The Other Daughter (27 page)

“My dear!” Rachel said, in her best Vera voice. “Do you still wear a nightdress? How too sweet!”

Olivia's cheeks colored, but she said doggedly, “I'm afraid I haven't any pajamas. My mother thinks they're fast.”

“Are they?” said Rachel languidly. “Mine tend to stay where I put them. Most of the time.”

“Um, well, yes.” Lady Olivia backed toward the door. “If there is anything you need, do let me know. Or you might ring…” She paused in the doorway, her expensive evening bag still clutched between her hands. “I'm sure this isn't at all what you're used to.”

She didn't know the half of it. There was a bellpull on the wall by the bed. Heavy cream writing paper on the table, embossed in gold. A far cry from Netherwell.

Rachel reached up to unscrew the French back of one of her earrings. “No. It's not.”

Lady Olivia hovered in the doorway, one hand on the knob. “After all the exotic places you've been … this must seem very provincial.”

Her voice was as stiff, as stilted as ever, but there was a hint of something else beneath it. Something a little wistful.

Head tilted as she struggled with the back of the other earring, Rachel looked curiously at her half-sister. “I hadn't thought you would read the
Daily Yell
.”

There was a long pause, and then …

“Cook takes it.” Lady Olivia fidgeted with the pearl hanging from her ear. “I know it's silly—but it is rather exciting, reading about your adventures.”

Lady Olivia looked like a child on the wrong side of a toy shop window.

Rachel's fingers stilled on the back of her earring. “But you have your picture in
The Tatler
all the time!”

“Yes, going to other houses in Mayfair.” Olivia glanced down at her hands. “I was to have gone to Paris to be finished, but … my mother didn't want me to fall prey to unfortunate influences.”

“You haven't been to Paris?” Rachel wasn't sure why, she had just assumed that the daughter of an earl would have traveled, would have stayed in the great rooms of the houses where Rachel had been governess.

“When I'm married. I'll be able to go then—” Olivia broke off, a small furrow appearing between her eyes. “If John says it's all right.”

Slowly, Rachel set her earring down on the coverlet. “I'm certain he will.” She didn't know what else to say. “Who could possibly object to Paris?”

Olivia shook her head slightly. “Well, there is the constituency to think about … and … Never mind.” She gathered herself together. “If you need anything, you will ring?”

She turned, the flounce of her long skirt brushing the floor.

On an impulse, Rachel said, “It's all rubbish, you know. I've never even been to India. And I certainly don't play the clavichord!”

Lady Olivia paused, her hand on the knob. “But the paper—”

“That,” said Rachel succinctly, “was all my dear cousin Simon's doing. I'm sure he did it just to irk me.”

“That does sound like Si—Mr. Montfort. He does enjoy tweaking peoples' noses.”

“Just their noses?” said Rachel drily.

She was rewarded with a small smile, but more than that, Lady Olivia refused to be drawn. “Breakfast is served at eight in the dining room. If you go to the foot of the stairs, past the statue of Niobe, it's the door to the right of the Canaletto.”

Rachel dragged her dress up over her head. “Fear not. I'll drop trails of breadcrumbs.”

Lady Olivia smiled uncertainly. “If you ask the footman in the hall in the morning, he'll show you the way.”

And she was gone, before Rachel could explain that she was joking.

*   *   *

Rachel came down to breakfast in the full splendor of her gypsy regalia.

The footman in the hall was too well bred to comment, but she could tell that he was bursting to run down and spread the news in the servants' hall. For his benefit, Rachel jangled and clattered her way into the dining room, a dark room toward the back of the house, made darker by heavy red paper and large oil paintings of various biblical personages being tortured in inventive ways.

Rachel's half-sister sat alone at one end of a table that might easily have seated forty. Spirit lamps flickered beneath a rank of silver chafing dishes on the sideboard, but her sister's plate held only a half slice of toast and a lonely kipper.

“Oh, good,” said Lady Olivia. “You found your way.”

“With a little help.” Rachel wafted her way into a seat across from Olivia and tried not to blink when dishes and silver magically appeared before her. It was odd to imagine a world in which one never had to do anything at all. Odd and a little disconcerting. “I'm afraid I nearly gave your footman an apoplexy when I came downstairs in this.”

“Perhaps he was afraid of what his future might hold.” Lady Olivia lifted the coffeepot. “Would you prefer coffee or tea?”

Had her sister just made a joke? Rachel wasn't quite sure. It had sounded like one, or a tentative attempt in that direction. “Coffee, please.”

“Oh, good.” Rachel extended her cup as Lady Olivia poured. “The tea's gone quite cold, but the coffee is still drinkable.”

“Why not add more hot water?”

“I don't like to bother Cook,” said Lady Olivia vaguely.

Rachel busied herself in reaching for a piece of toast, a variety of comments unspoken on her lips. It was, she realized, like trying to speak a foreign language, one where the grammar was entirely different and the concepts didn't quite translate.

Falling back on safer territory, Rachel nodded at the paper next to Lady Olivia's place. “Not the
Daily Yell
?”

“My mother would expire of shock.” Lady Olivia glanced quickly over her shoulder. “No. It's
The Times
. My father usually reads it, but as he's not here…” She extended the paper to Rachel. “Would you like it?”

The paper was warm to the touch. It must have been ironed, Rachel realized, so that unsightly newsprint wouldn't transfer itself to aristocratic fingers.

Rachel shoved it back. “But you were reading it. I wouldn't want—”

“My mother doesn't approve of my reading the paper at the table,” Olivia confessed. “There's an article about Dr. Radlett's experiments.”

Dr. Radlett? It took Rachel a moment to remember. That afternoon at Heatherington House felt like a lifetime ago.

She had thought her half-sister cold, cold and stiff. There was no denying the stiffness, but Rachel wondered if she might have been mistaken about the cold.

Rachel leaned her elbows on the white cloth. “What
did
you think of Dr. Radlett's lecture? You never said.”

Lady Olivia poked at her kipper. “It is a noble project.…”

“But?”

“It really is rot.” Glancing up, Lady Olivia favored Rachel with one of her fleeting smiles. “I don't think Dr. Radlett realizes that, though. He seems genuinely devoted to his project.”

Not to mention John Trevannion.

“Why didn't you say, that day?” Rachel dipped her knife into the butter. “When Simon asked?”

Lady Olivia struggled with her kipper. “He does mean so well,” she said apologetically. “Dr. Radlett, I mean.”

If that was the real reason, Rachel would eat that kipper.

Rachel's knife made a scraping noise as she dragged the butter over her toast. “Is it better, do you think, to be an unwitting charlatan than a witting one?”

Olivia wrinkled her nose at her kipper. “It's more honest, at least. That does have to count for something.”

There was a time when Rachel had considered herself honest. Before her world had turned on its head.

She took a vicious bite of her toast. “I'm not sure intentions make much of a difference in the end. I hear the road to hell is paved with them.”

She'd meant it frivolously, but Olivia answered seriously. “Yes, but one does have to live with oneself.”

“Not necessarily.” Rachel abandoned her toast. She wasn't feeling terribly hungry anymore. “There are any number of ways to avoid living with oneself. Gin, for example.”

“Yes, but you're still there at the base of it, aren't you? Only with a terrible head in the morning.” At Rachel's look of surprise, Lady Olivia looked quickly down at her teacup. “At least, that's what Si—what someone once said.”

“Mmm.” Rachel took a quick sip of her coffee. She ought, she knew, to be scrounging for information about their father, but she couldn't help but wonder just what the true nature of the relationship between her sister and Simon had been. “If it's the same someone I know, then he doesn't seem to have taken his own advice.”

“Would you like more coffee?” Olivia busied herself with the coffeepot, giving Rachel a good view of the side parting in her gently waved blond hair.

“No, I've had quite enough.” What would she do if Rachel were to ask her about Simon right out?

Ring for more coffee, most likely. Or discover a pressing need for fresh toast.

Her half-sister reminded Rachel of a puzzle box Mr. Treadwell had given her for her birthday one year. If one pressed on the right combination, the box sprang open. It was no use trying to shake it or prod it; that only jammed the delicate mechanism.

Rachel had detested that puzzle box.

There was the sound of a voice in the hall. “—tell Anna to bring it to my sitting room.
Not
the morning room. And I want the car for two.
Not
ten past.”

The voice became louder as the door opened and a woman sailed through, still speaking rapidly and loudly, the slap of her solid heels against the floor punctuating her more decided utterances.

Fashions had changed since John Singer Sargent had immortalized Lady Ardmore in the painting on the stairs. Years had passed. Her hair had dimmed from brown to gray, corseting no longer cinched in her middle to the then-fashionable hourglass, and the large diamonds that adorned her in the painting were undoubtedly stashed away in a safe.

The woman in the doorway wore a skirt and crepe blouse; her graying hair was carefully marcelled; and her jewels, while large, were what one might pardonably wear during the day, pea-sized sapphires in the ears, a brooch at her collar, and old-fashioned hoop diamonds on her fingers.

But it was unmistakably the woman in the portrait.

The woman for whom Rachel's father had left them.

Lady Ardmore's chest puffed out like a pigeon as she stared at Rachel. Her voice dripped frost.

“And
who
is this?”

 

EIGHTEEN

Lady Olivia scrambled to her feet.

“This is—” She started to say something and checked herself. “This is Miss Vera Merton, Mama. She is a friend of Cece.”

Slowly, Rachel stood, taking the measure of the woman who had usurped her mother's position, the woman who had barged in with her money, with that smug, pug-like face, and snatched her father away from them.

Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe he would have left them anyway. But Rachel wasn't in the mood to be rational about it.

“Lady Ardmore.” She deliberately let her fringed shawl drape down around her shoulders, her bangles clattering on her arms. “Good morning.”

“One of Cecelia's friends?” Lady Ardmore's nose pinched as though she smelled something nasty. To Olivia, she said, “Well, see that she leaves by the servants' entrance. We don't want people to talk.”

And that was all.

Rachel was left standing at the dining room table, her hands braced against the white cloth, as Lady Ardmore firmly and pointedly turned her back.

Olivia's eyes darted toward Rachel. “Mama…”

“And you!” The sapphires on Lady Ardmore's breast glittered meanly as her blouse expanded. She stumped toward the chafing dishes. “Out until all hours, I hear. Never mind that the household is in utter disarray. Never mind that your father runs off to Oxford without so much as a by-your-leave. I am sure we have nothing better to do than to serve as a hostel for each and every one of Cecelia's dubious acquaintances.”

With each word, Lady Olivia's face went a little more blank.

“I am sorry, Mama,” she murmured, in that quiet voice. “We did not mean to inconvenience you.”

Lady Ardmore gave an unpleasant laugh. “Oh, I'm sure you never mean it. You just gad on, with never a thought to anyone but yourself. Never mind the sacrifices I've made for you, the trouble I've gone to to put you forward—”

Sacrifices? Lady Ardmore hadn't the faintest notion.

Rachel was still standing. She heard her own voice saying, loudly, deliberately, “If anyone is to blame, it is I, Lady Ardmore. I forgot my latchkey. Lady Olivia very generously saved me from wandering the streets until dawn. It was an act of pure kindness.”

Olivia gave a quick, anxious shake of her head.

Lady Ardmore's eyes narrowed. “Our home is not a boardinghouse, Olivia. I do not know what Fanny allows, but you, my girl, have a position to maintain. You won't be able to play these little tricks when you're a politician's wife.”

“No, Mama,” murmured Olivia.

It was, thought Rachel, the most incredible act of self-effacement. Olivia seemed to blend back into the richly figured walls, just a shadow among the shadows.

Slowly, Rachel sank down into her own seat. Her piece of toast was cold on her plate, the edges curling slightly.

Lady Olivia sent her a grateful look.

Lady Ardmore carried on, her voice rising with her grievances. “As if I hadn't enough to worry about! Your brother's twenty-first in four days—and that wretched Miss Lane has twisted her wrist. Or says she did,” she added darkly. “One can never tell with these people. Malingering in her room, taking up good space in a bed. I am sure she did it on purpose to inconvenience me. And who, I ask you, who is to write up the cards?”