Your baby will need a father,” my mother added.

  Later Halide and I had cried together, for I was very fond of the pleasure-loving girl who alternately teased and spoiled me.

  “He tried to make me say I was sorry I had sinned,” she said, referring to my father, “but I’m not. He was so beautiful, my Ahmet. I knew he would not marry me, but he was so beautiful I could not resist him. When I am lying with that dirty old peasant in his cold stone house, I will dream of Ahmet’s honey-sweet words and strong young body.”

  “Confess to Papa,” I entreated. “Swear to be good for always and always and maybe he will let you stay.”

  “Never,” she hissed fiercely. “I would do it again…and again and again.’’ She smoothed my hair and searched my uncomprehending eyes. “Someday you’ll understand, little Katty.”

  “Do confess, Halide,” I sobbed.

  “Never!”

  Such defiance! Such bravery for naught. Dear, foolish, impetuous Halide. I had not thought of her for years—could it be she had something to teach me now? Perhaps that life devoid of love and the pleasure of loving was no life at all?

  I returned to the wardrobe and standing on tiptoe just managed to reach the shelf from which the leather-bound volume had fallen. I reached my hand back and felt across the length of the narrow space. My fingers touched first a sheaf of papers and then the hard edges of more books. I teased my discoveries toward the edge of the shelf, eased them down into my arms, and then, seated on the silk prayer rug, sorted carefully through Roxelana’s hidden library volumes one by one.

  In addition to a variety of erotic drawings, my trove included several books of stories whose sensual language and descriptions reminded me of the fabled princess Scheherazade, who kept the headsman’s ax at bay by entertaining her capricious new husband so well that after one thousand and one enchanted nights he finally forgot his purpose. Foolish Prince Schariar! As if any man, even one whose power is God-given and absolute, could prevail against a clever woman’s wiles.

  I closed the last book of stories reluctantly, wishing either that I had found them sooner, or that my stay at Hawkscliffe would not so soon be ended. I sighed and picked up the last volume. Both the cover and the pages densely written in Arabic reminded me of the stacks of journals kept by my Uncle Vartan over the sixty years of his business life, but there the resemblance abruptly ended. The style of the script was prosaic; the content, anything but. Roxelana, obviously educated to a degree unusual for a Muslim girl, had put her learning to use in an even more unusual way, for this commonplace-looking book was nothing more nor less than a handbook of sexual practices.

  At first individually described in numbered sequence, they were later incorporated into little scenes. As I read on, variously amazed and shocked by the variety and ingenuity of Roxelana’s playlets, I was once again reminded of the princess whose gift for spinning tales had saved her life. Had I discovered Roxelana’s secret? Had Charles Quintus Ramsay been her Schariar, and had Roxelana’s flair for erotic fantasy assured her permanence in the bed of her easily bored American prince?

  That would also account for her collection of glittering, gauzy garments and leather and jeweled curios. Costumes and props, that’s what they were! I understood now why Charles Quintus’s will had ignored his family: how could the homely ties of flesh and blood prevail against chains forged from silk and satin and hot, perfumed flesh? Roxelana’s clever manipulation of the sexual drive that had fueled the aging artist’s enormous talent had, in the end, degraded it to blind, carnal lust.

  As Thorn had said, Charles Quintus’s last mistress had indeed become his master.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After supper that evening Louise prowled through the house sowing discord. It was a Saturday. I remember that because I thought Cora might want to go into Hendryk on Sunday to pray under God’s roof for divine intervention on her and Philo’s behalf, but there was no mention of sending a carriage into town the next morning to accommodate churchgoers.

  Since the hearing to determine the missing heiress’s status was scheduled for Monday, Louise’s performance that evening must have been disheartening in the extreme.

  Her first victim was Philo, snared from the backgammon game he was enjoying with Lance. I say “enjoying,” because with me as a teasing onlooker shamelessly supplying Philo with hints about strategy, the contest had deteriorated into a rather noisy affair of silly jokes, underhanded ploys, and undignified yelps of triumph and protest. Thorn, who was attempting to read his paper,
regarded us frowningly, and when Lance asked him to mediate a particularly outrageous move, he muttered testily that he saw no point in playing games one doesn’t intend to win.

  “Winning isn’t everything, coz,” Philo protested with a smile. It was nice to see a little color in his cheeks for a change.

  “If Thorn’s dear mother had been yours, I doubt you would say that, Philo. Although as I understand it, her problems only began with her losing the games she so blithely entered and invariably lost..” Louise’s dazzling smile was succeeded by a rounding of her mouth in exaggerated surprise. “But you’re so flushed! The excitement of the contest, no doubt. I wouldn’t have thought Lance would be challenge enough for you—I’m referring to the game, of course.”

  The blood that had lent a youthful glow to Philo’s face drained away, leaving him pale as milk. He shoved back his chair and rose unsteadily to his feet. As he did so, Louise, who had been bending over him solicitously, grabbed his arm just above the elbow in a grip so tight I could see him wince.

  “My dear Philo, you’re looking quite unwell again. Do let Miss Mackenzie take your place at the board and walk with me out to the terrace. The fresh air will do you a world of good.” So saying, she adjusted her fichu of heavy cream lace to cover her shoulders and, in a flurry of lilac silk faille that set the purple bows on her bustle atremble, she all but hauled Philo out of the room.

  “Good heavens,” I murmured, “I wonder what that was all about!”

  “I daresay it’s her overdeveloped maternal instinct coming to the fore again,” Lance offered with an embarrassed half smile. “I can’t seem to convince her I’m old enough to take care of myself.” He shrugged. “You know how mothers are.”

  “What on earth does she have to protect you against, Lance? You were winning as often as you lost.”

  Thorn looked up from his newspaper. “It wasn’t backgammon she was concerned about, Kate.”

  “Well, I hardly think Philo wants Hawkscliffe badly enough to do away with Lance in front of witnesses!”