Falcon's Keep Read online

  FALCON’S KEEP

  by

  HENRIETTA REID

  In his old age, the eccentric Nicholas Kendrick advertised for distant relatives with the intention of inviting them to spend prolonged periods at his home, Falcon's Keep.

  When Ginny answered the advertisement, the old family lawyer warned her about the old man's heir, Luke Kendrick— “At least as far as Luke is concerned, these guests are not entirely welcome.” But Ginny, who wanted desperately to get away from her work in a private hotel, decided to go.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘You will be careful and not spill soup over Mrs. Morley again, won’t you, Ginny?’

  Ginny, busy manipulating a laden tray through the kitchen door, nodded speechlessly, and Mrs. Clarkson sighed. It would be so dreadful if Mrs. Morley took lasting umbrage and decided to sever all connection with Clarkson’s Private Hotel, for although she was consistently trying Mrs. Morley paid handsomely for her large room on the first floor where she lived together with her extremely fat pug dog.

  Turning back to the table, Mrs. Clarkson began to arrange the dinner plates. Strange that a girl as small and dainty as Ginny Lovelace could be so awkward in her movements! Perhaps the reason was that she had not really been trained for domestic service - although no one could be more hardworking or obliging. But then, thought Mrs. Clarkson, as she dished up the mashed potatoes, Ginny had once been a paying guest, and but for the fact that the solicitor in charge of the modest sum left for her in trust by her parents had absconded, including it in his loot, she would by now have been a fully trained physiotherapist. She had, however, with remarkable adaptability, decided to stay on with Mrs. Clarkson, who was finding it difficult to get domestic servants. It wasn’t really the right sort of life for the girl, Mrs. Clarkson decided vaguely, but there, she was glad to have her and dreaded the day when

  Ginny might move on to better things. She felt faintly uneasy as she remembered how she had advised Ginny to reply to that extremely peculiar advertisement in the daily paper. Although she couldn’t actually recall the legal jargon, she remembered that the notice had asked anyone named Virginia Lovelace, claiming relationship to the Kendrick family of Falcon’s Keep, to get in touch with Messrs. Ruttledge & Sons, Solicitors. It hadn’t specifically stated that the caller would hear something to her advantage, but then Ginny was distantly related to the wealthy Kendrick family on her mother’s side - and one never knew! Mrs. Clarkson’s kind heart was torn between helping Ginny to better herself and the tragic realization that if anything came of this advertisement she would be left without one of the best domestics she had ever had.

  She looked up as Ginny re-entered the room. ‘Well,’ she inquired, ‘how did you get on this time?’

  Ginny grinned, her small elfin face bubbling with mirth. ‘Not one single spot. In fact I was the ideal waitress.’

  Mrs. Clarkson sighed. Ginny’s ebullient spirits could be trying at times. ‘You’ll really have to try and take Mrs. Morley more seriously. She’s one of my best P.G.s - and without her I’m afraid Clarkson’s Private Hotel would have to close its doors.’

  ‘I know,’ Ginny said repentantly, ‘and I’ll do my best with her, although she is a most unattractive sort of person. Now if she were only more like Professor Norris! He’s always so sweet and understanding when I’m in one of my particularly “sloppy” days.’

  ‘Really!’ Mrs. Clarkson snorted. ‘Professor Norris is as poor as a church mouse and one never knows when he’ll disappear on an expedition to one of them foreign countries, digging up things that are better left alone. If I was depending on him I’d be out of business long ago.’

  ‘All the same,’ Ginny said thoughtfully, licking a finger that had caught in a soup bowl, ‘why must people be so horrid?’

  ‘I notice you don’t find young Lester Philips horrid,’ Mrs. Clarkson said mischievously.

  Ginny blushed. ‘If only he didn’t glimmer at one through those dreadful glasses and be so deadly serious! ’

  ‘Really, Ginny, you are the most extraordinary person I’ve ever come across,’ Mrs. Clarkson said with the exasperation she always felt at the inexplicable. ‘Have you no ambition? You don’t want to stay at Clarkson’s as a sort of glorified domestic all your life, do you?’

  Ginny considered this. ‘I certainly shan’t marry anyone till I meet the right man,’ she said.

  ‘And what is your idea of the right man?’ Mrs. Clarkson asked, smiling.

  Ginny nibbled a morsel of angelica that had escaped Mrs. Clarkson’s eagle eye when she was making up the trifle glasses. Her eyes grew dreamy. ‘Oh, I’m afraid he’s rather a mixture.’

  ‘I imagine he is - if you thought him up,’ Mrs. Clarkson said with exasperated affection. ‘He’ll be a penniless poet and live in a tent, no doubt!’

  Ginny considered this carefully. ‘I don’t think I’ d like to marry a poet particularly. He’d probably spend his time composing and have no interest in anything else — although it would be rather fun to live in a tent. ’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Mrs. Clarkson snorted, creating a great rattling and banging about the stove as she did when Ginny was particularly exasperating, ‘but I’ll wager you’d not stand it for long. It’s all very well to have your head full of romantic nonsense, but when it comes down to brass tacks a woman needs a man who can make a decent home for her and not spend his time gallivanting over the countryside.’

  Ginny assembled the plates carefully and gingerly raised the laden tray. ‘Oh dear, sprouts again! Mrs. Morley says she’s had sprouts twice running.’

  ‘Well, she’s going to have them three times running, so there,’ Mrs. Clarkson said with rare asperity. ‘And I do wish,

  Ginny, you’d be more discreet when you’re talking to the P.G.s. It was a great mistake to tell Miss Conway about answering that advertisement. Oh, I know,’ she added hastily, as she saw Ginny’s brown eyes grow bright in defence, ‘that she’s an old dear and genuinely has your interests at heart, but she told Professor Norris and he told Mrs. Morley, and now she’s pestering me about the foolishness of encouraging you to get ideas of grandeur that will probably come to nothing.’ Ginny considered Mrs. Clarkson with an expression that always disconcerted her a little. It was a mixture of penetrating wisdom and sad comprehension. ‘You mean I’ve been indiscreet again?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not exactly indiscreet!’ Mrs. Clarkson considered, as usual helpless before Ginny’s direct approach, ‘but it’s true, you know. Nothing may come of it and all you’ll get is your hopes dashed. There are probably other Virginia Lovelaces in the world besides yourself.’

  ‘Probably,’ Ginny repeated, ‘but it is a coincidence, and in a very very far out sort of way I’m a Kendrick. It’s nice to dream, anyway. I promise if nothing comes of it I shan’t mope. Something nice will probably turn up instead.’

  Mrs. Clarkson sighed as Ginny, her thin hands clutching the tray, started precariously for the long climb up the basement stairs.

  When she reached the dining-room she found Mrs. Clarkson’s P.G.s in various stages of restlessness. Mrs. Morley, a large stout widow, who had gravitated to the head of the table by sheer force of personality, sat like an outraged Buddha and considered Ginny with a basilisk glare. Even Lancelot, her pug, stopped eating from his own special dish beneath the table and gazed at her with snub-nosed ferocity that seemed to mimic his mistress. Professor Norris glanced at his watch with elaborate concentration and Miss Conway, always sensitive to atmosphere, twittered in the background.

  Much to her relief Lester Philips was not present. It could be disconcerting when she entered the dining room with a laden tray to be the focus of his languishing glances through thick-lensed glasses. It made her feel all fingers and thumbs and
she was inclined to commit the solecisms which were the despair of Mrs. Clarkson.

  Mrs. Morley glanced accusingly at the tureen of sprouts as it was placed on the table. ‘Sprouts again, I see,’ she snapped, outraged. ‘Really, the woman appears to have no imagination! Couldn’t she vary the menu a little — I mean, after all, considering what we pay!’

  She was well aware that her fellow lodgers didn’t pay as much as she did herself. They had no private sitting-room and would certainly not have been allowed to keep a pet. It was a subtle reminder of her superior social status, and she glanced at Miss Conway and was pleased to see that she was looking uncomfortable. The professor, as usual, appeared to be unaware of what she was saying and was staring vaguely at a spot on the wallpaper.

  As she placed the sauce-boat on the table Ginny’s hand jerked, causing the thick brown sauce to splash dangerously close to Mrs. Morley’s spotted silk dress.

  ‘Really,’ commented Mrs. Morley, ‘you’ve always been an awkward, careless girl, but since this foolish business came up you’ve been quite impossible. I can’t understand Mrs. Clarkson being so foolish as to encourage you in this mad venture. Not, of course, that anything will come of it!’ she added.

  Miss Conway looked up, her thin face animated for once. ‘Oh, but you’re wrong there, Mrs. Morley,’ she said. ‘One should always be hopeful and look forward. The strangest things do happen in life. I mean, one never knows what’s ahead, does one? I often think life is rather like a surprise packet - or a lucky dip, for that matter,’ she added lamely, as she became the focus of Mrs. Morley’s contemptuous glance.

  ‘Huh,’ snapped Mrs. Morley, as though intimating that she knew perfectly well what was ahead for Miss Conway. ‘I certainly think it most unlikely that people like the Kendricks would wish to make the acquaintance of some vague offshoot of the family — unless,’ she added darkly, ‘it was to their own advantage.’

  ‘In what way?’ Miss Conway queried, all interest.

  Mrs. Morley shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps they imagine a poor relation would come in useful.’

  Miss Conway twittered placatingly at this tactless and blunt remark. She glanced quickly in Ginny’s direction.

  But Ginny was listening, her brown eyes wide with interest. Apart from the fact that she was absorbed in Mrs. Morley’s theories, she also found it difficult to take the stout woman seriously, she reminded her so much of a large florid teacosy seated at the top of the table. It was these little fancies that helped her to bear the daily grind at Clarkson’s Private Hotel. For instance, dear fluttery Miss Conway reminded her of one of those big floppy moths with speckled velvet wings that blunder through the window on a summer’s night. Whereas Lester Philips was another matter. He was so young, yet so earnest that it was difficult to classify him, but with his thick-lensed glasses he did have the goggle-eyed look of one of those tropical fishes she had seen in the dingy books that Mrs. Clarkson kept in the bookcase in the sitting-room. She felt a little guilty about him because he really was what Miss Conway described as ‘a genuine type’, but not at all the kind of man that a romantic girl like herself would take seriously.

  She woke up to hear Mrs. Morley saying severely, ‘After all, the name Lovelace can’t be so uncommon. There are probably several Virginia Lovelaces scattered about the country—’

  ‘I hardly think it likely,’ Professor Norris interposed. ‘The name, if I’m not mistaken, is extremely unusual. Remind me to look it up for you, my dear. A very, very old family, the Kendricks,’ he muttered. ‘They have been at Falcon’s Keep for the last six hundred years - amazing really how some of these old families can cling on throughout a turbulent history.’

  ‘They’re wealthy too, I believe,’ Mrs. Morley interposed severely, ‘which makes me wonder why—’ She stopped. Even she hesitated to voice the derogatory remark she had evidently been going to direct towards Ginny.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Miss Conway interposed hurriedly. ‘Ginny’s such a far-out relation that they probably only heard about her lately and are the type of family who like to keep in touch with their branches. Lots of old families do, I believe.’

  Mrs. Morley laughed sardonically as though the idea that Miss Conway would be acquainted with the habits of old families was completely outside her comprehension. ‘Anyway, if nothing comes of this you’ll be stuck with us dreary people,’ Mrs. Morley went on depressingly, ‘so I’d advise you to try and improve yourself, Ginny. Your waiting manners are very bad and leave a lot to be desired. You’ll certainly never get a job in a decent hotel — a really decent hotel, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Ginny sighed as she tripped over Lancelot and it gave a yelp of indignation.

  As she left the room she realized that they were only waiting for her departure to discuss the situation more fully. Ever since the advertisement had appeared it had caused a minor furore at Clarkson’s. So few things happened in the little private hotel that it had brought a touch of interest and glamour into their mundane lives. Even Professor Norris, who took no interest in feminine flutterings, had impressed on Ginny the fact that should she really be the Virginia Lovelace that the advertisement was inquiring for her whole life would probably be radically changed - though he didn’t specify in exactly what way.

  She sighed as she clattered down the stone steps towards the kitchen. It certainly would be nice to feel that the years ahead offered something more than the smell of innumerable greasy stews and the cold stone steps to the basement. At times, up in her little room at the top of the house, her heart would beat with excitement as she thought about the future, but in the cold light of day and with Mrs. Morley’s depressing realism she reconciled herself to life at Clarkson’s. After all, she was trained for nothing. It was hardly likely anything very exciting would happen to her and she had realized ever since she had been old enough to know that her plain little face would not inspire any wild romantic adventures. With a little twinge of disappointment she had resigned herself. But all the same sometimes it had been impossible to suppress the spark of hope that so often fluttered up. As Miss Conway so often said, life held the strangest surprises. One could never be quite sure of what lay in store.

  As the cold grey dawn filtered through her tiny window Ginny lay in bed and glumly surveyed the chimney tops. It was a view that had become very familiar to her and it didn’t always inspire depression. Sometimes the rising sun gilded the chimneys in pale mauves and pinks and dark maroons and a bird sweeping across the sky would suddenly change a mundane city scene into something of exquisite beauty.

  But this morning a fine veil of rain filtered from a grey sky and cast a crude tarry shine on the rooftops. Mrs. Morley had been right, she thought. Two weeks had passed, but no letter had arrived in answer to the one she had sent to Messrs. Ruttledge & Sons. Obviously she was not the Virginia Lovelace they were looking for or, even if she had been, their clients had apparently changed their minds. People did change their minds, she had discovered in her short life, with disconcerting suddenness, and she accepted this without rancour, yet for the first time she became fully conscious that the future held very little for her. Her alarm went off with a shrill rattle, and Ginny through pure habit jumped out of bed and began to dress with furious haste. It was essential that all should be in readiness for the morning workers. Lester Philips had some sort of position in an insurance office. Miss Conway did social work. First of all the great black range in the kitchen had to be lit and the morning porridge prepared. But there was one job that Ginny loved, and that was to collect the letters and place them carefully in alphabetical order in the hall rack.

  As she came down the stairs she saw with a little thrill of pleasure that there was a large mail. The very shapes and colours of the envelopes strewn on the hall floor intrigued her. Some of the letters looked so interesting that it was rather sad to feel that she would never know their contents. For instance, Mrs. Morley received large bulging envelopes with foreign stamps from her son in Malaya. Sh
e read these with frowning concentration, but never volunteered any interesting snippets from their contents as Professor Norris so often did, although truth to tell his information was not fascinating - usually some archaeological details from colleagues who were digging in some far-flung part of the world. Neither Miss Conway nor Lester Philips, apart from a few official forms in connection with their work, ever seemed to receive anything that looked even remotely interesting.

  Now as she bent down to pick up the letters Ginny’ s heart gave a little thud of excitement, for there, snowy white against the rough doormat, was a square thick envelope, her name ‘Miss Virginia Lovelace’ in bold black type on the surface. She picked it up and looked at it with growing excitement and was on the point of hastily tearing it open when she decided against this. Somehow she felt that this was a very important milestone in her life, and almost reverently she carried it into the dining-room where the breakfast places had already been set out on the previous evening and, with a feeling of guilt, picked up Mrs. Morley’s own special fruit knife with the mother-o’-pearl handle and slit the letter carefully across the top. Slowly she drew out the thick expensive paper and held it with trembling hands while her eyes devoured the type.

  It was from Messrs. Ruttledge & Sons and was couched in the rather obscure terms of the legal profession, but its message was unmistakable. Mr. Ruttledge was perfectly satisfied with the details she had given concerning her relationship to the Kendrick family, and now the next step was that he wished her to call at his office for an interview. He still did not state the specific purpose for which he wanted her, but this didn’t worry Ginny particularly. The fact that her life held something new and a little out of the ordinary was enough to make her feel like dancing gaily round the breakfast table. She tucked the envelope carefully into her apron pocket and ran down the stairs.

  Somehow the work seemed to go faster than usual and she was busy stirring a large steamer full of porridge, her mind racing with all sorts of wild improbabilities, when she heard a small cough behind her. She dropped the wooden spoon and gave a little squeak of surprise as she swung round.