Deliberately, I went into the spacious marble-sheathed bathroom and lit the boiler fire to heat water for my bath; deliberately, I walked to the wardrobe, opened it, and sorted through its gauzy contents, garment by garment. Gold? Not enough contrast with my hair. The blue? Too vibrant; it would make me seem more wan than fair. Pink? Insipid. Black? Too obvious. Aquamarine, the color of the Aegean Sea in summer….
I lifted the padded hanger off the rod and carried it over to the mirror. I held the sheer bouffant pantaloons close against me and watched them sway in rhythm to my tentative movements. I smiled. It suited me, this color. I hastened back and chose a brassiere fashioned from satin of the same limpid hue trimmed with crystal beads and seed pearls. Charming! Then slippers—but, oh dear, they swallowed up my narrow feet; I would have to settle for bare toes, nails buffed and polished.
What else? I tapped my forefinger thoughtfully upon the tip of my nose. Ah yes, the veil. How difficult it was to choose among them! At length, I selected a glittering wisp of silver netting. I held it up experimentally beneath my eyes. Even without kohl darkening the edges of my eyelids, the veil seemed to magnify my eyes and lend them—and me—an air of mystery. I chuckled softly, and the delicately suspended fringe of tiny pearl droplets, stirred by the gentle huff of my breath, quivered seductively. I could almost hear the ching of the brass zil I would slip upon my fingers to accompany my dance.
I spread the garments I had chosen upon the counterpane and surveyed them with mounting pleasure as I undressed. I removed my flower-sprigged flannel robe from a hook upon the door. I began to don it, then allowed the homely garment to slip to the floor and stood naked. Naked, yes, but not proudly so; I trembled despite the warmth of the perfumed air.
The unclothed body is the devil’s lure, my father was wont to say. Katherine! Secure your stockings! Katherine! Button up your bodice! Better I should suffocate in the stifling heat of a Turkish summer than display one untoward inch of my childish flesh to hot male eyes. I folded my pale arms across the gentle thrust of my small breasts and took a deep shuddering breath. Old habits die hard.
* * * *
I returned to the bathroom to find the boiler popping and hissing. I turned on the ornate faucets and gasped as I eased myself into the filling tub. Truly, there is nothing like a steaming hot bath to ease the body and lull a restless mind. I added a handful of pink crystals from a cut-glass jar on the wide white marble ledge, and whatever remained of my misgivings soon dissolved in the intoxicating rose-scented cloud that soon enveloped me.
I have no idea how much time had passed when, while dreamily toweling the last droplets from my heated skin, I heard a knock at the outer door. I donned my robe, and as I ran my hands over my flyaway, steam-tendriled hair in a fruitless attempt to subdue it, I heard another knock, louder and more peremptory this time.
A deep voice called in a husky whisper, “Kate? Kate, I saw the light under your door….” Thornton Ramsay’s voice.
My eyes darted frantically from the door to the filmy garments beckoning me from the big bed. What could he want? This wasn’t at all what I had planned.
“Kate? A moment, please.”
I opened the door. His nostrils flared as the warm, perfumed air flowed out into the dark, chill corridor. I drew my robe close about me, for fear that that penetrating green gaze of his could pierce through its homely fabric to the pink, warm body it sheltered.
“I cannot let you in!” To my dismay, my quavering voice was as high and shrill as a schoolgirl’s.
He raised his eyebrows, and as I took hold of my scattered wits. I realized his expression was not that of a man intent on midnight dalliance; rather, it was withdrawn, remote. “It was not at all my intent to do so. I merely wished to inform you that Louise Ramsay’s visit to my room was not of an ... amorous nature.” He smiled mirthlessly.
Of what nature was it, then, I wondered, but I dared not, would not, ask. He wished to inform me, did he? Not quite the same as being told or persuaded or assured. “As you are so fond of telling me, Mr. Ramsay, surely this is no concern of mine.”
His expression, which had briefly softened as he surveyed my flushed cheeks and tousled hair, became coldly dismissive. “Quite true, but I would prefer the rest of the household not be made aware of it.”
“I am not a common gossip, Mr. Ramsay. Neither Louise Ramsay’s nor your comings and goings hold any interest for me, and I expect I will have quite forgotten them by morning. So you see, your secrets, whatever they may be, are quite safe with me.”
He gave a bark of harsh laughter. “My dear Miss Mackenzie,” he began in a jeering return to formal address, “I have more secrets than you will ever know.”
His back, as he turned on his heel and strode down the corridor, was as stiff and unyielding as his manner. Somehow, I sensed he had shut me out even before he’d knocked at my door; my childishly defensive manner had merely made it simpler for him.
I eased back into the room and gently clicked the big door shut. Hawkscliffe held so many secrets, most of which, like Thorn’s, I would never ever know. I sighed and began to hang away the garments that lay waiting patiently to fulfill a role in a play prematurely cut short.
Once again I felt trapped between my father’s implacable authority and the temptation Thornton Ramsay offered. Offered? No, that was not true. He had offered me nothing. What drew me to him I had discovered for myself.
I suspended the pearly veil beneath my dark eyes and searched their defiant depths. It was like hearing a mouse roar.
The notion made me laugh, a rueful laugh that ended in a quiet sigh. I hung away the veil, tucked in an errant wisp of scarlet silk, and firmly closed the wardrobe door. I had my secrets, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning found Hawkscliffe submerged in a fog so dense, so seemingly unyielding, it was as if some malevolent spirit had heaped loose bales of dirty cotton against its windows and doors, piling it up around the tiled surface of the masonry, ever thicker,until even the tarnished spires were wholly enveloped in murky fluff.
The dull ache clutching at my temples sank its claws deeper in the face of weather which could only serve to imprison Hawkscliffe’s inhabitants, aggravating an already uneasy association of personalities. Upon descending to the ground floor, I scurried from window to window seeking a promise of sunlight through the shifting misty veils, but the grayness was absolute. I could find no chink that might admit an errant, cheering ray. The conservatory windows, which only yesterday had framed the most splendid view yet of the landscape Charles Quintus Ramsay had so masterfully rendered in oils, were no more revealing than the others. We might as well have been set adrift on an island in space with no past, no future, only an interminably unresolved present.
“Good morning, Kate.”
It was Lance. His eyes were still puffed from sleep, a cowlick had escaped his comb, and his coat, misbuttoned, hung askew. He looked, I thought, more like a boy on the brink of adolescence than a young man at the tail end of it.
“What’s good about it. Lance? One can’t see beyond the windowpanes, and the air is so heavy I can hardly breathe.”
He looked at me owlishly. “My, we are in a grump, aren’t we? Actually, it strikes me as a perfect kind of day to spend in a stupefying activity like counting carpet knots.”
He stood aside to allow me to precede him into the dining room, then joined me at the sideboard. The usual Hawkscliffe array of breakfast treats, which heretofore I had regarded as an irresistible luxury, failed to tempt my appetite. If anything, the mingled aromas of scrambled eggs, grilled kidneys, and kippers made me queasy.
“May I serve you some of this crisp bacon?”
I irritably waved away the platter thrust beneath my nose. “Dry toast and tea is all I can tolerate this morning.”
“Why not stale bread and water? Then you can feel even sorrier for yourself.”
I looked up to meet a teasing smile. “Oh, dear, I do sound a bit of a martyr, don�
��t I?”
Lance nodded. “Sackcloth and ashes. Whereas I am the one truly deserving of pity. I haven’t gotten up before noon on a Sunday since ... since ...” He stared at me, genuinely astonished. “Since I can’t remember when, and all to be at your service.”
To be at my service. It was an offer not to be underrated. I smiled at Lance gratefully. Judging by the way the tips of his ears reddened, my smile was considerably warmer than intended.
“Tea with your milk, Kate, or lemon?” The red flush invaded his cheeks as his words tangled on his tongue. “What I meant to say was—”
“Thank you, Lance,” I returned solemnly. I was determined not to embarrass him further by betraying my amusement. “No milk, no lemon, no sugar.”
“A Spartan woman, is our Miss Mackenzie, Lance. Self-indulgence is not her cup of tea.”
My heart thudded against my ribs. I did not have to see Thorn Ramsay to suffer the effects of his dark magic. Just the deep, rough sound of his voice was enough to alarm me in a way I did not understand at all.
“You will not have to put up with my Spartan ways much longer. No more than twenty-four hours, to be precise.”
I had turned to address him and was ... what, exactly? Confounded? At the very least, unprepared for the look of consternation that briefly supplanted his customary guarded expression.
“You surprise me. I would have thought you would be curious to see how all this turns out.” The sweep of his arms encompassed Lance, the room, the fogbound estate—it even appeared to encompass me.
I raised my eyebrows. “You surprise me even more, Mr. Ramsay. Surely ‘how all this turns out,’ as you put it, is even less a concern of mine than all the other matters you have been at pains to chide me about during my stay here at Hawkscliffe.”
He smiled. It was a sad smile, and the yearning look I thought I detected in his green eyes, a liquid, longing look quickly suppressed, fair broke my heart.
We stood in tense silence, unable to look away. Out of the comer of my eye I was aware of Lance’s glance flicking from one to the other of us as if he sensed something animating our hostile formality, something mysterious beyond his ken and experience, and which, until that moment, had also been beyond mine. All I knew was that I feared if I spoke, if I so much as moved, I might shatter into a thousand pieces.
Thorn smiled again, this time a remote smile suited to a coolly courteous acceptance of my announced departure. “Perhaps one day I shall have an irresistible urge to furnish my study with a Persian rug.”
The devil he would! His words were, I was sure, deliberately chosen to convey to me his impression of my place—if any—in his future life.
I cleared my throat. My moment of fragility had passed;
I would allow no surface cracks to appear in my armor. “If so,” I began smoothly, “I, or one of my assistants, would be pleased to be of service. Avakian’s is well respected in the trade, and will be even more so for having catalogued the Hawkscliffe collection.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way, eh, Miss Mackenzie?”
Considering our present circumstance, it seemed a tactlessly ambiguous choice of words, but a quick glance at Lance reassured me. He seemed more restive than offended. “Are you sufficiently fortified to proceed with the morning’s agenda. Lance?”
The boy drew himself up into a quiveringly erect posture, saluted smartly, then, sensing an oddly unequal pull on his coat, looked down and realigned the buttons and holes. “l am now,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Will I see you at dinner. Cousin Thorn?”
“No doubt,” was the deep-voiced reply. “Assuming, of course, that you survive the tasks set for you by Miss Mackenzie. I warn you, the woman is a worker!”
“That may be, sir, but I would rather slave by Kate’s side than loll in the presence of another, lesser, maid.”
“Good heavens,” I admonished as we hurried up the stairs followed by Thorn Ramsay’s hoot of laughter. “You may catch more than you bargained for with honeyed words like that!”
“I might if I were as jolly as cousin Thorn,” was his unexpected reply.
I stopped short and looked at him incredulously. “‘Jolly’ is hardly the word I would choose to describe Thornton Ramsay.”
“What would you choose, Kate?” He looked at me with a hint of both envy and challenge in his eyes. “Whatever it is should express an appeal to women, don’t you think?”
Exciting, mysterious, provocative, virile…. The adjectives streamed through my mind unbidden. “Well, whatever I chose would apply to you, too. Lance. Will apply,” I amended hastily as he grinned at me wolfishly, “given a few years of worldly experience. Be that as it may, you’re much nicer than your cousin Thorn—promise me you’ll remain so!”
Lance accepted my evasion. “Only if you promise you’ll wait for me, Kate,” he proclaimed, rolling his eyes ridiculously, “for without you my life would be a barren wasteland, joyless and bereft of hope.”
It was impossible to resist his boyish hyperbole. We teased and giggled our way up the next flight, and when we reached the final landing a door opened to reveal a somewhat bloodshot and very annoyed eye.
“Why are you up so early, Lancelot, and what are you doing with that young woman?”
“Did I wake you, Mother? Sorry about that. Kate and I have business together.”
“Business? What kind of business?” Louise Ramsay’s incredulous tone conjured up a vivid image of a bawdy throng of monkeys. The door opened wider, revealing her uncorseted form wrapped in the satin and lace concoction I had seen flowing into Thorn’s room the previous evening.
“Counting knots. Mother.”
“Counting nuts? I never heard such nonsense in all my life!”
“Knots,” Lance repeated patiently. “Carpet knots. Actually,” he added hastily, as storm clouds gathered on his mother’s face, “Kate will be counting the knots while I finish sketching the carpet designs.”
“Well, do try to be quiet about it.” She fixed me with a baleful glare. “I do wish, Miss Mackenzie, that you would kindly consider that my son might have more rewarding things to do with his time than assist you with a task you seem to be having trouble accomplishing on your own. I really don’t know what Philo could’ve been thinking of,” she added in a mutter meant to be overheard.
The echo of her meanly expressed opinion threw a damper on the rest of the morning, and although we no doubt accomplished more than we might have had lightheartedness prevailed, we hadn’t nearly the fun I had counted on seeing me through the forlorn, fogbound day.
Three hours later I rubbed tired, strained eyes as Lance put the finishing touches on a sketch.
“There you go, Kate. The lot of ‘em’s done except for the one you’re working on now, and a rather sorry lot, too, if you ask me. No flowers, no trees, not even a lion pouncing on an antelope like the one in Mother’s bedroom at home.”
I wrinkled my nose. Probably a late copy of a popular but bloodthirsty theme I disliked even in its original sixteenth-century Herat version.
“As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Lance. I grant you I’ve seen prettier rugs, but these archaic designs are so powerful. It’s no wonder they were once so prized.”
“Prized, Kate?” Lance looked at me askance. “By whom?”
I stared at him. Prized by whom, indeed! Why, only by artists like Holbein and Lotto, who painted lovingly detailed rugs like these beneath the feet of saints, or hung over stone balconies to cushion the elbows of fair maids waiting for their lovers. Portarits of the artists’ patrons often included tables adorned with carpets like these to symbolize a well-supplied purse. Come to think of it, the modern counterparts of these smug, well-fed burghers furnished their parlors with carpets from Avakian’s.
I smiled. “All you see is a dusty old rug. Lance, but to me the history of textile design can be read in these rectangles of knotted wool.”
Lance looked alarmed. “I can see I’m in the presence of a
specialist with an obsession.” He wagged a warning finger as I opened my mouth. “No, no, spare me the details! I have a chum like you, Kate. Collects stamps. Gets all excited about a little square of paper missing the thingummies along one side.”
“Thingummies?”
“You know, perforations. And if the color’s a bit off he’s ecstatic.” Lance shrugged and smiled winningly. “I dunno, but to me a rug is to walk on, and a stamp takes a letter through the mails.”
Just then the dinner bell could be heard ringing in the distance. We gathered our paraphernalia and hastened to our respective rooms to freshen up for the midday meal. As I tidied my tousled hair, I wondered what function a will, specifically Charles Quintus Ramsay’s will, performed in Lance’s young life. No doubt he was content to follow his mother’s lead, untroubled by any complications or disappointments his inheritance might present to the lives of others. As far as Lance was concerned, a rug was for walking on, a stamp for posting letters with, and the purpose of C.Q.’s will was to provide him with an exotic residence suitable for the wearing of smoking jackets and smoking a hubblebubble—until, of course, the amusement of it palled and he put Hawkscliffe up for sale. Self-interest, yes, but purely innocent and unthinking. How very young he was!
I entered the dining room a few paces ahead of Lance and Louise, and it was clear from Lance’s hangdog look and sidelong glance at me as we took our seats that his mother was displeased with him, largely, I suspected, because of his association with me.
“Such a dispiriting day,” Louise Ramsay commented as she frowningly regarded the fog-shrouded windows. The gray light was not quite dim enough to necessitate the lighting of the oil lamps, and the day was too warm for a cheering fire. “Does the sun never shine at Hawkscliffe?”
“A hasty judgment to make on the basis of not quite two days of residence, Louise,” Thorn said dryly. “Might I suggest a distracting postprandial visit to the conservatory or library?”
The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Page 13