The Other Daughter (28 page)

Lady Ardmore dropped her plate at her place at the head of the table with enough force that a sausage rolled off the edge.

She seemed hardly to notice when the footman pulled back her chair for her; she took it for granted that the chair would be beneath her when she sat, heavily, with the air of Hecuba contemplating the fall of Troy in all its gory misery.

“Miss Lane is Mama's secretary,” explained Olivia, and then cast a guilty glance at her mother, as though she expected to be reprimanded for speaking out of turn.

“If I might be of any assistance … I've been told that I write a fair hand.”

It was purely strategy, Rachel told herself. And not at all because Olivia looked ready to crawl beneath the lid of one of the chafing dishes on the sideboard.

What better way to secure a temporary position in the household?

In full Vera mode, she rattled on, “Consider it repayment for last night's room and this morning's board. It would be rather a lark, really, playing at secretary. So many of one's friends do seem to have jobs these days.”

“We are not sunk so low as that, Miss…”

“Merton,” Rachel supplied, smiling with bared teeth. “Merton.”

What would Lady Ardmore say if Rachel rose, and said, oh so casually, “And, by the way, I just happen to be your husband's by-blow”?

“I shall have to call the agency,” said Lady Ardmore, in the tones of one making a great sacrifice.

If Rachel hadn't curled up on her mother's bed that day … if she hadn't gone to Cousin David … if she hadn't met Simon … she might be the one answering that call to the agency.

It was a deeply distasteful thought.

“I can help, Mama,” Olivia said tentatively. “If Miss Lane will tell me what is wanted…”

Lady Ardmore looked at her daughter coldly. “You would be better served setting a date for your wedding. You mustn't shilly-shally. There aren't many more fish in the sea. Not for you. Not after That Episode.”

That Episode?

Olivia's eyes had dropped to her plate.

That only seemed to annoy Lady Ardmore more.

“But, then, you wouldn't mind, would you?” The acid in Lady Ardmore's voice was enough to strip the gold rim off the Spode. “You'd be just as happy to cloister yourself away with a horde of bluestockings, wasting your life on dusty old books. Never mind the bother of giving you a Season, the trouble of finding you partners—you haven't a particle of gratitude, have you?”

It was painful to listen to, painful to watch, all the more so because Lady Ardmore didn't seem to care in the least that she had an audience.

Perhaps, in her view, she didn't. The footman wasn't people to Lady Ardmore, and neither was Rachel. They might have been one of the elephants at the base of the silver epergne in the center of the table, or one of the plaster roundels on the ceiling above.

Olivia seemed to get smaller and smaller with each lash of her mother's voice. But all she said was, “I would be happy to help Miss Lane with the cards, Mama.”

With an inarticulate noise of annoyance, Lady Ardmore stood, sending the footman scrabbling to pull back her chair. “Don't forget that you have a dress fitting at three. Your father was meant to be speaking in the Lords today. Heaven only knows if he'll be back in time. Oxford, indeed! What can there be in Oxford more important than in London?” The question was evidently rhetorical. Lady Ardmore paused in the doorway long enough to fire one last sally at her daughter. “
Don't
forget your fitting.”

“No, Mama.”

“And don't let her alter the pattern. I want it just so.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Lady Ardmore cast a narrow-eyed look at Rachel. “We can't have you looking
cheap
.”

And with that, she sailed out, having consumed no fewer than six sausages and left havoc in her wake.

In the shell-shocked silence, Rachel and Olivia regarded each other across the table, like survivors of a military action after the all clear.

“Would you like to borrow this?” Rachel said wryly, indicating her gypsy-embellished evening dress. “You really might do with a bit of looking cheap. And just think how everyone would stare at your brother's twenty-first!”

“It wouldn't suit me.” Olivia's eyes slid toward the door, where the footman stood silent sentinel.

Would this, Rachel wondered, make the rounds of the servants' hall later? Or were Lady Ardmore's diatribes to her daughter a daily course, served up with the kippers and the kedgeree?

“I do apologize, most awfully. It's the fancy dress.… Mother doesn't approve of parties. Not those sorts of parties.”

Yes, and Rachel was Queen Mary. “I should be the one apologizing, invading like this. I don't wonder that your mother was cross! And her secretary's wrist and your father away … It's enough to make anyone fuss.”

Olivia looked down at her plate. “Poor Miss Lane. It's not malingering, you know. She broke her wrist tripping on the steps of the Tube. And she would try to keep working despite it.”

Rachel lifted her coffee cup. “She must be devoted to your mother.”

“Miss Lane has an ailing mother in Ipswich,” said Olivia seriously. “She's terrified of losing her position.”

Feeling shamed, Rachel set the cup down. “I feel as though I really ought to write those cards for her. Just because.”

“You're very kind, but, really, I couldn't ask you to.”

“Why not? It's not as though I have terribly much else to do with my time.”

Other than penning ominous messages to her father, who wasn't there to receive them. Instead, he had received a letter and gone haring off to Oxford, missing a speech in the Lords, risking his wife's ire.

Somehow, Rachel doubted it was in search of a manuscript at the Bodleian.

Rachel thought back on all of those years of visits to Oxford, of Cousin David slipping her pocket money behind her mother's back, solemnly inquiring about school, treating her to walnut cake in his rooms. He had always acted as a sort of honorary uncle.

What if Cousin David had been as much watchdog as guardian?

She had assumed, all these weeks, that her father had left and never looked back, that he hadn't known where she was or what she was doing. Rachel's stomach turned uneasily. But what if he had? A brief moment of warmth, at the thought that her father might, from afar, have been watching over her, was succeeded rapidly by something darker. What if it wasn't love, but policy? Now, of all times, with his heir's twenty-first birthday on the horizon, a scandal was the last thing her father needed.

There was a certain bitter amusement to the notion of her father dashing to Oxford to interrogate Cousin David as to how she had slipped her leash; Cousin David with his ineffectual attempts to keep her away from her father, away from London.

No. Rachel caught herself. None of that followed. If her father knew her, knew who she was, he would have made some sign of recognition in the library that day. Wouldn't he?

“Coffee?” Olivia said, and Rachel realized her half-sister was holding the coffeepot, and probably had been for some time.

“Forgive me. I was away with the fairies.” Rachel's bangles jangled as she lifted her hands to rub her temples. “I ought to go home and change.” A stray thought struck her. “What did your mother mean about your cloistering yourself away?”

“Oh … I had an idea about going to university.” In a barely audible voice, Olivia added, “I won a scholarship to Somerville.”

“A scholarship!” Rachel had spent enough time in and around Oxford to know just how much those meant. “Good on you!”

“Si—” Olivia caught herself. “A friend helped arrange it.”

“Yes, but they don't take people just for arranging.” Those examinations were stiff. Her mother had suggested that Rachel try for a scholarship, but, at the time, Rachel had been more concerned with adding to the family coffers. Besides, she knew herself well enough to know that she had no passion for study. She preferred to be out in the world, doing something. “Why ever didn't you go?”

Olivia tucked a strand of dark blond hair behind her ear, saying with painful restraint, “My mother … reminded me that I had a position to maintain. Earls' daughters don't turn bluestocking.”

“I'm sure some do. In fact, I imagine a great many have.” Rachel remembered what Simon had said about poetry. “Did you mean to read Greats?”

“No.” Olivia cast Rachel a small, rueful smile. “Economics.”

*   *   *

Rachel garnered more than a few sideways glances as she took herself and her crystal ball back to the flat. The clothes that had looked so dashing by night were limp and tawdry by day, and her evening slippers pinched abominably.

The porter did a credible job of concealing his smirk as she passed his glass box on the way to the lift; Simon must tip well.

The porter also, obligingly, provided her with the spare key. Rachel fitted it into the lock, wishing she could make everything else fit quite so neatly.

It had been so satisfying despising her half-sister.

But the half-sister she had despised, the woman in the
Tatler
photos, was, it seemed, as much of a fiction as Miss Vera Merton. The real Lady Olivia Standish had won a scholarship to Somerville. To study economics.

And Simon had helped her.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. Rachel plunked her crystal ball down in the bowl on the hall table and gratefully stepped out of her shoes. He might have assisted her during the tenure of their engagement. But that made no sense, either. She didn't think they accepted married women into college.

And if it had been after their engagement had ended …

If he was so furious about being shown the door, why help Olivia escape to Somerville?

That it was an escape, Rachel had no doubt. Rachel grimaced at her own reflection in the hall mirror as she padded, barefoot, down the corridor to the bedroom. If she had to spend breakfasts with Lady Ardmore, she would discover a sudden passion for academe, too.

Poor Olivia.

The thought took her by surprise. A month ago, the notion that she could feel sorry for her half-sister was laughable. Olivia had it all, didn't she? The name, the houses, the family connections. Their father.

And a mother who made her shrink into herself, who bullied her into speaking in a murmur.

Rachel found herself, suddenly, fiercely, missing her own mother, her mother who had never stopped her from climbing the highest tree or jumping into the deepest pond, who might scold her for tearing her frocks, but always sewed them up again, who taught her to play chess and sang to her when she was sick.

The bright room seemed darker; Rachel's own image swam before her eyes in the dressing-table mirror, the hoops still dangling from her ears. Madame Zelda tells all.… If only she could.

She understood it now, the urge that drove the credulous to spiritualists and fortune-tellers, the dangerous promise that she might see the shadow of her mother's face in the curved reflection of the crystal ball or hear her voice, once more, in the whisper of the cards, murmuring, as she had, not so very long ago, “I love you.”

Closing her eyes, Rachel pressed her fingers to her temples, breathing in deeply through her nose. She wouldn't go hysterical like Cece. Poor Cece …

She should see her, make sure she was all right.

Or as all right as she could be. Rachel sobered at the memory of the story John had told in the taxi.

A quick scrub with cold water and a brush through her tousled hair made Rachel feel more like herself. She stopped at the newsagent's on the corner to pick up a copy of the latest
Tatler
. Cece did so love to see who was in and out.

With the magazine beneath her arm, cool and fashionable in her blue suit and cloche hat, Rachel presented herself at the house on Park Lane. She was a regular caller by now, and she smiled confidently at Sneller as the butler opened the door.

“Is Miss Heatherington-Vaughn at home?”

It was a pro forma question. At this hour of the morning, Cece was always at home, lounging in her boudoir in her silk pajamas, her eyes still ringed with paint from the night before.

But Sneller didn't send her through. His eyes didn't meet hers as he said formally, “A moment, miss.”

“All right.” Puzzled, Rachel followed him into the great Moorish Hall, with its potted palms and pointed pilasters.

“This way, miss.” To Rachel's surprise, instead of taking her to the family wing, he led her up the stairs and into the sitting room on the first floor, which Rachel had visited once before with Simon.

Rachel bit her lip at the sight of the pictures in their silver frames; the boy beside Cece, the man in the uniform: they had to be Peter.

What must it feel like to walk past his image every day? Did Cece remember him as he had been then—or as she had last seen him?

Rachel could see a blond head over the back of the sofa by the cold fireplace. “Cece, darling!” she said with relief. She waved her
Tatler
in greeting. “Do you have the most frightful—Oh.”

It wasn't Cece who rose from behind the sofa. In the light from the long windows, Rachel could see the silver in the blond hair. While skillfully applied makeup might provide an illusion of youth, it couldn't hide the years entirely.

Rachel checked her progress. “Lady Frances. Good morning.”

“Miss Merton.” Lady Frances was smiling, but there was something about that smile that made Rachel nervous. It didn't reach her eyes, those pale-blue eyes that were so like Cece's.

“I am sorry,” Rachel said, taking a quick step back. “I didn't mean to disturb you. Sneller must have—I came to see Cece.”

“No mistake.” Lady Frances wasn't smiling anymore. She indicated a deep chair upholstered in chintz, set kitty-corner to the sofa. “I asked Sneller to bring you to me if you called. Do sit down, Miss Merton.”