The Other Daughter (6 page)

“Cousin David,” she said, and lifted her cheek to be kissed, as she used to when she was a little girl. They didn't embrace—her godfather wasn't an embracing sort of man—but Rachel felt her shoulders begin to relax at the warmth and nearness of him. “Thank you for seeing to the arrangements.”

“I can't say how sorry I am.” Cousin David looked nearly as weary as she felt. “We tried to find you, but—”

“I know.” Unreasonable to ask him why he hadn't tried harder, why he hadn't waited longer. Rachel spoke as lightly as she could. “I could murder the count's valet—he didn't bother to pass the messages on. I didn't even know she was … ill until Monday.”

Cousin David awkwardly patted her arm. “You mustn't blame yourself.”

Rachel's lips twisted. “Wouldn't you?”

“Er,” said Cousin David eloquently. Rustling himself into action, he waved a hand in the general direction of the tea table, an octagon of dark walnut, heavily carved in an exaggerated example of Victorian gothic. “You'll be wanting coffee, I imagine? You mustn't worry that it's the swill they serve in Hall. Spence makes coffee that is coffee. Hi, Spence!”

Feebly, Rachel protested. “Really, it's quite all right. I've had so much tea I'm sloshing with it. I don't need—”

“No, no, you mustn't worry. It's no trouble at all. Two coffees, Spence,” said Cousin David, thrusting the coffee things at his scout, who received the tray impassively. “And I should have some brandy about somewhere.…”

He began poking through a forest of bottles incongruously stashed in a cupboard below the bookshelves.

“Please, Cousin David, if I have any brandy, I'll be asleep before Spence brings the coffee.” Rachel touched a gloved hand lightly to his shoulder. “You needn't fuss, really.”

Cousin David rose slowly, brushing his hands off against his trousers. “I just wish—”

“I know.” She didn't, really, but she couldn't bear the thought of sympathy just now, even from Cousin David. Especially from Cousin David. Better to be brisk and businesslike, to focus on the necessities. “I understand you took charge of my mother's affairs?”

“Yes, yes. Just let me find the papers.…” He began rustling in a pile on one of the tables. The appearance of disorder was deceptive. Cousin David could locate a specific source from underneath a chair. In this case, it only took him a moment to extract a thin sheaf of papers and hand them to Rachel. “You should find it all present and accounted for.”

“All” consisted of her mother's will, a short and simple document, written in her mother's own hand and witnessed by Jim and the vicar. The writing was sloping and uneven, very different from her mother's usual tidy script. It would, Rachel realized, never have occurred to her to make a will. Before.

Biting her lip, she went on to the next item in the pile, her mother's bankbook, with a balance of one hundred and thirty-eight pounds.

Rachel drew a deep breath, struggling for equanimity. “I'm better off than I expected. If I'd known, I might have splurged on a second-class ticket.”

There were worried lines between Cousin David's eyes. “It's precious little to be going on with. Will you be returning to France?”

“Everyone seems very eager to send me back to France. Thank you.” Rachel took the chair he pulled out for her, tucking the will and bankbook into her bag. “If I can scrape the funds together, I'll take a typing course and hire myself out as a secretary.”

Cousin David moved a pile of books out of the way and sat down across from her. “If training is what you want,” he said hesitantly, “I can find you a course here. And then … the dean of Somerville might be in need of a new secretary.”

“You mean that you'll ask the dean of Somerville if she could possibly be in need of a new secretary?” Rachel couldn't hide the affection in her voice. “There's no need to contrive for me. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge of it, striking out on my own.”

He couldn't quite hide his relief. Cousin David might love her as a niece, but he had no desire for a daughter. “If you ever need anything … Ah, thank you, Spence.”

The cups were set out before them, the fragrant brew poured. Rachel waited until Cousin David had put sugar in his coffee before asking diffidently, “Did you see my mother, before—?”

“Yes.” Cousin David stirred his coffee, around and around and around. “I arrived in Netherwell on Friday morning.”

“Did she—” Rachel concentrated on her coffee. “Did she say anything?”

A shadow crossed Cousin David's face. “She was rambling,” he said at last. “Delirious with fever. But she did give me this to give to you.”

Cousin David fished in his waistcoat pocket, drawing out a thick golden oval, a thin chain threaded through the hasp. His fingers closed around it for a moment in a quick, convulsive grasp, before he held it out to Rachel.

“Here. It's only right that you have it.”

The gold was heavy on Rachel's palm. It was a brooch, ornate, old-fashioned, dominated by two intertwined filigree letters:
E
and
K
. Edward and Katherine. Her mother had once had other pieces of jewelry. A pearl ring that Rachel remembered from when she was little. A little brooch of seed pearls. A heavily engraved gold bracelet that had belonged to Rachel's grandmother. All those had disappeared, piece by piece, to pay the butcher and the baker, and, later, Rachel's school fees.

But the brooch had never left her breast.

“Thank you.” Rachel's throat was tight. Her fingers closed around the brooch. “I can't remember her without it.”

“No,” Cousin David agreed. “It was one of the few things she had left of your father.”

“Speaking of my father…” Rachel looked down at the elaborate
E
and
K
, woven together for all eternity. Easier to think about oddities than about the brooch and what it meant that it was now in her possession. “It sounds silly even to ask, but—is the Earl of Ardmore a relation of my father?”

Cousin David's hand jerked on his coffee cup, spilling brown liquid. “Clumsy, clumsy,” he murmured, mopping at the liquid with a napkin. “Why do you ask?”

Rachel reached into her bag, drawing out the page from
The Tatler
, folded neatly into fourths. “I found this in my mother's room last night. Under her pillow, of all strange places.”

Cousin David's fingers touched the edge of the paper. He drew it slowly closer to him.

“It is curious, isn't it?” She ought to have been prepared for it this time, but the sight of her father's face, beneath another man's top hat, was deeply disconcerting, like passing a mirror and seeing someone else's face reflected.

“Hmm. Yes. Curious.” Cousin David's face was set and still, his eyes fixed on the little cutting. Clearing his throat, he said, “I didn't think Katherine read
The Tatler
.”

“She didn't. Not that I know of. I imagine Alice must have brought it. Or a nurse. But that's not really the point, is it? When I saw it—when I saw it, I had thought it might be my father. Of course, then I realized how foolish that was,” she added hastily. “But it does look very like, doesn't it?”

“Very like.”

There was something about his stillness, about the short nature of his response, that was making Rachel edgy. She scooted forward in her chair, crossing her legs at the ankle. “That's why I wondered, you see. Whether they might be related. The resemblance is rather remarkable,” she prompted.

Now was David's chance to say, yes, the earl was a fifteenth cousin twice removed, but he simply nodded his head, jerkily, like a puppet. “Yes. Quite remarkable.”

Even down to the scar on his chin. “You'll think I'm mad.” Rachel's voice seemed to echo in the stillness, too loud, too high. “I was imagining the most absurd things. He looks so like my father. But—my father is dead.”

Silence.

Rachel looked across the table at Cousin David. “He
is
dead.”

“I told your mother that it would come out eventually.” Cousin David's voice was so low that she could hardly hear him. “I wanted to tell you. Years ago.”

“Tell me.” The edge of the chair bit into the backs of Rachel's legs. “Tell me what, exactly?”

“It isn't a chance resemblance.” Cousin David sat a little straighter in his chair, his voice quiet, but clear. “The Earl of Ardmore looks like your father because he is your father.”

 

FOUR

“That isn't funny,” said Rachel sharply.

“I'm not trying to be funny. Please—” Cousin David half rose. “Sit down? And I'll try to tell you what I can.”

Rachel hadn't realized she was standing. “My father was a botanist. He died when I was four years old.”

“It seemed best at the time—” Cousin David started, and then shook his head. “I shouldn't be the one telling you this. Your mother—”

Her mother wasn't here. She wouldn't be telling anyone anything again.

There had been some small consolation in the thought that her parents, at last, were together.

They had to be. This nonsense about her father being alive—it was just that, nonsense. And cruel. So cruel. She hadn't thought David could be cruel.

“This isn't true.” Rachel blundered back, the legs of her chair scraping against the worn floorboards. “My father is dead.”

There was discomfort on David's face, discomfort and guilt and, worst of all, pity.

Rachel could feel panic rising in her chest. “He was a botanist. He died on a collecting trip. You know that. You were there. You helped us—you helped us move.”

That haphazard departure, clothes flung into trunks, her mother's head down, shoulders stiff with determination, Rachel clinging to her skirts, whining to be picked up. In her memory, it was always darkness, lit by the light of a few candles, as her mother moved from wardrobe to trunk, trunk to wardrobe.

“Your mother thought that it would be easier for you if you believed that your father had died.” She could see the spots of sweat on David's forehead, although the room was cool and damp. “Metaphorically, you might say in a way that he did.”

“Metaphorically,” echoed Rachel. “Meta
phor
ically? One doesn't die metaphorically. One is either alive or one isn't.”

Her father couldn't be alive. Her father couldn't be alive, because if he was, it meant that he had abandoned them. He had crumpled them up and thrown them away like the newspaper from a twist of chips.

“It wasn't my choice,” said Cousin David quickly. “Your mother thought it was better that way. She didn't want you to be … confused.”

Confused? That didn't begin to approach it. The clipping lay on the table still, where Cousin David had discarded it.

Lady Olivia Standish, escorted by her father, Edward, Earl of Ardmore.

Her father.

Rachel's father.

“More confusing this way, don't you think?” said Rachel, clinging to her composure by keeping her voice hard and her face harder. “You told me my father was dead. Forgive me if I find his sudden resurrection disconcerting.”

“My dear.” David took a step toward her, stopped. “I'm so sorry. If you could pretend—”

“Pretend that I never saw
that
?” Rachel gestured sharply toward the clipping. She was pacing now, in short sharp bursts, her skirt tangling around her legs. Why? Why couldn't David have lied? He could have lied, said it was a chance resemblance. He could have let her keep her father, the father she remembered, the father she believed had loved her.

She could feel grief rising within her, swamping her, grief for that father she remembered so dimly, the botanist who had died on a faraway island. She remembered the feel of his hair beneath her hands, barley fair; the glint of his spectacles in the lamplight; the joy of being hoisted aloft on his shoulders.

Rachel could feel him receding from her, slipping away, the father she thought she had known.

Rachel came to a hard stop against the back of the chair. “He was alive. All this time. He abandoned us.”

“It wasn't like that.”

The heavily carved walnut bit into her palms. “What was it like, then?” Rachel demanded. “Was he kidnapped by gypsies? Did he lose his memory? Or did he simply forget the way to our door?”

“He didn't—he didn't know where you were. It was your mother's wish that there should be a clean break.”

Anger flamed through Rachel. “My mother
loved
my father.”

“Your father loved your mother,” countered Cousin David. “Truly, he did.”

“Not enough to marry her.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it hit its mark. Cousin David made a helpless gesture with one hand. “There were circumstances.…”

“Circumstances,” Rachel echoed.

There had been no little church in the countryside, no marriage lines. The ring on her mother's finger, the widow's weeds she had worn for a year after they had moved to Netherwell—lies. All lies. The respectability that had guarded and cloaked Rachel all her life was nothing more than a flimsy sham, a thing of paste and cardboard.

Cousin David reached for a decanter and set it down heavily on the table. “Your father wasn't meant to be earl. When his older brother died—the world changed.” He looked helplessly at Rachel, the crystal stopper in one hand. “I wish I could make you understand the obligations—the expectations. He was forced to give up his old desires and ambitions.”

“His old daughter?” Rachel shot back.

Cousin David's eyes flicked down, to the clipping on the table. “Would you—would you like some sherry? It's really quite drinkable.”

“No, thank you.” She was all full up with wormwood and gall. Rachel braced her hands against the table. “Was everything a lie, then? Are you even my cousin?”