The Other Daughter (7 page)

Uncle David managed a crooked smile. “For my sins, yes.” He paused for a moment before adding quietly, “On your father's side. His mother and my mother were sisters.”

Another betrayal. Such a small lie, on top of all the others, but Rachel felt as though she had been slapped. She straightened, so abruptly that her hip knocked against the chair. “No wonder you take his part.”

Cousin David cleared his throat painfully. “Your father wouldn't see it that way. I haven't spoken to him since—It's been a long time.”

“Twenty-three years?”

“I—” Cousin David poured himself a sherry and drank it like whisky, stiff-wristed, in one shot. He said thickly, “The three of us, we were raised together. I loved your mother like a sister.”

It was the same Cousin David, the same well-worn suit, the same thinning hair, but Rachel felt as though she were seeing him for the first time. “Brothers don't usually sell their sisters. There's a word for that, isn't there? Pandering.”

And there was a word for what her mother had been: a mistress. A kept woman, hidden away in a little cottage in the country.

No wonder there was no other family. No wonder they had never had any guests other than Cousin David. No wonder they had moved so far away, all the way to Netherwell, to a quiet village where no one knew them, where no one would ever guess that that quiet, nice Mrs. Woodley was no better than she should be and her daughter the fruit of shame.

“Rachel—” Cousin David reached for her.

Rachel dodged out of the way. Laughter bubbled out of her throat, corrosive as lye. “And all these years, I'd thought my father was a botanist.” It seemed ridiculously funny now. “A botanist.”

“He would have been a botanist,” said Cousin David, seizing on that small thing. “If his older brother hadn't died. That was the tragedy of it.”

“
That
was the tragedy of it? That he couldn't be a botanist?”

“No! That wasn't what I meant. You have to understand—your father—” David checked slightly at the look Rachel gave him, then blundered valiantly on. “Your father never wanted to be earl. He might have been a botanist. He might”—he took a deep breath—“he might have married your mother. But then his brother died.”

“My heart bleeds for him,” said Rachel acidly. “He ought to have considered that before he anticipated his wedding night.”

Helplessly, Cousin David said, “Your father loved you. You and your mother.”

“The Earl of Ardmore,” said Rachel, in a voice that was too loud and too hard, “is not my father. My father is dead. He died when I was four years old.”

Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides; her chest rose and fell as rapidly as if she had been running.

They might have stood like that indefinitely, but for the light rap of fingers against the doorframe.

A clipped, aristocratic male voice, rich with humor, drawled, “I hate to intrude.…”

There was a man. A man lounging just inside the doorframe. He leaned bonelessly back against the old oak, his pale gray suit molding itself to his long form, a miracle of expert tailoring.

The man looked just as expensively constructed as his suit, along the same long, elegant lines. Beneath close-cropped, curly black hair, a pair of high cheekbones slanted down across his face. His lips were red and sensual, lips for eating strawberries with, but his black eyes were alert and all too keen.

Right now, they were focused on Rachel.

Rachel's cheeks turned crimson. “I was just leaving,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. To Cousin David, she said, “You needn't bother to see me out. I know the way.”

“Rachel—”

The man in the doorway straightened, brushing a speck of invisible dust from his trousers. “Don't let me interrupt. I merely came to return this.”

This
was a leather-bound book, suitably musty about the edges.

Cousin David looked from the intruder to Rachel and back again, three little furrows between his eyes. He murmured, “Simon Montfort, my cousin—Rachel Woodley.”

Cousin David hesitated slightly over her name.

It took only a moment for Rachel to realize why. Her name—oh, Lord, what was her name? Woodley was the name of her fictitious father, the botanist who never was. A feeling of panic welled in her breast. Even her name wasn't her own.

It was an uncomfortable, shivery sort of feeling, like going out fully clothed only to discover that all the seams had gone, and she was standing in the middle of the street, naked.

Pulling herself together, Rachel nodded stiffly. “Mr. Montfort. Cousin David.”

Cousin David looked at her pleadingly. “If you'll just stay a moment…”

For what? For now, all she wanted was a dark and lonely burrow. “I must be going. Good day, Mr. Montfort.”

Rachel didn't look back as she left the room. She felt like an old glass window, cracked and leaded back together, ready to shatter at a sound.

Behind her, she could hear Cousin David saying, in a low voice, “How much did you hear?”

“I hear no evil and I see no evil. I am deaf and dumb.”

“It isn't funny, Simon.” Cousin David was speaking low and earnestly; Rachel only caught bits and pieces. “Not fodder … essential that this not get out … the embarrassment … unfortunate.…”

Embarrassment? Rachel paused, with her hand on the staircase rail. Of course. She was the embarrassment. The unwanted, unknown child of the Earl of Ardmore.

All of these years, swaddled in respectability, she hadn't realized there was a scarlet brand lurking just below the surface. The world swayed and dipped; everything turned upside down.

“Hullo.” Mr. Montfort clambered down the stairs. “Miss … Woodley, is it?”

Rachel resolutely resumed her progress. “Mr. Montfort.”

She didn't look at him, but Mr. Montfort was looking at her, cataloging her features with a thoroughness that amounted to rudeness. “So you're Ardmore's daughter.”

Her father had another daughter, an official daughter, a daughter with fashionably marcelled blond hair and gowns that shimmered in the flash of the camera.

No, not her father. The man who had fathered her. Her real father, the man who had held her, had played with her, had soothed her childish fears, was dead, dead twenty-three years ago.

“No,” said Rachel woodenly. “Lady Olivia Standish is the Earl of Ardmore's daughter.”

“His other daughter, then.” Mr. Montfort reached the door to the quad ahead of her, holding it open with a flourish. “His unacknowledged daughter.”

“Why sugarcoat it?” retorted Rachel, stung into response. “Why not just say illegitimate and have done?”

“Because I'm not done.” Sauntering beside her, his hands in his pockets, Mr. Montfort subjected her to a long, thorough scrutiny. “You don't look like him—”

“Thank you!” said Rachel furiously.

“Except about the eyes. Those are Standish eyes. You'd best not go gazing into anyone's or they'll spot you right off. Unless, of course,” he added casually, “that's what you want.”

Rachel's shoulders were painfully stiff beneath her good wool jacket. The mist was rapidly turning to mizzle, stinging her eyes and damping the shoulders of her suit. “What makes you think I want anything to do with him?”

Mr. Montfort regarded her with something like pity. “You are bursting for revenge. The most casual observer could see it.”

The worst of it was that it was true. “I didn't invite you to observe.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Montfort imperturbably. “If I waited to be invited, I would never go anywhere at all. I've been asked to give you a cup of tea.”

“Consider your duty discharged.” Rachel raised a hand to Suggs, who was enjoying his afternoon smoke by the door of the lodge and eyeing a party of undergraduates in commoner's gowns in a rather forbidding fashion. “Good day, Mr. Suggs.”

“Miss Rachel.” The porter nodded respectfully to Mr. Montfort, saying, “Good to see your face back here, sir.”

“Likewise, Suggs, likewise.” Montfort adjusted his stride to Rachel's, hands in his pockets, shoulders back, face lifted to the slate-gray sky. “Let me guess. You intend to go storming off to Ardles and challenge the earl with the fact of your existence. There will be a tearful scene—his, not yours—after which he will repent and declare you his joy, his treasure, and his sole heiress.”

Rachel turned her heel on an uneven piece of paving. “That's nonsense.”

“Yes, it is. Arrant nonsense. More likely, the butler won't let you past the door.”

“There's no need to be cruel.” Resolutely, Rachel turned up the collar of her jacket, wishing she had had the forethought to wear a mackintosh.

The mizzle had made up its mind to be rain, turning to a hard drizzle that dripped down her cheeks like tears and made her hair stick in wet half curls against her ears. She had, she realized, left her umbrella in Cousin David's rooms, but nothing could induce her to go back and retrieve it, even without Mr. Montfort hovering over her like an ill wish.

“It's not cruel, it's honest.” Mr. Montfort produced his umbrella. “You appear to be in want of one of these.”

“Such gallantry,” said Rachel sarcastically. “There's a puddle. Would you like to drape yourself over it?”

Mr. Montfort obligingly held the umbrella closer, stepping next to her so that they were both sheltered beneath its brim. “Not even for your dainty foot. I rather like this suit. And this isn't pure chivalry. I owe your cousin a debt.”

Both Mr. Montfort and Cousin David could go directly to a hot place populated with pitchforks. “Find some other way to discharge it. There must be dragon to be slain somewhere.”

“I'm fresh out of dragons and phoenix feathers.” Mr. Montfort placed a hand beneath her elbow. “I refuse to argue with you in the middle of St. Giles. Come have a cup of tea.”

“Then don't argue with me at all.” Rachel shook off his hand, speeding her step on the rain-slick flagstones. “I don't want tea.”

“Would you rather have gin?”

“No!”

“Tea it is, then,” said Mr. Montfort conversationally, “and here is a Fuller's conveniently to hand. They will, as I understand, purvey brown liquid in a pot.”

Rachel swung to face him. “You mean you're to keep me from storming off to bother—” She'd nearly said
my father
. “The Earl of Ardmore.”

Mr. Montfort's eyes met hers. His were black, true black, so dark that there was no distinction between pupil and iris. “I don't give a damn about the comfort and convenience of the Earl of Ardmore. But I did promise your cousin I'd make sure you didn't walk in front of a train.”

The rain was seeping down through Rachel's collar. Inside, the Fuller's looked bright and inviting, the windows steaming with warmth.

And even the company of Mr. Montfort was preferable to being left alone with her own thoughts.

“Oh, all right,” Rachel said disagreeably. “It's too much bother to fight with you.”

“Many people have said the same.” With a mocking half bow, Mr. Montfort gestured for her to precede him through the door of Fuller's.

Rachel submitted to being ushered to a table, where Mr. Montfort installed her in her chair with the exaggerated reverence due a duchess.

She placed her bag firmly on her lap, determined not to let Mr. Montfort get the first word.

“Do you know”—Rachel couldn't bring herself to say
my father
—“the Earl of Ardmore?”

Mr. Montfort seated himself in his own chair, spreading out his long frame, so that he seemed to command far more than his allotted space. Slowly, deliberately, he removed a cigarette case from his breast pocket. “I spent some time at Caffers after the war.” At Rachel's blank look, Mr. Montfort translated, “Carrisford. Carrisford Court. Home of the Standish family since time immemorial—or at least since the third earl pulled the whole bally thing down and built it up again.”

It all felt impossibly remote. “I know nothing about the family.”

“Don't you mean your family?”

“Hardly.” Why would she lay claim to anyone who didn't want to claim her? Rachel had done very well without the Standishes for these twenty-odd years and she would do very well for twenty-odd more. “I'd scarcely heard of them until today.”

“Were you hoping to touch Ardmore for money?” Mr. Montfort regarded her with dispassionate inquiry, as if she were a specimen on a naturalist's table. “If so, you're doomed to disappointment. Everything he has is his wife's. Her father did a brilliant job of tying it all up in settlements.”

Rachel stared at him, the blood roaring in her ears. “Oh, I see. Because I'm a by-blow, I must be venal?” Her fingers closed tightly around her slim purse. “I manage very well on my own, thank you very much.”

Mr. Montfort signaled to the waitress. “We'll have a pot of the Lapsang.” To Rachel, he said, “You would be surprised what one might do under the influence of an empty stomach.”

Rachel lifted her head proudly. “Mine is hardly empty.”

It would have been more convincing if her stomach hadn't chosen that moment to rumble.

“And a slice of walnut cake,” said Mr. Montfort to the waitress.

“I detest walnut cake.” Rachel shook out her napkin. “I have a little money. Not what you would call money”—or her father—“but enough to keep me until I find another position.”

Mr. Montfort tapped an unlit cigarette against the table. “Oh? And what do you do?”

“I am a nursery governess,” said Rachel defiantly. “You needn't look like that. I can't imagine you have ever spent a day trying to make three ill-mannered children mind you.”

“No,” admitted Mr. Montfort, making no effort to hide his amusement. “I cannot say that I have.” Leaning back in his chair, he extracted a lighter from his pocket. “Gasper?”