The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe

by Joyce C. Ware

  “The theme was the Ottoman Imperial Court, and the effect was splendid! There were colorful paper lanterns aglow in the trees. Large turtles, gotten from heaven knows where, wandered the grounds with candles on their backs. I’ve often wondered what happened to the poor creatures.”

  “I know a little about the historical precedent,” I said. “Sultan Ahmed Ill’s turtles, loosed each year during his Tulip Fetes in the seventeenth century, were kept caged between times and treated like royal pets.”

  “But this was a one-time affair.”

  I shrugged. “Soup, then.”

  Unable to decide whether or not I was joking, Duncan Meriwether fell silent. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he nodded. “Yes. Exactly her style. Soup.” He shuddered elaborately before continuing. “Pretty little tented pavilions had been put up here and there, some for the gorgeously costumed musicians and others for the food.

  “Oh, the food. Miss Avakian!” He paused to pat the little bulge of his stomach. “Pastries filled with meats and cheeses, charcoal-broiled lamb, eggplant mashed with garlic, tomatoes dressed with olive oil and herbs, and flaky confections with pistachios and wild honey. It was a feast to remember.”

  The costumes assembled by the guests were, he told me, inauthentic, but given the number of artists in the throng, the effect must have been, well, artistic. Roxelana, on the other hand, was a vision straight out of the imperial harem.

  “Only her dark, plummy eyes could be seen. She was draped head to toe in silks which glowed like jewels against the milky whiteness of her skin. I’ve never seen skin quite like hers. It was a warm night, and later, when she danced ... but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “I remember how surprised I was when Eloise and Thorn arrived in conventional evening dress. Eloise didn’t remember the invitation’s saying anything about a costume party. In fact, they had assumed it was a small family gathering to celebrate their engagement. So Roxelana pressed upon her an ensemble from her own wardrobe. How fetching she looked! And how dashing Thorn looked in the red fez C.Q. plopped down upon his dark curls.

  “It was an exciting evening, Miss Avakian, I won’t deny it. The cooling champagne punch released us from our inhibitions. Even dear Eloise--who was as shy and unsophisticated as befitted a girl barely out of her teens--sparkled that night. Swathed in the chiffon lent her by Roxelana, she seemed a veritable woodland sprite as her toes twinkled across the close-mown grass to the insistent rhythms of the palm-stroked drums.

  “Thorn was obviously pleased with her—not that she danced well, mind you, but it was unlike her even to try. He joined her in their own version of a courtship dance: pairing and parting, circling, twining. It was very sweet and moving, and Roxelana very soon had had enough of it.

  “Insinuating herself into the space created for them by the smiling onlookers, the twosome became a threesome. Roxelana didn’t dance, she writhed; she didn’t twinkle, she smoldered. It was an unequal contest, he concluded sorrowfully.

  “And one that an innocent young girl never had a chance of winning.”

  “Are you implying my niece’s humiliation was planned?”

  “One way or another, yes.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “I’m a woman: I’ve seen Roxelana’s portrait,” I reminded him. And I’ve read her notebooks, I thought.

  He shook his head as if to clear it of this unpleasant notion. “As I said, it was a warm night. Roxelana had discarded her encumbering veils; all that remained was a hip-slung billow of transparent silk and a cropped, beaded bandeau-like vest that barely contained her.”

  Mr. Meriwether got to his feet. He began to pace and threw his quickened words over his shoulder at me. It was almost as if he wished not to be held responsible for them.

  “The sheen of her moist skin had the pulsing glow of fine pearls. I remember her throwing back her head and bending her body until that loosened cloud of ebony hair brushed the grass at her heels. By this time, you see, the music had taken possession of her, and she vibrated, mouth slack, eyes half closed, in a tight circle with Thorn at its center, shamelessly offering herself to him.”

  He paused and swallowed hard, his eyes averted. “C.Q. was furious. As for Thorn Eloise ceased to exist. just as surely as if she’d never been born. It took just those few wanton moments to destroy any possibility of her ever meeting his expectationsHe resumed his seat beside me on the bench.

  “I took my niece home that very night. I never returned to Hawkscliffe, and I never forgave Roxelana, but I never suspected her actions might have been deliberate.” He shook his head. “How cruel,” he whispered. “How very cruel.”

  “I did see her again, though,” he added unexpectedly. “Late one night at the Hoffman House bar.”

  I felt a stab of shock. Louise had mentioned gossip about Roxelana’s so-called shopping trips into the city— had this been one of them?

  “I had gone there with a group of friends. A woman was screaming and cursing—the shrill voice was what caught my attention—and it was Roxelana, engaged in a donnybrook with a coarse-looking, heavyset chap. Didn’t know him—none of us did—but standing close to her side, talking earnestly down into her angry face, was Thornton Ramsay. They left together. It was two in the morning, Miss Avakian,” he added meaningfully, lest I miss his implication.

  “Mr. Meriwether.....” I hesitated, then decided that enough confidences had been exchanged for one day. “I’m pleased we were finally able to find a Hereke of the quality a discriminating eye like yours deserves,” I said, rising to my feet. “You may be assured I will do all I can to speed its restoration so that Santa Claus may bring it down your chimney Christmas morning.”

  “Oh, Miss Avakian,” he said smilingly as he pressed my hand good-bye. “Think of the soot!”

  Soot was the last thing on my mind as I packed my portmanteau that evening, although my thoughts were black enough. Thorn Ramsay and his uncle’s wife; Thorn and his uncle’s last mistress. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

  He seemed to have as little family loyalty as my cousin Araxie.

  I paused before sliding tissue paper into the folds of my pretty new cashmere and silk dress. What is the point? I wondered, yet I not only packed it, I also slipped in the suede pouch containing the brooch and earrings Uncle Vartan had given me.

  The people we love aren’t always worthy of our respect, I heard myself telling Lance.

  Advice is always so easy to give, I told myself.

  I was too restless to sleep, so there was nothing to do but to take up my uncle’s journal again, although I had had my fill of tales of willful, selfish females for one day.

  The next section repeated in greater detail what Yervant had already told me: the wedding at our yali, and the entertainment devised by a roomful of bored girls. Considering the lasting harm it had done, there seemed little to choose between Araxie’s dance and Roxelana’s at Hawkscliffe.

  Araxie had been placed in a school, but not only because of the rift she had created in the family, I learned. Ottoman taxation had become increasingly oppressive. The Hagopians had already emigrated to America and occasionally commissioned Uncle Vartan to find them special pieces.

  One day he received a letter from Charles Quintus Ramsay, who saw no point in paying an intermediary for a service he could acquire on his own. Uncle Vartan refused. Bypass his old friend, Lemyel? That wasn’t the way he did business!

  Charles Quintus, who at the moment was not only awash in the money his fame had brought him but suffused with the white hot avidity of the beginning collector, then proposed that Uncle Vartan come to America, at C.Q.’s expense, to explore the possibility of opening his own shop in New York with C.Q. as his backer. It was Uncle Vartan’s golden opportunity! Lemyel Hagopian, when consulted, assured my uncle he was not at all sorry to see the last of a customer who had treated his beautiful wife, Salome, with altogether too much familiarity.

  The die was cast. Aunt Vosky moved back to Erzurum tempor
arily until Uncle Vartan could establish himself; Araxie was enrolled in a boarding school. The next year my uncle made two trips to Turkey: the first to buy rugs; the second to mourn at the grave of his beloved wife, the victim of an outbreak of plague that had ravaged the local population. No one knew where Araxie was. She had been sent for to care for her mother, but when it became apparent her mother was dying, she fled. She did not return to school. All that was left of her was the crystal evil-eye amulet found under her mother’s deathbed, that had somehow escaped her. For shame! her father wrote. And he cursed her name.

  So the amulet enclosed in the envelope addressed to me had been Araxie’s!

  I got out of bed and fetched it from my lingerie case, where I had temporarily lodged it, and once more unfolded its silk wrappings. It was very old and very beautiful, but not worth—nothing was worth—the pain it had caused. I would add its glitter to the keepsakes in my carved box as a forceful reminder of what Uncle Vartan had told me so many years ago: you will find, dear child, that faith and courage and loyalty serve better to ward off evil than lifeless, glassy objects ever can.

  As far as I could tell, the rest of the journal was an account of his years here in America. The section that remained to intrigue me was the so-called smuggling of Roxelana from the harem on the Bosphorus to the estate high above the Hudson.

  On impulse I closed the book, took it with me up to my room, and packed it in my bag. I would save it for tomorrow night at Hawkscliffe. Perhaps when my work was completed there I could throw Cora’s malicious version of my uncle’s role in Roxelana’s saga back at her. He had suffered quite enough.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I found Harry Braunfels waiting for me at the Hendryk station. It was not a pleasant surprise.

  “Thorn told me you were coming. Told me not to keep you waiting,” he added.

  We eyed each other warily.

  “This all you got, then?” he sneered, as he carelessly slung my bag into the back of the dusty trap. I clutched my portfolio protectively, resisting similar treatment of the painstakingly transcribed pages within. “Not planning on doing much sashaying around in furbelows, I reckon.”

  When did I ever, I wondered as I eyed him coldly. “I’m here on business, Harry; I suggest you mind yours.”

  “Monkey business,” he muttered under his breath, and before I could remonstrate, he flicked the horse with his whip. “Giddap, Sassafras!”

  The nervy little chestnut mare leapt away from the platform at a pace too fast for comfort, and the pounding I took as we rattled up the long, winding road to Hawkscliffe ensured my silence. The sparkling blue of the morning was smudged now with the cloud scales of a mackerel sky, and the spanking breeze had become a steady, raw blow from the northeast.

  “You look a mite windblown, missy,” Harry pronounced with satisfaction as he pulled the horse to a haunch-buckling halt under the porte cochere.

  Mary Rose, who must have been watching for us, ran out to meet me. “Ooh, Miss Kate,” she said, as I all but tumbled off the seat. Planting the heels of her hands on her hips, she turned to Harry indignantly. “I saw you whipping up over the rise like a whirlwind! What could you be thinking of? You’re such a roughneck, Harry!”

  “Not always, Mary Rose.”

  Harry’s voice was suddenly so softly compliant I stopped fussing with my bonnet, which had jiggled all askew, and regarded him in amazement. He looked almost human.

  “Oh, Harry, go on with you!”

  And Mary Rose was blushing. What on earth! Was this an example of Harry’s way with the ladies that Thorn had mentioned? I had found it impossible to believe then; I still found it hard, but seeing is believing.

  “Tell me. Harry,” I said on impulse, “have you ever been in the Hoffman House bar, in New York?”

  His eyes shifted. “In New York? Not likely, missy. I can get me a tumbler of whiskey closer than that.”

  As a denial it wasn’t very convincing, but I allowed Mary Rose to shepherd me inside.

  “I’ll take your bag upstairs, miss. Agnes has a kettle boiling on the stove and a tray all set and waiting. You look as if you could use a nice cup of tea about now.”

  “I can indeed,” I replied gratefully.

  Mary Rose lifted her black cambric skirt to mount the stairs, then turned back. “Miss Kate? What was that about a bar in New York? You know, with Harry just now?”

  “Oh, someone thought he might have seen him there, but that was years ago. It’s nothing, Mary Rose. I don’t know why I asked.”

  And I didn’t. There must have been many coarse-looking, heavyset men in the Hoffman House over the years. No reason to think it had been Harry who Duncan Meriwether had seen brawling with Roxelana that night. The only thing certain was that Thorn had been there, and that he’d left with his uncle’s mistress at two in the morning.

  Reassured, Mary Rose smiled and mounted the stairs.

  “Am I to be in the suite, Mary Rose?” I called after her.

  “Oh, yes, miss. Mr. Thornton said you was.”

  Somehow, the way she put it hinted at disagreement—with Cora, probably. Now that there was no longer any purpose served in my being there, I suspect she would have liked to put me back in my former room, in my place, as it were.

  Where was Cora? I wondered as I looked about me. I shivered. The house seemed dark and cold and unwelcoming. No lights had been lit yet, though the afternoon was half over. Oh, well, Agnes’s teakettle was waiting for me in the kitchen….

  I was halfway down the dim hall when a figure glided out of the library. It stopped soundlessly a few feet in front of me, its dusky, indistinct clothing seemingly fashioned of shadows, like an apparition. My indrawn breath became a quavering gasp of alarm.

  “Good heavens, Miss Mackenzie!” the ghost cried. It was Cora.

  I exhaled slowly and smiled weakly. “Miss Banks, forgive me. I wasn’t expecting you—”

  “You weren’t? How odd. I thought that was one of the purposes of your visit.”

  “Of course I was expecting to meet with you, but not so unexpectedly. The hall is so dark, you see.”

  “Yes, to be sure,” she said as she reached up to set a globe in the hallway alight. “I forget you are not as familiar with Hawkscliffe as you would like to be. Also, I’m sure you have more important things on your mind than meeting with me. I have laid a fire in the library; I shall wait my turn for you there.”

  I clutched nervously at my skirt as she scuttled from side to side along the wide corridor lighting lights, all the while spewing forth her genteel hostility, telling me, for example, that it was wasteful to heat the entire house when no one was in residence. No one that mattered, was the implication. She reminded me of a little spider, a venomous little brown recluse.

  My spiteful thoughts made me feel better. “I was just going to the kitchen for a cup of tea, Miss Banks. May I bring you one?”

  I expected her refusal, so I just nodded, and as I resumed my walk to the kitchen, I wondered about the change in Cora. She had never liked me; I knew she distrusted me. But it had always been expressed in a prickly, taut, high-pitched sort of way. Now she seemed to relish it more, to savor her meanness, as Louise had. It seemed ... oh, it was silly of me, I know, but it almost seemed as if Louise’s malicious spirit had found a new—not home, home was too cozy a concept—a new place of residence. Just pushed Cora to one side and set up housekeeping. I could almost see those dark blue eyes peering out through the shutters of Cora’s wren-like brown ones.

  Self-confidence, that’s what it was, I suddenly realized. I stopped short in front of the kitchen door. Somewhere, somehow, Cora had acquired the confidence that comes only with security.

  Had she contrived that sense of safety? It wasn’t hard to imagine her planning to lure Louise Ramsay to that foggy, fatal hilltop; it was harder to see Louise following docilely in her footsteps.

  Misadventure.

  Once more I pondered the notion, twisting it, stretching it, leavi
ng no angle unexamined. It was, of course, possible, and much, much less unnerving to contemplate than the alternative.

  Even so, my puzzlement remained unresolved: If Cora hoped to stay at Hawkscliffe and secure it as a haven for her seriously ailing nephew, she still had another obstacle to contend with, unless Lance had dropped his claim to the estate. Had he? Had he and Philo and Cora come to some sort of accommodation? Or was Cora’s new confidence based on nothing to do with Hawkscliffe at all, something I knew nothing about?

  It is none of your concern, Kate, I reminded myself, and pushed open the kitchen door.

  Agnes shooed me out and up to my room to freshen up. Mary Rose would take my tray to the library in fifteen minutes. When I protested that Cora was waiting impatiently for me. Agnes sniffed. “She’s not the guest, miss,” she said, shrewdly assessing my anxious expression, “you are.”

  The cook’s down-to-earth sense of place emboldened me to mount the stairs with a sure step and to use with a clear conscience the time she had allowed me to repair the damage done by Harry’s hell-for-leather delivery. Not that Cora Banks cared how I looked, but I could do without her tight-lipped appraisal. Also, I must confess it, I was looking forward to sampling again the suite’s rose-and-musk-scented ambience, to see if it was as sybaritic as I remembered.

  It was, down to the last luxurious detail, except that the air lacked sufficient warmth to coax forth more than a hint of potpourri’s fragrance.

  * * * *

  “Will they do, Miss Mackenzie? I know it’s hard to judge color in this light; if only you had been able to come earlier….”

  Cora had spread her watercolors out on the library table. She was right; the light was both distorting and inadequate. I faulted myself for not taking that into consideration, and admitted as much.

  “The execution is quite wonderful!” And it was. Not as good as she had been at her best, but for this purpose, accuracy of detail was more important than the finish. “And look! You were able to do eight! We were expecting only five more. Philo will be so pleased.”