The Other Daughter (36 page)

But there was Simon's note on the bedside table.

He had folded the paper into a tent. Rachel knocked it off the nightstand, catching it just before it fell to the floor. With clumsy fingers, she opened the note.

Stay at the flat as long as you need.—S

A wave of pure misery swept over her. Stop being an idiot, Rachel told herself. Simon was being kind. Kinder than she deserved.

She forced her wobbly legs out of bed, forced herself to fold the note and set it down flat on the nightstand, instead of reading it again and again and again in the vain hope that some other message or nuance might appear to temper the brusque finality of it.

What did she expect? She had turned him down. He was hardly going to be leaving her sonnets.

The idea of Simon leaving anyone sonnets brought a rueful smile to her lips. Although, once, with Olivia …

No. She wasn't going to be jealous of Olivia.

And, besides, what did it matter? Simon would be away in New York in a day, well rid of both Standish daughters. Drearily, Rachel dragged on a skirt and jumper, ruthlessly applying cold cream to last night's makeup.

Simon would have regretted it if she had said yes, she told herself belligerently, as she splashed cold water on her face in the bathroom. She might have delivered a blow to his ego last night, but she had saved him the much greater blow of finding himself saddled with a wife who couldn't mix in his world, a bastard without antecedents or connections, a sham and a fraud.

The strongest person I know.

For a moment, Rachel let herself bask in the memory. Tempting to think that all the rest could be pushed aside, that for him she could just be Rachel and valuable in herself, whatever her parents might have been or done. She had never, in all her life, felt so much herself with anyone as she had with Simon. Even with Alice, she had had to mute bits of herself, make allowances. But not for Simon. He met her head on.

And that was quite enough of that. Rachel dried her face roughly with a towel, not sparing the area behind the ears. People believed in the meeting of minds, but who really ever knew anyone else? Her own instincts had, for the most part, been spectacularly poor.

A shrill buzz drilled into Rachel's aching head. The doorbell, particularly strident after a long night out.

After one frozen moment, Rachel shoved the towel roughly onto the rack and bolted toward the door.

It wasn't Simon.

The porter was half hidden behind a large bouquet of hothouse flowers, tied at the bottom with a ribbon bearing the insignia of a fashionable florist. “These came for you, miss.”

“Thank you, Suggs.” Rachel managed to refrain from pouncing on the card until the door was already closed, her eyes going first to the signature.

In appreciation of your friendship, J. Trevannion.

Lovely. Flowers sent to buy her silence. Just what she wanted. As for friendship … If you can't say anything nice, her mother had always said.

Closing her eyes, Rachel leaned forward until the silky petals brushed her forehead. Once it would have filled her with unspeakable, guilty joy to have received flowers from her sister's fianc
é
. Now, it just made her feel vaguely irritated.

Well, they were pretty flowers. They added a touch of color to the flat. Prosaically, Rachel rummaged in the cupboards until she found a vase, then set the vase on the glass table in the drawing room, nearly knocking it over as the bell rang again.

It couldn't be flowers from John this time, unless he'd mistakenly sent a second bouquet. Which meant …

Breathlessly, Rachel flung open the door, Simon's name on her lips.

“Hello, Rachel,” said her father.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

When Rachel didn't say anything, her father said hesitantly, “May I come in?”

No, Rachel wanted to say, but her tongue and her mind didn't seem to be working in concert. Instead, she mutely stepped aside, allowing him entry.

Her father took a gingerly step inside. He had seemed far more formidable last night, in his knee breeches and silk stockings. Away from the grandeur of Caffers, he seemed somehow diminished, uncertain.

Rachel could see him taking in the shaded walls of the drawing room, the angular statuary, the white, white rug.

“This is a … pleasant place.”

“I'm moving out,” said Rachel bluntly. “Did you want something?”

She ought to offer him something, she knew. Tea, a cocktail. But she couldn't force herself to perform the amenities, to pretend that he was just another visitor.

Go away, go away, go away, she thought. Hadn't he hurt her enough already? Did he need to come back for another go?

Her father turned his hat around and around in his hands, as though unsure what to do with it. “I'm meant to be in Oxfordshire. We have a house party. But I needed to speak to you—to apologize.”

“If this is another offer to pay me off, you needn't bother.” She had left magazines on the glass cocktail table, copies of
The Tatler
.
We're both in this week
, said Cece. Mechanically, Rachel began stacking the magazines. “I meant what I said last night.”

Her father followed, hovering a careful distance away. “But I … When I received those pictures … Please, mayn't we sit down?”

Last night, he had deliberately received her in a room without chairs.

Rachel dropped the magazines into the wastepaper basket. “I am quite comfortable as I am.”

Her father didn't argue. “You sound so like her.” He looked at her, with something unguarded in his eyes, something painful to see. “Like Katherine. You don't look like her. There is little of her in your face. But your voice, the way you speak—”

“Is hardly unique.” She didn't trust this sudden change of heart. “And, as you say, I don't look like either of you.”

Except the eyes, but she didn't point that out.

“No,” her father agreed. “You have the look of my mother. I never saw her—she died before I was old enough to know her—but there were portraits.…” He stared down at the hat in his hands as though surprised to find it there. “Forgive me. I seem to have forgotten myself.”

“But you remember me. Now.” Rachel folded her arms across her chest. It was all a little too convenient. Rather like John's flowers. An offering with strings attached. “To what may I attribute this sudden outpouring of paternal affection?”

Her father took a moment before answering. “When the pictures arrived,” he said quietly, “I was quite certain that it was a swindle, of the basest kind, attempting to play on my emotions as a prelude to blackmail. The pictures were very cleverly done—but they can do incredible things in darkrooms these days.” His eyes lifted to hers. “But I knew they couldn't be real.”

Rachel's nails bit into her palms. “Why not?”

The earl drew in a deep breath. “Because my daughter—my Rachel—was dead.”

Dead
.

The word shivered through the bright, modern room, as out of place as a dirge at a nightclub.

“That's absurd,” said Rachel flatly.

“It is,” said her father quietly, “what I was told.”

Rachel hardly knew what to say. She felt as though she had been presented with her own tombstone. There was something deeply disquieting about being told one was dead, even when one knew very well that one wasn't.

“So you see,” he said, “when you appeared … what was I to think?” Gingerly, he set his hat down on the glass table. “Please, may we sit down?”

Wordlessly, Rachel gestured toward the white sofa. Her father waited until she had seated herself on one of the neighboring chairs before he awkwardly lowered himself onto the sofa, sitting on the very edge as though he mistrusted it.

“Even if you had been told—” It was curiously hard to say the words. “Why on earth would you believe it?”

Her father stared at the glass surface of the cocktail table. “I knew that she—that you—were dead because I saw the house. There was very little left of it. Just the charred walls. Some of the chimney. I saw”—his voice almost broke, but, with effort, he composed himself—“I saw one of your dolls. Her hair was all singed away. The porcelain had cracked and charred.…”

“Amelia.” From far away, Rachel remembered that doll, a smirking, porcelain-headed doll with a frilly frock. “I hated that doll.”

They had left Amelia behind, along with almost everything else.

But … a fire?

Her father leaned forward, saying urgently, “How did you do it? How did you escape? I had nightmares, for years, of you, in your room, in the fire—”

His face twisted, contorted. He rocked forward, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking. A horrible choking sound emerged from between his splayed fingers.

Her father was crying, great, shuddering, terrible sobs.

Rachel didn't know what to do. She dropped to her knees in front of him, chafing his wrists, trying to get his attention.

“Please, would you like some tea? A cocktail?” It sounded so painfully inadequate.

“I—” Her father fought for control. “All these years—I thought—”

He didn't need to voice the words. Rachel could read the horror of it in the grooves in his cheeks.

“No,” she said, and felt her father's fingers fleetingly brush her hair, before she pushed herself to her feet. Forcefully, she said, “There was no fire. At least, not while we were there. Please—I was never in any danger.”

Her father shook his head, looking dazed.

“I saw the house. Your doll…”

“We left her behind. Mother said I could only bring one trunk.” It was as though they were speaking separate languages. Rachel felt a slightly hysterical laugh welling up. “You see, we were told you were dead. That was why we left.”

Her father stared at her as though she were speaking in tongues. “Dead?”

“Yes,” said Rachel, “that's rather how I felt, too. Mother had a letter. She said it was from abroad, that you had died on a collecting trip. There couldn't be a funeral because there was no body.”

Rachel, four years old, had never questioned it, any of it. The world was full of strange shifts, of grown-up decisions for which she was offered no explanation.

“I don't know why we had to go. But we did. All we took were our clothes—and your chess set. We kept your chess set. I have it still.”

“Dead,” her father repeated. He looked dazed, as dazed as Rachel felt. “It was my brother who had died. Katherine knew that. It was why I had to go home. I never—I cannot imagine—”

“I've spent my life believing that you were dead.” Speaking as evenly as she could, Rachel said, “When I learned you were alive—I thought you must have left us.”

“I did, but only for a month.” Her father looked as though someone had put him through a wringer and hung him out on a line in a high wind. “I was gone for longer than I had intended. I'd meant to be away a fortnight; it took a month. I wrote your mother, telling her—”

“Telling her what?”

Her father picked at the upholstery of the chair. “Did your mother ever tell you—anything of our situation?”

“Yes. All of it untrue. I was led to believe that you were a botanist—and an orphan.”

Her father's lips tightened. “It would have been easier if I were. I was fortunate. I was the younger son—and a disappointment from the moment I was born. My father didn't pay much attention to me.” His expression softened, his eyes looking at images Rachel couldn't see. “We grew up together, your mother and I. She was the estate agent's daughter—did she tell you that?”

Rachel shook her head.

“She was always in and out of the house. Her mother had died, so there was no one to watch over her. And I … I had been meant to go to school, but I was a sickly child, so it was simpler to keep me at home with a tutor. We were company for each other.”

His words painted a more vivid picture than he knew, of two lonely souls finding each other.

“We always knew we wanted to be married. I had thought, as a second son … but my father didn't consider your mother a fitting match for a Standish.”

“Why didn't you just marry and damn the consequences?”

“Because he would have cut off my allowance,” her father said simply. “We had nothing else on which to live. And then there was you.” Awkwardly, he said, “Whatever else, I want you to know—we loved you so. You were our own private wonder.”

Rachel's eyes stung; her throat was too tight to speak.

We loved you so
.

Her father was still speaking. “We thought that all we had to do was wait it out. When my father died, I would inherit, not much, but enough to keep us modestly. My brother Marcus was nothing like my father; he wouldn't cut up stiff about it. But then Marcus died.”

Dimly, Rachel recalled Cousin David telling her something of the kind, about her father inheriting unexpectedly. It all seemed a million years ago, that initial interview with Cousin David, a yellowed clipping clutched in her hand.

Hurriedly, her father said, “That was why I went home, for Marcus's funeral. My father announced to me that he had an heiress for me. The estate—it was all but bankrupt. I hadn't realized—”

That letter. Rachel could see that letter, sitting on the kitchen table. “So you told my mother you were leaving us?”

“No!” Her father was genuinely horrified. “I needed more time. There had to be some way, something my father hadn't considered. An asset he hadn't yet dissipated. That was what I told your mother—that I needed more time.”

“I see.”

And Rachel had blithely been grubbing in the dirt, playing in mud puddles in the garden, while all of this had been going on around her. Life, at four, had been a sea of knees and ankles, chair legs and the undersides of tables.