“I understand, Kate. These last two days….” He shook his head. “I expect you too have found that considering the poisonous atmosphere pervading Hawkscliffe just now, one’s own company is preferable to anyone else’s.”
I turned to leave. Cora and Harry would have passed by now. “I’m sorry if—”
Philo’s long hands reached up in an imploring gesture. “Please! Don’t go! I’ve also found that one’s own thoughts lead to nothing but despair. Oh Kate,” he blurted burying his head in his hands, “I fear I’m a sorry excuse for a man.”
I hastened to his side. “Hush, Philo. There is no call to berate yourself.” I sat down beside him and patted his shoulder. “Your aunt has put you in an impossible position.”
Philo turned a tearstained face to me. “If I were the only one her threats affected, I could manage—I always have. I am not a greedy man. My needs are of an aesthetic, not material nature, and I am well satisfied by my work. Even Thorn grants me that much. But my dear friend ... the one I told you about, Kate? The one for whom I wished to order a carpetbag like yours? My friend has tuberculosis, and I thought...I hoped if I could bring my friend here to live, up here where the air blows clean and fresh, with Cora to help care for ... for ….”
He paused, groping awkwardly for a way to avoid the pronoun that might reveal his secret to me, the secret with which Louise Ramsay had threatened to destroy his professional life.
“For him,” I completed gently.
Philo stared at me, aghast. “You mean you know?”
“That your friend is a man? I guessed as much, Philo. Your aunt’s insinuations; a word here and there.” I shrugged. “It is important only in that it is causing you such distress.”
Philo sprang to his feet and began to pace. “I don’t understand, Kate. You know this about me, yet you seem to calm ... so accepting. How can that be? I am a pariah, an unclean thing, to anyone who knows of my ... depravity.” He spat out the word bitterly. “Why aren’t you like that?”
I raised my eyebrows at the unexpected note of accusation in his question. “Good heavens, Philo, would you rather I were? You forget I grew up in a world where affection displayed between men is commonplace, and since most of the liaisons are succeeded in due course by marriage and a family they arouse neither censure nor scorn, much less a basis for life-destroying scandal.”
“Whereas in our so-called civilized society I am compelled to live a life of deceit,” Philo exclaimed, “and that, I daresay, is why Louise is here. She’s laying claim to the estate not just for the sake of her son, but also to right what she considers to be a wrong done to her. A very old wrong.”
I could make neither head nor tail of what he was saying. “Philo, I—”
“The how and why of it are no longer important,” Philo continued, ignoring my interruption. “What’s done is done. But she shouldn’t be allowed to keep us paying for it for the rest of our lives.”
The last was said in a fierce whisper, more to himself than to me, yet the words reverberated oddly in my mind. Was it an echo of something said, or merely a reflection of the hostility Louise had provoked in all of us?
Philo continued pacing, head bowed, then stopped abruptly and faced me. “Under the circumstances, it was very generous of you to protest Louise’s plan to usurp the Hawkscliffe rug catalog.”
“Please, Philo, let it be.” It was a subject I was still not comfortable discussing with him. “If the truth be known, I’m not quite sure why I did. Perhaps it’s just because Louise is so much easier to dislike than you.”
I could tell by Philo’s purposeful expression that my attempt at lightness had failed to deflect him.
“No, I must tell you. I couldn’t before, but now that you know about Ralph—” He hesitated, then resumed his pacing. “You see, I didn’t want the rug catalog just for myself. Even if my plans for Hawkscliffe worked out, we would still need every penny I could lay my hands on. The medical expenses alone….” He shook his head. “Ralph has little money of his own, and Cora even less.”
“Cora?” I was bewildered. “What has Cora to do with him?”
“Why, Ralph is Cora’s nephew, Kate. Surely you know about him?” He looked at me with a startled expression, then passed a shaky hand over his head. “Of course you don’t,” he muttered, answering his own question. “No reason you should, it’s just that. . . .” He broke off, hunched his shoulders and threw his arms wide in a gesture of amazement. “It’s just that so much has happened during your brief stay here, I feel as if I’ve known you for years!”
Cora’s nephew. The boy in the photograph in her bedroom.
“She doesn’t know the nature of our relationship, Kate. She wouldn’t understand. Please, you won’t….”
As Philo again reached his hands out to me, I suddenly realized how much power he had placed in mine. I had neither sought his confidence nor wanted it, yet once given, I felt obligated to safeguard it.
“Tell her? Of course not. Cora and I are not exactly friends, you know. I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I would share such knowledge with her—or with anyone else, for that matter,” I added deliberately. I grasped his hands in mine reassuringly, and when he winced I looked down to see that his carefully kept nails were broken, his knuckles and palms scraped and raw. “Philo, your poor hands—”
“It’s nothing!” He pulled them away from me. He hesitated, then blurted, “I came upon Harry earlier, in the fog. In my foolish haste to escape his notice I stumbled and fell.”
I could tell that being thought fearful and clumsy was repugnant to him. “Tell me about Ralph,” I urged gently.
Philo crossed to one of the rough-arched openings and rested his cheek against the shredding bark of the timbering.
“He wasn’t much older than Lance when I met him,” he began quietly. “Convinced of his artistic promise, Cora brought him to me. C.Q. was far too self-centered to waste his time encouraging the young, so she hoped I might become his mentor. At first I was excited by his talent, but although Ralph is an excellent and painstaking draftsman, and blessed with an unusually discerning eye, I gradually became aware he was entirely lacking in originality.” Philo paused then, turning toward me, he added dryly, “Lord knows I tried to persuade myself otherwise.”
Philo began again to pace, his steps quickening and his forlorn air slipping away as he shared his private life with me, an unlikely confidante perhaps, but a needed one.
“He was such an appealing boy, Kate. Quiet, serious, and with absolute faith in my judgment. I hemmed and hawed for as long as I could, and then it came to me. Maybe he could never be a creative artist of the first or even second rank, but his particular talents were ideally suited to restoration work.
“I took him with me to Europe to see at first hand the masterpieces he had seen only in engravings and shoddy reproductions, and to visit the ateliers of the masters of the restoration arts in Germany and Italy.” His face softened, and he seemed in the dimness almost as young as I. “Especially Italy.”
I guessed that the Italian golden light and la dolce vita had nudged their budding relationship into full flower.
“He stayed on in Europe for several years—it seemed a lifetime to me—to serve his apprenticeship. When he returned, word of his extraordinary skill spread like wildfire through museum and collector circles. He could soon pick and choose among the many commissions offered him. Cora was very grateful,” he said, his mouth twisting wryly. “Ralph is now too ill to work, much less for any physical….” He paused, then looked directly into my eyes. “She must never know.”
Cora must not know. The Philadelphia Museum’s board of directors must not know, and especially the straitlaced Elizabeth Van Renssalaer, newly elected to the board of the Metropolitan, must not know. Louise Ramsay had a great deal to answer for.
“So you see, Kate, I may apply for a position at Avakian’s after all.”
Good Lord, I thought, whatever would I do with him if he did? But th
is was no time for sober realities. “I think we’d make a capital team, Philo: Mackenzie and Ramsay, purveyors of rugs as fine art.”
He smiled at that. I stepped to the archway overlooking the path where I had seen Cora and Harry. Harry was well away, walking back toward his quarters, the two leashed dogs trotting at his heels; Cora was nowhere in sight. I turned back to take my leave of Philo, but his smile had been succeeded by an expression so bleak I decided it would be kinder to depart in silence than to force him to summon a courteous response from the depths of his despair.
A few yards beyond the gazebo I came upon a copse of yew whose branchy reach, untamed by knife and shears, had long outgrown the original ornamental intent of the planting. Rather than retrace my steps, I forced my way through the scraggly clawed tips and emerged, mussed and breathless, face-to-face with Thornton Ramsay. It was hard to say who of us was the most startled: Thorn, I, or the shaggy Akbar by his side whose deep woof of alarm was succeeded shortly by a wag of tail and a softening of the alertness in her deep-set brown eyes.
“It might have been easier if you had stayed with the path, Kate,” he said, as he plucked needles of yew from my hair.
“True, but if I had I would have encountered Harry coming up from the kennels. This appears to be a day for walking the dogs,” I said as I ruffled Zulu’s ears. Her well-muscled posterior vibrated with the quickened tempo of her wagging tail.
“And you appear to have made a friend. I daresay you are the sort of person dogs instinctively trust.”
I laughed. “I’m glad Zulu accepts me without question. She may be the only resident of Hawkscliffe who does.”
“Come now, Kate. Surely you don’t include young Lance in your harsh indictment. I’d say he was hopelessly smitten.”
“Oh, but I do. Mrs. Ramsay considers me an unsuitable companion, and Lance is a dutiful son.” Resentment welled up in me as I recalled the boy’s awkward disassociation from me after dinner. “Considering the uncertainty concerning Lance’s paternity, Louise Ramsay is a remarkably bold and determined woman.”
“Ah, but haven’t you sensed that she wants control of the estate as much for herself as for her son? Why, it’s the ultimate revenge. Think of it, Kate—C.Q.’s last mistress may have been able to enslave the old philanderer as Louise was never able to, but here she is, the wife he treated so shabbily, busily positioning herself to enjoy the fruits of her successor’s labors. How she relishes the prospect, and how she enjoys rubbing everyone else’s nose in it!”
In view of Louise’s vanity and pride, both Philo’s and Thorn’s readings of the matter made more sense than one based solely on the protectiveness of a doting mother. Her self-interest may have been cloaked by her display of maternal concern, but it was the grit of her greed for revenge that had honed those formidable claws of hers to murderous sharpness. Yet I had a strong suspicion I was hearing only part of the story.
I cocked my head to one side. “And you, Mr. Ramsay— are you, like me, merely a disinterested bystander?”
He looked at me warily. A muscle twitched in the long hollow of his cheek. “I’m not sure that is a question I should answer,” he murmured finally.
We stared at each other. I recognized the troubled doubts in my own heart, but what was in his? What had been the purpose of Louise’s late night visit to his room, if not for the lovemaking he had denied? If he was in fact Lance’s father, what use was Louise planning to make of that? His face was as unreadable as his heart. I shook my head at the hopelessness of it all, uttered a few trite parting words, and moved on.
“Don’t wander too far afield,” he called after me. “It is easier to lose one’s way in this murk than one might imagine.”
I had already decided to stick to the known path, but I nodded my acknowledgment. I walked slowly up the slope where I had suffered humiliation at Harry Braunfels’ hands earlier in the week—it was a route I was unlikely to forget—and as I did so I became aware of a change in the air, a freshening stir and a cooling of the temperature that made me draw my wrap more snugly around me.
Within the next few minutes the fog’s cloak had thinned to tatters, and by the time I topped the rise a breeze bounding out of the western hills had sent its gray coattails scurrying for cover in the approaching dusk, revealing the late afternoon sun in all its golden glory. I hastened toward Harry’s hawking platform for one more look at the glorious view Charles Quintus had sketched there and later masterfully fixed in paint to remind future generations of the wild fastness we had been privileged to know here.
My footsteps slowed, then faltered as I neared the edge. I stopped—thank God I stopped!—long enough to catch my breath and summon the courage to step out upon that aerial wedge of clumsily cobbled planks only to find that my worst fears had become a hideous reality.
Minutes earlier the fog would have masked this danger dangling above the abyss, this sinking ship upon a sea of air. The crude platform sagged at an alarming angle, and its splintered railing swayed gently in the wind that now swirled along the cliff top.
I stood frozen upon the precipice until a sudden gust, which threatened to wrench the platform from the few spikes that remained to moor it, caused me to sink upon my heels in sudden panic. As the broken rail twisted and creaked above me in the wind’s embrace, I became aware of a flutter of color clinging to its raw, jagged edge. It was just a little snippet, hardly bigger than a pen wiper, but it had an iridescent sheen that dizzied me with foreboding.
Slowly I inched forward through the roughly grassed coarse gravel. As I again reached the barren edge I fearfully eased my head over the brink. Below me on a small rocky promontory, much too far to reach but close enough to see all too well, a tangle of scrubby oaks clutched a crumpled mass of plaid watered silk. The bone-hard spiky branch ends jagging up every which way through the shimmering stuff called to mind the paintings that depicted in ghastly detail the martyred Saint Sebastian, pierced similarly by arrows.
I looked down numbly for a long moment, then closed my eyes to shut out the pretty effect of sunlight glistening on the folds of fabric fingered by the gusting breeze. But it was no use. In my mind’s eye I still saw Louise Ramsay sweeping imperiously out of the dining room, the fringes of her soft shawl bobbing above her bustle to the staccato tempo of her angry heels, her pastel plaid skirt billowing behind her.
I heard a thin, piercing call above me. A sudden swoop of shadow blotted out the play of sun on silk. Shot through with shock and terror, I gasped as a large hawk descended upon the scraggle of oaks and began to inspect fastidiously with outstretched neck and probing beak Louise’s oddly askew red shawl. I watched in horror as the bird transferred its perch to the crimson wool. All I could think of was how cold she would be if it carried her shawl away in its talons.
A surge of hot anger gave me the courage to rise. Distracted by my screams and waving arms, the huge bird soared effortlessly away, lifted by the winds rushing up the cliff face into the limitless blue of the darkening sky.
Help. We needed help, Louise and I.
As I ran headlong down the slope in search of Thorn, I recalled with sudden, dreadful clarity that the luxurious cloud of mohair Louise had flung around her shoulders had been pink, not red. A pink as pale as pearls.
I intercepted Thorn on the path to the kennels. Harry had already returned to his quarters there, and as soon as I had blurted out my sorry news. Thorn ran ahead to alert him. By the time I arrived to assist in the rescue preparations. Thorn had already coiled a length of rope around his shoulders, while a scowling Harry, forced to abandon his tumbler of whiskey, backed a stout, sleepy pony between the shafts of a small wicker go-cart.
“No need for all this rush,” the groundsman grumbled. “The hawk the girlie described would be a red-tail, indulging its curiosity. Carrion’s no treat to that breed of bird. Now if missy here had seen crows feeding—”
“For God’s sake. Harry!” Thorn exploded, cutting short the groundsman’s chillingly brutal observat
ions. “Wait for us here, Kate,” Thorn commanded. “There is no need to alert the others yet.”
“I’m coming with you! We don’t know yet if she is—she may need my help,” I concluded falteringly, trying to deny the awful truth of the red—so much red!—cloaking the plaid silk. I drew in a shuddering breath, then met Thorn’s stern, inquiring gaze directly. What he saw must have reassured him.
“Come along, then.” He swung me up into the back of the little cart along with an armload of hastily gathered horse blankets, and we jounced wordlessly up to the top of the cliff.
Thorn securely knotted one end of his rope around the axle of the pony cart, and while Harry held the stolid pony, he let himself down over the precipice in a smooth, practiced motion. I peered down to see him land lightly on the protruding island of rock among the sparse, stunted oaks. As he gently freed Louise from their stubby clutch, her head lolled at an angle that left little doubt that her most precious possession, her life, was lost beyond recall.
I lifted my eyes beyond the somber tableau to the glittering river and the hills rolling away serenely to the west, set aglow by the slanting copper light of the setting sun. A majestic scene, upon which Louise’s cruel passing had left no mark.
The pony snorted and tossed his shaggy head as the weight on the rope, doubled now, telegraphed its pull to the shafts secured to his harness. I looked away as Thorn cradled Louise’s body with blankets in the little cart meant for picnics and carefree jaunts. It seemed a frivolous choice for a hearse.
As we walked, Thorn and I, behind the cart toward the house, a sudden gust caught the horse blanket thrown loosely over her, tugging her silk skirt back above legs plumper and ankles thicker than I was sure she would have cared to have so baldly revealed. I called to Harry to halt.
The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Page 15