The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe

by Joyce C. Ware

  The whole thing was idiotic, including finding myself in the position of defending Philo. Although I no longer begrudged his appropriation of my idea about publishing the Hawkscliffe rug catalog, I was not yet kindly enough disposed to act as his champion. I looked at Lance indignantly.

  “He is a bit of a poof, Kate,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “A what?”

  Lance looked about him helplessly, then sent a silent appeal to Thorn, who had given up the pretense of reading his paper and was listening unashamedly to our dialogue.

  “What my young cousin is trying to tell you, Kate, is that Philo is a homosexual.”

  Lance turned beet red at Thorn’s frank use of a term forbidden in polite society. I nodded gravely and thanked Thornton Ramsay for enlightening me, determined to indicate thereby that the term and the relationships implied did not shock me. As indeed they did not.

  Accustomed from birth to the ways of Eastern societies, which sequester their women, affection displayed openly between men seemed to me neither unusual nor abnormal.

  No wonder Louise had looked so astonished when Cora told her I was at Hawkscliffe as Philo’s guest. In light of her maliciousness, and despite Thorn’s contemptuous interpretation of what he saw as my attempt to worm my way into Philo’s affections, I was glad I had acted impulsively to create the illusion of a romantic attachment between us. However, when Philo returned grim-faced and paler than ever from his involuntary stroll with Louise, it was obvious the bluff had been called.

  As he walked wordlessly by us toward the hall, Louise could not resist throwing a gracefully fashioned dart at his departing back.

  “We are agreed, then? There is no need for Flossie Biddle on your board in Philadelphia—not to mention dear Elizabeth and the Metropolitan Board—to know absolutely everything about everyone in their employ. As I always say, a bit of mystery lends appeal, and I would be the last one to deny your appeal, Philo darling.”

  The remaining vestige of my grudge against him faded from my mind and heart as Louise smoothed her faultless coif with dainty pats of her beringed white hands and turned back to us with a happy little sigh. “Philo thinks he may stay on in Philadelphia after all.” She paused and quirked her mouth in a coy fashion unbecoming to such an imposing woman. “But none of us likes to see his plans go awry, do we? How did the Scottish poet put it, Miss Mackenzie? ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley. ...’“

  “. . . an’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain for promis’d joy,” I completed expressionlessly, the familiar words dropping like stones from my lips. Confound the woman! She had apparently not only blackmailed Philo out of his expectations, but quoted my father’s favorite couplet from Robert Burns to boot. Considering how often Papa had serenely caused my own childish plans to go a-gley, they were lines I could very well have forgone hearing.

  Lance looked from me to his mother. His alert uneasiness reminded me of a twitchy-nosed young rabbit testing the morning air, its hippity-hopping ebullience slowed by something not quite right…a fox, perhaps? The dreaded weasel? Whatever Lance sensed, he obviously felt unable to cope. He abruptly yawned.

  “Do you mind if we resume our game tomorrow, Kate? All at once I feel most awfully tired.” Another yawn was accompanied by an elaborate stretch that drew his mother’s reproving attention.

  “Really, Lance. Miss Mackenzie will think her company has fatigued you.”

  “She knows better than that, Mother. It was only her stimulating presence that kept sleep at bay during my game with Cousin Philo.”

  I burst out laughing. “You make me sound like a bottle of smelling salts, Lance. Go along with you, sleepyhead, but no games tomorrow, mind you. It’s going to be work, work, work for us both.”

  Lance pursed his mouth and raised his eyes heavenward. “On the Lord’s Day, Miss Mackenzie? Surely the weary deserve their rest,” he protested.

  “The weary, yes, but not the wicked,” I said briskly.

  “Well, I must admit I would rather be thought wicked than weary,” Lance conceded with a grin. “Goodnight, sweet Kate! I shall count the hours ‘til we count carpet knots together again. Goodnight, Mother.” He kissed his mother’s cheek, placidly ignoring her muttered disapproval of his boyishly flirtatious exchange with me. “Goodnight, Cousin Thorn.” His long legs took him quickly out of the room. “Goodnight, Miss Banks,” we heard him say as he entered the hall.

  I rose, planning to follow Lance’s example. This war of nerves had nothing to do with me--why should I allow myself to be conscripted into it?

  “What have you done to Philo?”

  I was too late; Cora had fired the opening shot of another battle.

  “Whatever do you mean, Cora?” Louise Ramsay gazed down round-eyed at the little woman whose own eyes had narrowed to angry slits. The sparrow had met her match in this big owl of a woman whose luxurious plumage masked a coldly covetous heart. “He left us about an hour ago. To go to the studio and his lonely bed, presumably.”

  “Your presumption was wrong, Mrs. Ramsay, as has often been the case. Philo is nowhere to be found, and neither is the decanter of brandy I left in the library.”

  “What do you think. Thorn?” Louise’s languid voice betrayed her lack of concern. “Could Philo be wandering about the grounds imbibing false courage? Trying to avoid facing the inevitable? He never was much of a one for reality, as I remember.”

  “The dogs are real enough, I trust, to keep him off the grounds at night. He’ll soon turn up,” Thorn began in a quiet tone of tightly controlled anger, but his effort to keep tempers leashed was outflanked by Cora.

  “You’re a fine one to talk about facing reality, Louise Ramsay! Sashaying in here trying to pass off that boy as C.Q.’s son.”

  Shrugging disdainfully, Louise glided over to station herself beside Thorn’s chair. She turned back slowly to face Cora, her silk gown hissing softly in the sudden silence. “And who among you is to say he is not?”

  “C.Q. threw you out because of him!”

  “Charles Quintus’s name is on the birth certificate.”

  “He wished to spare you the disgrace.”

  “Did he, now.”

  Louise’s dry tone and raised eyebrows alerted me to the fact that C.Q.’s vanity made it probable he had been much more interested in concealing the fact that he had been cuckolded than in protecting Louise’s reputation.

  “There’s nothing about that on the certificate, Cora, only his name,” she added with a sly smile. “And it’s the name that counts, you know. Isn’t that so, Thorn?”

  After a long pause. Thorn inclined his shaggy dark head. “In lieu of evidence to the contrary, yes.”

  His reluctance alerted me to the intriguing possibility that contrary evidence might, in fact, exist. But even if it did, the hearing was, after all, the day after tomorrow. There was hardly time to institute a search. And then it came to me: no wonder Louise had waited so long to press her claim! She knew that a birth certificate presented by a grand lady like herself to a rural judge in a river town court was unlikely to be questioned, no matter how vocal the opposition. Proof was proof, especially when registered in a New York City hall of records.

  Cora, too angry to be sensitive to nuances, persisted in her attack. “He divorced you! He never even saw the boy, much less publicly acknowledged him.”

  It was clear from the glitter in Louise’s eyes that this time Cora had drawn blood. “It would have cost him nothing to make the gesture then, but now the rest of you will have to pay his debt for him. After the hearing Monday, Hawkscliffe will be ours, Lance’s and mine, and then it’s out with the old and in with the new!” Louise’s smile had become a sneer of triumph.

  Cora advanced on Louise with her little fists clenched and her thin mouth pulled tight in a grimace of rage.

  “This was to be my home until I died! C.Q. promised me, he promised….” Cora’s voice broke, and her slight, taut figure
suddenly drooped. Alarmed, I moved forward, but Thornton forestalled me.

  “Enough!” he commanded. “The two of you are only making a bad situation worse.”

  Louise raised her eyebrows. “Bad, Thorn? From whose point of view? Not mine or Lance’s, certainly.”

  “I doubt that young Lance will be happy about depriving Cora of her home.”

  Louise guiltily averted her gaze, confirming Thorn’s suspicion that Lance hadn’t been told of all the consequences of his inheriting Hawkscliffe. “She should have known better than to believe Charles Quintus’s promises,” Louise exclaimed. “He was always ready to promise anything to get what he wanted.”

  Thorn clasped his hands behind his back, and leaned toward her confidingly. “Ah. So that’s where you learned that little trick. Lulu.”

  Louise pulled abruptly away from him. Gathering her draped lilac silk skirt with one hand she made her haughty way between us: Cora and Thorn on one side, I on the other. At the entrance to the hall she paused, and looked back over her shoulder. “I would suggest, Cora, that you begin packing your bags. Under the circumstances, two weeks’ notice is all that I am inclined to give.”

  After Louise left, Cora began to cry. Thorn moved forward to comfort her, and as he awkwardly patted her shoulder her sobs subsided to mewing sniffles. There was nothing I felt I could do, and when they began talking together in low murmurs, I quietly departed.

  Although I was not overly fond of Cora, I had learned to like the formidable Louise even less, and so was disconcerted to stumble upon her in the shadows of the stair landing, studying Roxelana’s portrait in the wavering light of a lamp affixed to a wall bracket opposite. Although the effect of the illumination was not as dramatic as that created for me days earlier by flaming wax tapers held aloft in the bronze peacocks’ beaks, it was sufficiently arresting to capture Louise’s entire attention.

  I cleared my throat. She uttered a little shriek of alarm and whirled, wide-eyed, to confront me.

  “Miss Mackenzie! You might have spoken, you know. I didn’t know who….I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said stiffly. “I had no idea you were here.”

  She gestured towards the portrait. “Did you know her?”

  I was amazed. “Roxelana? Good heavens, no. She disappeared long before I ever came to Hawkscliffe.”

  “I thought perhaps…. Thorn tells me you grew up in Turkey.”

  “Yes, but our paths would never have crossed. For one thing, she was a good bit older than I.”

  “Mmmm, yes.” Her tone was thoughtful. “She’s not beautiful, is she? Not even pretty, really.”

  “No.”

  Judging from the look of sullen resignation on her face, there was no need to elaborate on the obvious: Roxelana’s unmistakable erotic appeal had nothing to do with conventional ideas of beauty. I had sensed that much even before I’d found her secret journal.

  I realized it would be difficult to edge by Louise without touching her, and somehow I was loath to do that. She shifted uneasily, self-consciously, and it then became impossible to get by her at all.

  “Miss Mackenzie, what kind of ring is that she’s wearing?” Louise tentatively extended one long white finger toward the glowing gold disk, but no sooner had it grazed the painted surface than she snatched it back as if from burning coals.

  “A talisman ring. Quite old, probably. The inscriptions are rendered in an archaic script, but most likely they are variations on ancient runes meant to ward off evil.”

  Louise gave a dismissive sniff. “I might have suspected as much of her. Superstitious as well as coarse.”

  “In the East, belief in the evil eye is taken seriously regardless of class or rank, Mrs. Ramsay.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have done this one much good, eh?” She flicked a contemptuous glance toward the portrait. “After seven years gone to heaven—or hell—knows-where, she’s hardly likely to return to. claim Hawkscliffe now.”

  “Well, now, we won’t know that for sure until Monday, will we?” I countered smoothly.

  “We? You say we, Miss Mackenzie?” Panic flared out at me from quickly hooded eyes. “What, pray, have you to do with Hawkscliffe or us?”

  “Why, nothing. I was using ‘we’ in the editorial sense. A careless choice, nothing more.” I deeply regretted arousing a suspicion that I feared would not easily be put to rest.

  “Be that as it may, Miss Mackenzie,” she said, eyeing me warily, “I have no doubt justice will prevail. Although what we will do with this vulgar monstrosity of a house I can’t imagine. Sell it, I suppose.”

  Imagine dismissing Philo’s and Cora’s dreams and plans so casually, so heartlessly! I fought to suppress any outward sign of my indignation.

  “Lance quite likes Hawkscliffe,” I offered lightly. “He rather fancies himself in a velvet smoking jacket relaxing in the library, fire ablaze, brandy in hand.”

  Louise tensed. The little shop person was turning out to be more than she bargained for. “My son’s tastes, unlike his cousin Thorn’s, are as yet unformed.” She wagged her finger coyly at me, cutting off the protest on my lips, but her playfulness was in deadly earnest. “Oh, I’ve seen the way you look at Thorn, Miss Mackenzie, but I can assure you his appetites run more to ripe, juicy pears than tart little green apples. Don’t waste your girlish sighs on Thornton Ramsay, my dear…why, you’d be better off with Philo.”

  Her voice was the silky purr of a domestic cat that, bored with the fare provided it, lies in wait to swipe out a well-nourished paw at passing small creatures. Loathsome woman.

  “Ah, but surely he has learned by now how fleeting is a pear’s perfection, Mrs. Ramsay. No sooner does it reach its glory than rot creeps in to claim the flesh beneath its still unblemished skin.” I paused, then added in a musing tone, as if it were a spontaneous afterthought, “But apples, if sensibly kept, endure.”

  Having demonstrated that even a mouse, if provoked, can use its sharp little teeth to advantage, I was rewarded with the hiss of her indrawn breath. It was only later that I realized I had all but admitted what Louise had implied.

  Thorn Ramsay had indeed invaded my thoughts and dreams and was even now laying siege to my heart.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My mean little moment of triumph over Louise was short-lived. No more than an hour later, after I had completed my toilette except for the ritual one hundred brush strokes of my hair, I heard a muffled but insistent rapping. Wondering who it could be, I laid down my brush and hurried to the door. When I opened it, my halfhearted greeting died on my lips.

  No one impatiently waited at my door to be admitted; rather, I saw first a figure at the other end of the dark corridor, then a spill of light from Thornton Ramsay’s suite and a flash of lace-trimmed ecru satin as the door began to close upon a half-whispered exchange of bass and contralto voices. Louise and Thornton. My hand froze on the curved brass handle in my hand, and before I could recover my senses, Thorn’s door swung out again—he must have caught a fleeting glimpse of me earlier—just wide enough to frame his face. Paring the distance between us, the intensity of his gaze dizzied me until I was ready to drown in its turbulence.

  Stumbling back into my room, I pulled the door shut and leaned against it, eyes closed, hands splayed against the cool, carved surface. As I did so, a wholly unfamiliar emotion seized me. My body began to tremble, and as I fought the urge to wail, I felt the bitter taste of bile in the back of my throat.

  That woman…that dreadful woman. My God. She was almost old enough to be his mother, and yet the knowledge of it did nothing to calm me. All I could see was the gleam of satin and lace in Thorn’s room; all I could think of was that ripe body in his bed. Tears began to fall, and I dashed them away with angry fists . Angry, jealous fists. Jealousy… so that’s what it was! But recognition did not stop the monster’s mocking taunts. What a poor, helpless, sniveling little wretch I had become. Weeping and wringing my hands as I paced; next I would be tearin
g my hair and moaning of my woes.

  I suddenly caught sight of my red, puffy, tear-tracked face in Roxelana’s pier mirror. What would she have done? Scorned him? Scolded him? Not Roxelana. She was too clever by half for that. I thought of the journals I had read with such guilty fascination. I knew exactly what she would have done—had done—with the skills she had refined to an art. Schooling her body to attract his eye and divert his mind, she had, time and time again, driven Charles Quintus to erotic distraction.

  I began again to pace. This was not a course I should be considering, not even for a moment. Not high-minded Katherine Mackenzie, to whom self-respect was more important than self-indulgence. As I pondered, an old Scottish ballad suddenly skirled through my mind, its words making a mockery of my genteel reservations. Oh, ye’ll tak the high road and I’ll tak the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye….

  Was I perhaps too high-minded? Was I perhaps making too much of a simple flirtatious impulse? I had had no such qualms with young Lance. Young Lance. Ah, there was the nub of it: Lance was a boy. A handsome boy, a bright, talented, and spirited boy, perhaps more sophisticated than first impressions had led me to believe, but for all that, a boy. He did not tie my tongue in awkward knots, or rouse my temper for no good reason at all, or dizzy me with a single look. It took a man to do that; it took Thornton Ramsay to do that to me. Flirtation? The road I was considering taking was lower than that. Seduction was more like it; seduction, pure and simple. Well, simple, anyway, I reflected wryly, though it wouldn’t be simple for me; no, not for me.

  Think, Kate, think!

  I paused to take stock of my situation. On Monday was the hearing; on Monday I must depart. Even though the disposition of the estate was still uncertain, Philo had told me it would be best if my work were completed by then, and I had no choice but to comply. But once I left Hawkscliffe, once there was no longer any natural reason for my path to cross with Thorn’s….

  I twisted my hands together in anguished frustration. If only there were more time! But there was not, and I could think of no way but Roxelana’s.