Cora’s grateful, proud smile transformed her. She might not like me, but she was able to separate her personal feelings from a professional undertaking like this. It was not easy to do, and in my experience, harder for women than for men. Had I judged her too harshly?
“I soaked my hands in hot water,” she said, “ten minutes at a time. It helped.”
But only temporarily; her knobbed fingers, as she shuffled through the drawings, reminded me of scuttling crabs.
We chatted a little longer, and I promised to review her portfolio in the morning light--although I had no doubt it would pass muster-- and then I made my excuses.
“I must make a final round of every room in the house to be sure I haven’t overlooked anything, as well as write the captions for your pictures. Since there are more than expected, it will take me longer to do than I had planned.”
She stiffened. “I’m sorry if I’ve made your task more difficult. I only—”
“No, no, no! I merely wished to explain why I cannot continue our conversation. As for your sketches, the more than merrier.”
The minute the words were out of my mouth, I feared she might interpret them as a veiled rebuke for having completed only eight. To my relief, she chose to take them in the spirit intended.
“Perhaps, then, you would prefer to have a supper tray in your room?”
The thought of being relieved of making small talk with Cora throughout an entire meal made me giddy with relief. “How very considerate of you, Miss Banks. May I instead stay here in the library? It is warmer here; the light is better, and the seating more conducive to concentration.
“I will see to it. Will six o’clock suit you?”
I smiled and nodded, then a thought struck me. “Do you happen to know what time the Ramsays plan to arrive in Hendryk tomorrow?”
“On the noon train.”
“There is a train leaving for New York at half past twelve--do you think I might ride down with Harry?”
She looked puzzled. “You do not plan to stay?”
“I think not. All I need to do is give the completed portfolio to Philo. I can do that as easily on the station platform as here.” It would be hard enough seeing Thorn at all; no point in prolonging the ordeal.
Miss Banks’ eyes gleamed with delight. She would be rid of me even sooner than she had dared hope.
“We will see that you make your train,” she said, her fervent tone implying she would carry me down herself piggy-back if need be. “Goodnight, Miss Mackenzie.”
The lilt in her voice was almost enough to make me change my plans. But, unsettling as it is to know that one’s farewell will earn another’s hallelujah, I also knew that staying on would bring me nothing but heartache.
The captions flowed effortlessly from my pen—I had, after all, already done the research—and by eight o’clock, despite time out to enjoy the savory beef pot pie Mary Rose brought me, I had copied them neatly on separate sheets of paper and clipped them to the margins of Cora’s watercolors.
The survey of the house would take at least another hour, and yet I kept finding little things to do to postpone my penetration of the soundless shadows: retying the portfolio closure; burnishing the point of the pen I had already cleaned; returning my tray to the kitchen. Even the kitchen was deserted, Mary Rose and Agnes having retired to their quarters.
Except for the wide corridor Cora had lighted earlier, the big house lay in darkness. The lamp I had brought with me from the library flickered in the drafts created by my opening and closing of doors. The dining room was cold and dank and smelled of damp ashes. The only carpet in the room, the Heriz under the table, bore no evidence of the water spilled upon it during that dreadful dinner my first night in this house. The incident could be traced now only in memory, and probably only in mine.
I retreated to the studio. The colors of the small, finely woven South Caucasians leapt into glowing life as I paused at each one, lamp in hand. As I turned to leave, the arc of light swept across the huge landscape on the easel.
I recalled standing on this same spot, exchanging words of praise with Philo for Charles Quintus Ramsay’s masterful rendering of the view from Hawkscliffe’s highest point. At the time it seemed to me the ultimate proof of C.Q.’s conviction that the contemplation of God in nature was the proper function of the artist. All I could see when I looked at it now was death.
I returned to the corridor. Its arched alcoves, providing quiet nooks for reading or private conversations, held no surprises, nor did I find any rugs lurking unsuspected under the fern fronds in the conservatory.
Oh, Lance, I thought despairingly as I recalled his only lighthearted words to me during his strained visit in New York. Who could have turned you against me? If he were with me now—the old Lance, not the new stranger—his merry laugh would have chased away the gloom, and we might have played hide-and-seek among the shadows.
The great clock struck nine, robbed of its resonance by the lengths of heavy, dark red draperies drawn across windows and French doors against the approaching winter’s cold. I made a brief foray into the sitting room—there was a backgammon game, half-played, upon the table there—and took a turn through the rococo chinoiserie of the east parlor before turning back into the court hall.
The kilims behind the bronze peacocks had long since been measured and noted, as had the bags and trappings crowding the large space beyond. Their dark shapes, draped as they were on racks and small tables, seemed like slumbering animals. I half expected to see half-slitted golden eyes contemplating me hungrily from here and there among the furry piles. I would expect no protection from the blue-and-white-eyed amulets staring glassily from around the necks of the stone Hittite lions. They had failed Roxelana and Louise; why should I expect any more benevolent treatment?
I had overlooked nothing. All rooms, all corridors, all nooks and crannies were accounted for. I closed my notebook and started up the stairs, past the crossed lances and brassy shields, past the unsettling portrait that this time, thanks to my resolute shading of the lamp in my hand, remained masked in shadow.
As I gained the second floor landing, I paused, then looked back downstairs over my shoulder, not knowing quite why I did so. Nothing had changed as far as I could tell—nothing material, that is. Nothing lay in wait but an abandoned game of backgammon. Yet everything as I remembered it had subtly altered, become alien in the way familiar scenes do in dreams. I never much cared for the place, Duncan Meriwether had said; I, on the other hand, had, but now I sensed a similar sense of—what was it, unease? Distaste? Because of all that happened during my previous stay? Or had I, myself, changed during the two weeks between my visits?
Had it really been only two weeks? It seemed a lifetime….
I glanced involuntarily toward the suite at the other end of the hall. Thorn’s suite. I walked slowly down the hall, lamp held high, and knocked—a formality—at the closed door. The bronze doorknob looked almost too large for my small palm to encompass, but it turned smoothly, disengaging the latch with a soft click. I entered.
The room was as I remembered it, although at night the somber effect of walls and windows covered alike in dark red brocade approached the funereal. I found the empty stillness unbearably depressing. As I turned to leave, silver-backed brushes winked at me from the top of the bureau. Were they Thorn’s? I crossed the room, picked one up, and plucked a few dark, springy hairs from the coarse bristles. They felt alive in my hand, welcome symbols of vitality in this cold tomb of a house. There was a handkerchief next to the brush, slightly dusty, seemingly forgotten. Without conscious thought, I wrapped the hairs in the white linen and thrust it into my pocket.
What do you intend to do with your prize? I asked myself mockingly. Squirrel it away in your box of amulets with other forbidden treasures? Heat rose in my cheeks. I pulled the handkerchief out again, scattering its contents. Keepsakes are for silly schoolgirls. I smoothed out the wrinkles and placed the refolded white square back on the bure
au.
I turned again, and as I passed the magnificent rosewood sleigh bed, worthy of a Napoleon, I couldn’t resist tracing the smooth, glowing cyma curve of the footboard with my forefinger. What rousing rides Charles Quintus must have enjoyed here with Roxelana! I pictured Thorn’s lean muscularity against the creamy linen sheets, and then, next to his darkness, my pale red hair, pale body….
I hurried out and closed the door firmly behind me. Silly, foolish schoolgirl!
It was eleven o’clock before I settled into bed with the third of Uncle Vartan’s journals. I had finished it by midnight, but as I heard the last of the twelve deep notes striking faintly from below, I knew that despite my fatigue I would not sleep that night.
His last journal, which recounted the events of Uncle Vartan’s life after he came to America, was written in English, signaling, perhaps, a break with his painful past. Business success had not been long in coming, for although his sponsor, Charles Quintus Ramsay, always expected first choice--at a preferential price--of the rugs my uncle acquired, he introduced him to his free-spending friends and clients.
Many words were devoted to my uncle’s impression of Charles Quintus Ramsay, a man whose company he enjoyed but about whom he had few illusions: he was vain, selfish, and self-indulgent, and Uncle Vartan deplored his taste for very young women hardly more than girls.
He wrote about Louise and Cora, whose dislike for him he reciprocated. Louise, he wrote, was overbearing; Cora made no effort to hide her low opinion of rug dealers. Thorn Ramsay was, to my surprise, his favorite among the young people he met at Hawkscliffe. Not as respectful of his elders as he might be, he wrote of him, which did not surprise me, but “a young man whose handshake I trust.” He continued to grieve for Vosky, but he never mentioned Araxie.
As drowsiness weighted my eyelids, I scanned the pages more and more rapidly, seeking the account of C.Q.’s journey to Turkey and his return with Roxelana, hoping to exonerate my uncle of complicity in the incident, or at least of the penny-dreadful intrigue of which Cora had accused him. At last I found it.
Leaving Charles Quintus on his own in Constantinople, Uncle Vartan had traveled with some misgivings to the East to look at rugs Yervant had assembled since his last visit. When he returned, he found his worst fears had been realized. The aging artist, whose waning popularity had rendered him vulnerable for the first time in his life, announced he had met the most exciting girl in the world at a reception for foreign notables at the Dolmabahce Palace.
She was a true Ottoman beauty, he had boasted; aristocratic in speech and manner, but endowed by Allah with the milk-white skin and dark, velvety, insinuating eyes of an odalisque. Uncle Vartan’s suggestion that she might in fact be just that was dismissed out of hand.
Charles Quintus was convinced she was the princess she claimed to be, her hand promised in marriage to a man she had never seen but known to be old, dissolute, and diseased. The Sultana Mother had urged the union for political purposes; the girl feared for her life if she resisted. The infatuated artist, in thrall to the romanticism of moonlight rendezvous at the-palace gardens—he on one side of the elaborate fence, she on the other—had promised to save her. “I must, Vartan! And you must help me find a way.”
Uncle Vartan was appalled. His friend had taken leave of his senses. An attempt to abduct a woman from the imperial palace would be considered an offense against the sultan himself, and punishable by death.
It was no use. By then the sweet thrill of soft fingers curled around his on gilded bars had been succeeded by earthier pleasures indulged in a ride stolen with his ladylove along the Bosphorus. Charles Quintus remained adamant.
I placed my finger in the journal to mark the pages and leaned back with a sigh against the pillows. Whatever the actual course of their conversations, C.Q.’s bullying tactics finally wore Uncle Vartan down. He agreed to meet with the aging lover’s incomparable Roxelana.
It was a clever ruse: as Roxelana’s carriage wound its way up to the Yildiz Palace gardens, the veiled occupant, attracted by a beautiful rug slung across a ragged old man’s bent shoulders, commanded her driver to stop. She pulled aside the curtain to inspect the rug and exchanged whispered words that had nothing to do with the price of carpets.
Except for one unforeseen detail, all went exactly as had been planned. When my uncle returned from the meeting and informed Charles Quintus that the abduction, though hazardous, was feasible, the aged Lothario was too overjoyed to notice his accomplice’s grim expression and unusual pallor.
Grim? Pale? He must have been, for when I determined to confirm for myself what had shattered his peace of mind on that long-ago afternoon, those were the words that best described my own reflection in the pier mirror as I reached down to the foot of the bed for my challis robe.
The fire had burned to a listless glow, and my unprotected toes—I had forgotten to bring slippers— seemed to shrivel in against the cold, which became more pronounced as I moved into the hall. The lamp’s warm glow of light was an illusion my light wrap, clutched close, failed to sustain.
The big house, quiet earlier, creaked and groaned as its wooden skeleton adjusted uneasily to the frosty blanket of winter enfolding Hawkscliffe’s ramparts and binding with icy lace the edges of the dark waters gliding far below. The wide stair rail slid greasily under my nervous palm as I edged slowly down the carpeted steps. The springy wool prickled the soles of my bare feet like a scurry of insects frantically escaping my nocturnal prowling. I pulled my feet high, first one, then the other, from their imagined shattered antennae and splintered chitinous casings. Shuddering, I hurried down to the landing.
I paused to catch my breath, then turned the wick up, spreading light where I had avoided casing it earlier, when I ascended. As if beckoned by its searching, flickering fingers, C.Q.’s portrait of his last mistress glided out of the shadows. The uneven ridges of paint, caught in the lamplight’s net, sped dancing rivulets of illumination into the huge dark eyes, curving along the full red mouth and glinting across the ancient runes inscribed upon the huge golden disk adorning the plump, milk-white hand resting on her breast.
I swallowed hard. I tried to deny it, but I knew my uncle had written the truth; he was too honest with himself to do otherwise. The unforeseen detail that had broken my uncle’s heart for a second time and crumbled his defenses was the sight of this gold ring glittering on the finger that had pulled aside the curtain of a carriage paused below the gates of the Yildiz Palace.
This was the bauble exchanged for a lifetime’s gifts of silver trinkets. It was this Ottoman ring for which the tokens of parental love had been scorned, not the crystal amulet lost beneath a dying mother’s bed. This was the magic talisman so prized, and this woman known as Roxelana was his daughter, Araxie Avakian.
CHAPTER TWENTY
My hunch that Cora would be no more anxious than I for our paths to cross the following morning proved to be blessedly accurate. I had enough on my mind without coming face-to-face with the person whose dark suspicions about the part my uncle had played in Roxelana’s abduction had proved, to my deep distress, to be more right than wrong.
According to my uncle’s journal, it was true that Roxelana’s life had been threatened. Not, however, by the Sultana Mother, as she had claimed, but by Abdul Aziz’s wife, who was murderously jealous of the calculating concubine who had caught the sultan’s jaded eye. Roxelana had shrewdly guessed that if the aging wife were to be made aware of the planned abduction of her young rival, she would do nothing to thwart the scheme. A whisper here and there was all it took to ensure a diversion of the guards’ attention on the appointed night.
Heady with success, it never occurred to Charles Quintus that his daring rescue was, in fact, a deliverance. It was an irony Uncle Vartan kept to himself. The girl was his daughter; he owed it to her mother, his darling Vosky, to ensure her protection. He knew C.Q. would reject his high born Turkish beauty if he thought he had been deceived.
His daughter.
As I walked down the hall to the dining room, my mind still balked at the thought of Araxie and Roxelana being one and the same—his daughter, my cousin. I wasn’t sure I cared for that. I cared even less for the sudden realization that, by virtue of Uncle Vartan’s adoption of me, she was also my sister.
I paused in the doorway. My sister? Feeling suddenly faint, I moved falteringly toward the sideboard and gripped the edge of it with trembling fingers.
“Miss Kate!” It was Mary Rose, bringing in a pot of tea. She deposited her burden on the damask-covered table, heedless of the hot amber liquid sloshing from the spout, and hurried to my side. She pulled out a chair and assisted me into it.
The fragrant steam rising from the cup of tea she forced into my fingers revived me. I sipped gratefully. “Mary Rose to the rescue again,” I said.
My smile seemed to reassure her; she filled a plate with eggs, bacon, and toast for me before returning to the kitchen. Alone once more and fortified by the hot, nourishing fare, I grappled with the revelation that had dizzied me: I had learned the previous night that Uncle Vartan had disinherited Araxie in my favor when she disappeared from Hawkscliffe. He wanted no chance of her arriving after his death on my doorstep to snatch the fruits of her father’s and my labors. That was also why he had adopted me; he wanted my inheritance to be doubly secure. What he had not known was that Araxie, as Roxelana, was the sole heir to Hawkscliffe.
Once more I examined my reasoning. It was simple and irrefutable: if Araxie was my uncle’s daughter, and if I was Uncle Vartan’s daughter by legal adoption, then I was not only Araxie’s cousin by blood, but her sister, her closest living relative and her legal heir.
I had no birth certificate to substantiate my uncle’s blood relationship to Araxie, but I did have a significant exchange of letters between father and daughter after she was established at Hawkscliffe. Such sad, dreadful letters! I had found them clipped inside the back cover of Uncle Vartan’s journal, mute evidence that,he had anticipated a possible future need for them.
The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe Page 20