Falcon's Keep

by Henrietta Reid

  ‘And when will you let me know your decision?’ he asked, reverting to his usual formal manner.

  ‘Would tomorrow afternoon do?’ Ginny asked diffidently.

  ‘Why, yes, certainly,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll expect you to call on me tomorrow afternoon with your decision. You can ring my secretary if I’m not here.’

  As she walked down the steps of Ruttledge & Sons Ginny tried to control the feeling of sinking depression that seemed to clutch at her very being and she realized to her dismay that she had been counting too much on this interview with Mr. Ruttledge. What had she really hoped for from this conversation? she wondered. The beginning of a new and fascinating life, set in gracious and beautiful surroundings! The solicitor’s almost clinically ruthless outlining of the situation had disposed of these nebulous dreams, and after drinking a swift cup of coffee at a local cafe she headed back towards Clarkson’s.

  As she approached the grey building she felt her depression grow even more pronounced. Strange how she had not noticed how shabby and dismal the tall narrow building was! And now that the autumnal fog hung lightly over its scarred walls she could see the blurry outline of the dining-room as the weak bulbs were switched on under the dingy shades. Soon the evening meal would be served at Clarkson’s in that shabby room with its worn carpet and faint smell of cabbage.

  She dreaded too the interrogation she knew she would be faced with by the guests. She felt she couldn’t endure even the well-meant curiosity of Professor Norris and Miss Conway, and she almost winced as she realized that Mrs. Morley would take full advantage of her disappointment and point out how she had anticipated the outcome of the interview.

  She was met at the door by Mrs. Clarkson, who wiped her hands in her apron a little nervously and, after one glance at Ginny’s drawn pale face, said quickly, ‘Don’t worry about supper, dear, I’ll fix it. Run up to your room and have a little rest.’

  Grateful for the reprieve, Ginny slipped past the open sitting-room door. Inside, she could see the guests assembling for their evening meal. The scene, so similar to those she had witnessed for the past few years, added to her depression and once she had gained the sanctuary of her little room she flung herself on the bed and gazed at the scaling ceiling in dry-eyed misery. Life seemed to stretch ahead, interminable and grey. She had always been so certain that the future held something good and exciting that now that the bubble had been exploded she was like a child who had burned its fingers. Never again would she face the future so joyously and hopefully. A horrible realization smote her that perhaps the years ahead held nothing more romantic than a marriage with someone like Lester Philips - Lester Philips, who was so worthy and yet so dull. The very thought made her burst into tears, and turning her face to the pillow she gave herself up to sobs. She didn’t hear the light tap at the door and the quiet entry of Miss Conway, who gazed down at her compassionately for a few moments before shaking her lightly by the shoulder.

  Sniffing, Ginny sat up and surveyed her with red eyes. ‘Please, Miss Conway,’ she said, ‘don’t ask me about it tonight.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ Miss Conway, with rare determination, pulled up a chair and sat down, ‘for it’s perfectly obvious to me what happened. Something went wrong - badly wrong.’

  Ginny nodded. She dabbed at her eyes with a damp handkerchief, then poured out her story while Miss Conway sat in companionable silence, nodding occasionally in a very wise manner. ‘So you see,’ Ginny ended, ‘it’s completely impossible for me to go. I told Mr. Ruttledge I’d discuss it, but actually there’s nothing to discuss. I realize that.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Miss Conway said crisply. ‘You’re talking rubbish. ’

  Ginny looked at her in a startled manner. It was so unlike Miss Conway to express a firm opinion about anything that she was completely amazed. ‘But don’t you see,’ she said, ‘it would be impossible for me to put myself in the position of an - an - adventuress, as Mr. Ruttledge said.’

  Miss Conway gave a short, acid and uncharacteristic laugh. ‘Adventuress - nonsense! Do you look like an adventuress?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Ginny admitted slowly, ‘I suppose I don’t. Adventuresses are usually beautiful and fascinating.’

  ‘Apart from that,’ Miss Conway said impatiently, ‘you’re so transparently honest — and anyway, if old Mr. Kendrick wants to meet you I can’t see why this Ruttledge-man objects. After all it’s none of his business.’

  Ginny turned this over in her mind.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Miss Conway went on, ‘that this solicitor is taking altogether too much on himself. He obviously objects to the old man’s unorthodox behaviour and although he was forced to put the advertisement in he is deliberately discouraging anyone from carrying out his client’s wishes.’

  Ginny gazed at Miss Conway in open-mouthed wonder. It was true, she thought, reviewing the conversation. Mr. Ruttledge had picked on the things that he knew would repel her from visiting Falcon’s Keep. Evidently Mrs. Clifford and her daughter had resisted his off-putting manner while she, on the contrary, had felt humiliated and affronted at the suggestion that she would deliberately sponge on an old man’s weakness.

  As she turned things over in her mind Miss Conway said suddenly, ‘You haven’t accepted Lester Philips’s offer, have

  you?’

  Miss Conway was indeed proving a startling person tonight, Ginny thought. ‘But how did you guess?’ she gasped.

  Miss Conway smiled smugly. ‘I’ve ways and means of telling,’ she said ambiguously. ‘Oh, I know Mrs. Morley takes me for a fool, but I’m not quite as simple as she thinks. It has been fairly obvious to me that Lester Philips has had the words trembling on his lips for the past few weeks. I was just wondering when he’d come up to scratch.’

  ‘Well, he did this morning,’ Ginny said weakly. ‘In the kitchen, actually, while I was stirring the porridge!’

  Miss Conway snorted. ‘Just like him! The man has no imagination, no finesse, and naturally you refused. ’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ginny said bleakly.

  ‘Quite right,’ Miss Conway said crisply. ‘The man is a most frightful bore and you wouldn’t be happy with him. I could tell that right away. At the same time,’ she added cautiously, ‘he would have been a sort of - security, as it were.’

  ‘But I don’t want security when it comes from a person like Lester Philips!’ Ginny wailed suddenly, as the full realization

  of her misery swept over her again.

  Miss Conway dealt with the situation promptly. She stood up in a resolved manner. ‘I’m going down to the kitchen now and I’ll ask Mrs. Clarkson to make some cocoa. When I bring it up we’ll sit here and thresh the matter out. I think you’ll realize when we talk things over, Ginny, that you’d be very foolish not to grasp this opportunity. After all, if you don’t like the Kendricks you can always leave.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ Ginny said a little wonderingly. When Miss Conway had left the room in search of cocoa she lay back on the pillow. Worn out by her adventures she drifted into sleep full of vague half-nightmarish spectres. She dreamed of a man called Luke Kendrick, who in the guise of a great taloned falcon repelled her entrance at wide silver gates that led to an enchanted palace standing high in the hills, its spiralling turrets tipped with pearly translucence.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With a little gasp of dismay Ginny saw the train begin to pull out. Clutching her hat with one hand and her case with the other, she raced along the platform. If only Professor Norris hadn’t insisted on giving a speech at the end of the little celebration they had held at Clarkson’s for her departure! Eloquent after a few glasses of sherry, he had droned on and on, while Ginny, her heart in her mouth, had glanced at the clock helplessly.

  Panting, she raced along as the train gathered speed. Then suddenly one of the doors opened, two hands were outstretched to her and with a gasp of relief she flung her case in and felt herself being hauled through the open door pursued by an indignant porter. ‘Well,’ an
amused voice said, ‘is this how you usually catch trains?’

  Ginny found that her rescuer was a tall young man who was standing in the corridor. He had a handsome, rakish face, the type of appearance that Miss Conway would have described as ‘experienced’, and Ginny now that she had got her breath back felt embarrassed as she found herself on the floor with her hat and the contents of her case strewn along the corridor.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ he said and, to her mortification, he began to pile into her small case the garments that Miss Conway had decided were essential for her journey.

  It was Miss Conway too who had chosen her outfit, which she realized was not at all becoming - but then Miss Conway had insisted on paying and Ginny had felt reluctant to express any criticism of the unfashionable tweed suit she had chosen. Hastily ramming in the last few articles, she snapped the lock and clapping her hat firmly on her head stood up and said with as much dignity as she could, ‘But for you, I’d have missed the train.’

  He bowed with mock courtesy and said, ‘Think nothing of it. I’m only too charmed to help a damsel in distress. But you sound as if the missing of the train would have been of national importance.’

  ‘It would have been important - to me,’ she admitted, and then, owing to her excitement and the strain of nearly missing the train, added, ‘You see I’ve never done much travelling before, and it would be dreadful if they thought I wasn’t turning up.’

  He looked at her in a puzzled way and then said quietly, ‘This sounds interesting. What about us retiring to a carriage and talking it over?’

  She hesitated, doubtful about her discretion in confiding so ingenuously in this stranger.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he smiled, his dark eyes glittering with amusement. ‘I’m quite harmless, I assure you. It’s simply that I take a great interest in my fellow human beings and I feel certain I’m sure to be engrossed by whatever you’re to tell me.’

  Doubtfully Ginny preceded him into the carriage and when he had placed her case on the rack and had ensconced her in a corner he took a seat across from her and for the first time she was able to study the tall young man in detail. There was a careless ease about his clothes and he was undoubtedly what Miss Conway would have described reprovingly as a Bohemian, yet there was great charm in the dark rakish face with the bright interested eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘and what’s your conclusion?’

  Ginny started a little, not realizing that her scrutiny had been so obvious.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘you’ve been studying me in the most embarrassing manner with those pansy brown eyes of yours? No, they’re not really pansy,’ he said, turning his head to one side and considering her thoughtfully. ‘They’re more like wallflowers, the velvety dark brownish ones - you know the kind. ’

  Ginny laughed and immediately felt more at ease. ‘It’s just,’ she admitted, ‘that you’re not at all like any of the young men I’ve met so far. You see, at Clarkson’s Private Hotel I didn’t get much opportunity of meeting people - except of course the guests, and they were all rather old - with the exception of Mr. Philips, I mean,’ she said hastily, and then blushed as she remembered his proposal.

  The quick eyes opposite didn’t miss it. ‘Ah, I think I detect some horrid secrets in your past life,’ he said. ‘And who is this Mr. Philips - someone fascinating out of your past?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t exactly fascinating,’ Ginny admitted, ‘but he was kind. But for him, in a way, I suppose, I shouldn’t be going to Falcon’s Keep now.’

  He gave a slight start that was unnoticed by Ginny whose eyes had wandered to the passing landscape. His face lost its look of amusement as he studied her gravely. ‘And just what connection had Mr. Philips with Falcon’s Keep?’ he asked.

  ‘None really, she confessed, ‘except that if I had accepted him I shouldn’t be going there now. ’

  Seeing the bewilderment in his face, she realized she was getting into deeper waters than she had bargained for, but before she knew where she was she had explained all the ramifications surrounding her venture into a new way of life, even to her interview with Mr. Ruttledge.

  ‘Yes, I know him,’ the young man said thoughtfully. ‘A pompous ass.’

  Ginny gasped.

  He laughed and when she had shaken her head to his proffered cigarette case, lit up. ‘It just so happens that I too am on my way to Falcon's Keep. You see, I’m Richard Kendrick, known as Rikki. No doubt,’ he added dryly, ‘James Ruttledge told you all about me.’

  Ginny’s innate honesty came to the fore. ‘Well, not exactly,’ she said, ‘but he gave the impression that he didn’t approve. ’

  ‘He certainly doesn't,’ the young man said bitterly, ‘but then there are very few people old Ruttledge approves of. ’ He blew a thin stream of cigarette smoke towards the window and then added stiffly, ‘With the exception of Luke, perhaps, but then Luke is the type of person who would appeal to him. ’ There was something so brooding and withdrawn about him when he mentioned his brother’s name that Ginny forbore to question him.

  Then, discarding his mood of bitterness, he turned to her and said, ‘Well, for once, Grandfather’s latest hobby has paid dividends. It’s nice to know one’s even vaguely related to a girl with wallflower eyes. After all, you might have been a formidable old dowager - although why anyone should venture down to Falcon’s Keep is beyond me. I mean, it’s not the sort of place one would go for a jolly holiday, as it were. However, it will be pleasant to have a female around the place for a change. I don’t know if he told you or not,’ he said, ‘but our domestic arrangements are a bit slapdash. Mrs. Hingston is housekeeper and a bit of a Spartan. She runs things pretty much as she likes. You’ll have to be prepared for pipes that gurgle and colossal baths that were modem about fifty years ago.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. She felt a little sense of disappointment. Somehow she had visualized Falcon’s Keep as stately and ordered with formal gardens and gracious lawns. It sounded dreary and depressing. She glanced through the window, realizing with a growing sense of panic that the country was flitting past at a fantastic pace and that every mile was separating her ever more irrevocably from her old life.

  He studied her quizzically. ‘My grandfather is a man of sudden enthusiasms. Evidently he sees himself as a sort of patriarchal figure, the head of the Kendrick clan as it were, and the idea is to cultivate the various branches and sprigs of the family. I expect he sees himself as a benign host presiding at future Christmas dinners, surrounded by the happy smiling faces of innumerable Kendricks. As it is, only a Mrs. Clifford and her daughter Anthea have accepted. Poor old Grandfather is rather disappointed by the lack of response, but then you can hardly expect people to rush down to a remote part of the country just because he happens to be riding a hobby-horse.’

  Through the window the mist-laden countryside looked bleak and deserted, with dark copses and tall stands of trees that looked spectral against the evening sky. A growing sense of anxiety possessed her. Had she made a terrible mistake in allowing herself to be persuaded by Miss Conway? After all, what did she know about this strange family? She glanced almost apprehensively across at her companion, then to her relief found that he had nodded off. Now that those bright experienced eyes were no longer fixed on her, she began to relax. The carriage was warm and gradually the soft swaying motion made her eyelids droop.

  She had no idea how long she slept, but she was awakened suddenly by Rikki Kendrick vigorously shaking her shoulder. ‘Wake up, me beauty,’ he called cheerfully. ‘We’re just running into Kendrick station. It’s time to powder your nose.’

  She opened her eyes wide and for a moment regarded him without recognition. Her eyes, he decided, were more than ever like velvety wallflowers, warm and cinnamon brown, as for a moment she regarded him with the placid ingenuousness of a newly awakened child. Then, as suddenly memory flooded back, apprehensively she stared at him, then glanced about as the train slowed and stopped with
a jerk.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ he said quizzically, ‘why the look of alarm? What ideas are swinging around under that extraordinary hat of yours?’

  Ginny straightened her hat which she could see in the reflection of the window was rather askew. ‘I know it’s a frightful hat,’ she replied with dignity, ‘but I didn’t choose it. Miss Conway did, and now I’m sorry I ever took her advice about coming here,’ she added, her voice quavering dismally.

  He stared at her incredulously for a moment, then reached up and pulled down her case. ‘You are a little weirdie, aren’t you?’ he said half laughing, half exasperated. ‘Look, the train isn’t going to wait here for ever. You’ll have plenty of time to regret Miss Conway’s advice - whoever she is - when we get to Falcon’s Keep. Meanwhile I suggest we make a move.’

  Reluctantly Ginny allowed herself to be hustled across the platform. Outside the railing in the yard stood an elegant sports car, and when Ginny had taken her place in the low bucket seat and he had stowed away her case, he started with alarming suddenness and tore out of the station yard. From her seat Ginny caught sight of the countryside flying past. She glanced at his profile and was not reassured by the reckless set of his handsome face.

  ‘Why don’t you relax?’ he asked presently. ‘I can almost feel you shivering in your shoes.’

  ‘Well, you are driving rather fast,’ Ginny ventured.

  He laughed. ‘Were you not prepared for the wild Kendricks by the estimable Mr. Ruttledge? I hope you didn’t arrive looking

  for an ordinary conservative household, for you won’ t get it, my poor innocent. In fact I don’t give you more than a week at the outside.’

  Piqued, Ginny said, ‘You were the Kendrick Mr. Ruttledge

  seemed to disapprove of. ’

  ‘Oh, indeed?’ Her bluntness appeared to amuse him and he glanced at her swiftly before swinging the car into a side road. ‘Then let me inform you I’m a model of courtesy compared to my brother Luke.’

  On either side, hedges enclosed the narrow road, but Rikki didn’t slacken his speed perceptibly. Ginny closed her eyes as a farm cart loomed up at a narrow turning and with a scream of brakes Rikki slewed the car to one side, so that the branches of the hedges scraped against the windows. ‘Silly ass,’ he muttered. ‘That’s old Hobbs, a tenant of ours. He knows better than to be wandering about the countryside at this time of night. ’