The Other Daughter (15 page)

Simon raised a hand to attract the driver's attention. “Did you, in your time in France, encounter that charming French idiom about cats and whipping? In simple terms,
j'ai d'autres chats
à
fouetter
.”

Rachel did know the phrase. It was colloquial and brusque and, in any language, a neat brush-off. “I thought it was a dog you had to see a man about.”

“My interests are many and varied.” Simon handed her into the taxi and gave the driver his mother's address. Looking Rachel up and down, he said, “Get some sleep. You've Lady Fanny to impress tomorrow.”

Rachel huddled into the backseat, feeling suddenly cold as the taxi trundled away through the midnight streets. They had accomplished what they set out to do for the evening.

Why, then, did she feel so unsettled?

*   *   *

Rachel dreamed she was on a ship. The captain was ringing the alarm, calling everyone to the boats. People were running, banging into one another, and, above it all, the bell was ringing and ringing, harsh and implacable. John Trevannion was holding out a hand to her, trying to help her into one of the boats, but her mother was still below, asleep in their cabin, and Rachel wouldn't go without her.

She just needed to get to the stairs. Simon Montfort was standing with Cece Heatherington-Vaughn, champagne glasses in their hands. To get to the hatch, Rachel would need to get around them, but, unlike everyone else, they seemed in no hurry to move.

“Drowning—
such
a bore,” Cece was saying.

Rachel tried to cut around them, but Simon was in her way. He dangled a life preserver before her. “Aren't you forgetting this?”

Rachel shouldered him aside. The ship was listing and the bell was ringing, ringing, ringing.…

There was a shout. The last of the boats had cast off. Staring down into the choppy waters, Rachel caught a glimpse of her father's face—and then she was awake, and the ringing resolved itself into the insistent shrill of the telephone on the nightstand.

Rachel blinked at it, still shivering, still cold, despite the mess of sheets and blankets lying crumpled around her. A dream. Only a dream. With the realization came both relief and a terrible sense of loss. Her mother wasn't in a cabin below; her mother wasn't anywhere.

The telephone bell jangled one last time and went still. Rachel pressed her face into the pillow, taking a deep, shaky breath.

The pillowcase was soft against her cheek, faintly scented with an unfamiliar perfume. Rachel raised her head, taking stock of her surroundings. There was something rather disconcerting to waking up in a strange bed, even when the bed was the most luxurious she had known.

Perhaps because the bed was the most luxurious she had known.

The sheets on which she was lying were nothing like the coarse stuff that the Comtesse de Brillac had considered sufficient for the nursery governess or the much-mended sheets provided by Mr. Norris with their cottage, washed again and again to time-softened thinness. There were pillows of goose down beneath her head, and, half off the bed, a pale-green satin counterpane that matched the color of the drapes and the accents on the woodwork.

The scarlet dress she had worn the night before was draped languidly over the back of a chair, the matching shoes sprawled below.

The telephone, which had gone silent, began to ring again.

Rachel groped for the receiver, saying hoarsely, “Hullo?”

“Good morning, my sweet.” There was no mistaking that voice, in its most saccharine tones. “I trust you were up with the lark?”

“There are no larks in London.” Rachel's throat felt abominably dry. She felt at a distinct disadvantage, telephoning in bed. “What time is it?”

“Past ten,” said Simon smugly, sounding far too awake for a man who had been off doing only heaven knew what for most of the night.

“Past
ten
?” Rachel struggled to a sitting position. She never slept this late. She was up before six, most days. Seven, if she were being truly decadent.

But, then, her bed wasn't usually nearly this comfortable.

The voice on the other end of the line went on. “I've spoken to Cece. You're to present yourself at the family manse at half past three.”

“And where might that be?” The strap of her borrowed nightdress slid off her shoulder. Rachel hitched it hastily up again.

“Park Lane,” came the voice from the other end of the line. “The taxi driver will know it. Wear the navy-and-white foulard.”

Rachel held the receiver away from her ear. “Would you like to choose my shoes and bag, as well?”

But Simon had already rung off.

Rachel wore the navy foulard. She didn't take a taxi. It was a small defiance, but it made Rachel feel more herself to walk. She felt, without being able to say quite why, that it was important to cling to these small bits of Rachel.

It was a beautiful day, the sort of day that justified the weather the rest of the year round. Sunshine glinted off black railings and the smooth tops of taxis, dusted tree leaves with gold, and made the nannies wheeling their charges toward the park cluck and fuss and draw the canopy up just a little bit higher on the pram.

She ought to have enjoyed the walk, but she found herself fussing with the buttons on her gloves, peering at passing faces, as though her father might suddenly pop out from behind a hedge. No use to tell herself that Simon claimed he was generally in the country; she was in his territory, deep in the heart of Mayfair, and Rachel's imagination conjured him everywhere.

Was this, she wondered belatedly, why her mother had insisted she go to France, rather than London, for her foray into nursery governessing? Not foreign polish, then, as her mother had claimed, but the fear that she might see her father through the railings at a ball, catch a glimpse of him from her place at the back of a drawing room, wondering if she were seeing ghosts, thrust suddenly into the nightmare of an unexpected resurrection.

Would her father be at the lecture? The thought struck Rachel like an electric jolt. She knew, reasonably, that he wasn't likely to be there, but she couldn't help imagining it all the same, the look on his face as he saw her, confusion turning to recognition, recognition to shock. Would he bluster? Make excuses?

Or would he pretend not to know her at all?

Heatherington House was a vast Italianate pile, designed to awe. Rachel had no doubt one could fit all of Netherwell into a single wing. Other guests were drifting up the front stairs, but there was no sign of Simon's distinctive dark head.

Rachel hung back, pretending to hunt for something in her bag. Three thirty, Simon had said. It was past that now. Would he have gone in without her? Technically, she had been invited. But Cece had been in no position to remember much of anything, much less Rachel.

There was a line of chauffeured cars decanting their passengers. A taxi drew up behind them, and a man climbed out, the sun gilding his light brown hair.

With relief, Rachel moved forward, trying not to seem as though she were hurrying. “Mr. Trevannion!” she said warmly. “Have you come for the lecture?”

“Miss Merton.” Mr. Trevannion's greeting was reserved, in sharp contrast to his demeanor of the night before. “Yes. It is a topic in which I take an interest.”

It might, Rachel realized, have behooved her to determine the topic before attending. Too late now.

“Yes, I can see why,” said Rachel vaguely. She fell into step beside him as they trailed behind the others up the stairs. “Did your friend make it safely home last night?”

Mr. Trevannion's voice warmed slightly. “He's most likely still sleeping it off, but at least he's sleeping it off in his own bed. It's kind of you to ask.”

Rachel's lips curved. “I couldn't help thinking of poor Lord Nelson.”

“Lord Nelson passed the night unmolested,” Mr. Trevannion assured her. They were nearly to the top of the stairs, where a very important-looking personage held the door open for the arrivals. “Your cousin isn't with you?”

“Oh, I'm sure he'll be along eventually,” said Rachel, glancing behind them. Middle-aged ladies in pearls and droopy frocks, an elderly man stomping along with the help of his cane.

Blast it all, where was Simon? A nightclub had been one thing; anyone could go to a nightclub, provided they paid the fee. This was different. The people, the accents, the massive portraits at the bend of the staircase, the smell of beeswax and lemon oil and expensive perfumes, all proclaimed this as a world apart, one of the inner sanctums of Mayfair to which only the elite were admitted.

With a lightness she was far from feeling, Rachel said, “I hope Lady Frances won't think I'm gate-crashing. Simon was meant to introduce me.”

“Was he?” Mr. Trevannion's mouth set in grim lines. Glancing at Rachel, he started to say something, looked away, and then said, abruptly, “You've been abroad, you said?”

“Yes,” said Rachel warily. Just so long as he didn't ask where or with whom. She parroted the story she and Simon had concocted. “I've been away for some time. My mother wasn't well, you see.”

Mr. Trevannion looked at her with troubled eyes. “Then you wouldn't know.”

They had slowed nearly to a stop. The others eddied around them. Rachel looked up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. “Know what?”

Mr. Trevannion mustered an unconvincing smile. “Lady Frances, of course.”

It was, Rachel was quite sure, not what he had originally intended to say.

Before she could press him, Mr. Trevannion placed a hand beneath her elbow. “Allow me to perform your cousin's office.”

It was one thing to bilk Cece, but Rachel felt a bit guilty about Mr. Trevannion. In introducing her, he made himself responsible for her. And if she were caught …

“You are very good,” she said soberly.

He gave a short laugh. “Not as good as I ought to be. But I can make you known to our hostess.”

Mr. Trevannion led her past the butler, into a front hall dominated by a massive marble staircase, which branched out in either direction, adorned by a vaguely Moorish-looking colonnade. Their hostess stood at the foot of the stairs, sending people up the staircase in ones and twos.

The line filed slowly forward, the people in front of them blocking Rachel's view of her hostess. Rachel took a deep breath, resisting the urge to fiddle with the paste pearls in her ears. She looked the part, there was that at least. Simon hadn't led her wrong with the white-and-navy foulard. But there was more to it than wearing the right frock. Her diction was impeccable, her mother had seen to that, but she didn't know their idioms, their slang, their private jokes.

If Lady Frances pegged her as an imposter …

Too late. The line had filed forward, and Mr. Trevannion was saying, in his pleasant tenor voice, “Lady Frances, may I present Miss Vera Merton?”

That was Lady Frances? From Simon's description, Rachel had imagined a dowager with a bosom like a pouter pigeon, her neck encased in a boned collar
à
la Queen Mary.

Instead, Lady Frances was a slight woman, half a head shorter than Rachel, her brows tweezed, her hair elegantly waved, her expensive skirt just skimming a very well-preserved pair of knees. Next to her, Rachel felt distinctly gawky.

“How do you do?” Lady Frances's eyes were the same pale blue as her daughter's, but far sharper. Sapphires glittered in her ears. “You must be one of my daughter's friends.”

Rachel's throat felt dry. She summoned up her best tea-at-the-vicarage manner. “My cousin, Mr. Montfort, was kind enough to introduce us. I've only just returned from abroad—”

“Montfort…” Lady Frances nodded to herself. Rachel had the disconcerting impression of entries being filed in a mental ledger. “Are you one of Callista's girls? Or one of Penelope's?”

Behind Rachel, the line of invitees was beginning to pile up; she could hear their voices behind her. If she was ejected from Heatherington House, the humiliation would be public and final.

“It's a more distant connection than that, I'm afraid,” Rachel began, when a voice came from behind her.

“Hullo, Vera.” Skirting the waiting guests, Simon loped over to Lady Frances's side. Possessing himself of Lady Frances's jeweled hand, he made a show of lifting it to his lips for a resounding kiss. “Dearest and most generous Cousin Fanny. Forgive my tardiness?”

“If I do, it will only encourage you to do it again,” said Lady Frances, but the sharp words were contradicted by the squeeze she gave his arm. “How is the general?”

“The pater is as ill-tempered as ever. He threw a boot at me last week.”

“I'm sure you deserved it. And Hypatia?”

“Still gallivanting about the colonies with my esteemed stepfather.”

“Tell her I demand her return immediately. London is too dull without her.” Turning back to Rachel, she said impersonally, “I do hope you enjoy the little talk, Miss Merton. Such an important topic, don't you agree? Ah, Helen! How darling of you to join us.”

Rachel let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

“Move, wigeon,” breathed Simon in her ear, and Rachel automatically moved along with him, up the staircase to the first-floor landing.

Rachel smiled sweetly up at her so-called cousin. “Half past three?”

Simon bared his teeth right back. “Punctuality is so confining.” As they drew to a stop on the first-floor landing, he nodded to someone behind her. “I see you've entertained yourself in my absence. Hullo, Trevannion.”

Rachel hadn't realized, until then, that Mr. Trevannion was right behind them.

Detaching herself from Simon, she moved to Mr. Trevannion's side. “Mr. Trevannion was kind enough to make me known to my hostess in your absence.”

“It was the least I could do,” Mr. Trevannion assured her, looking pointedly at Simon.