The Other Daughter Page 5

  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. “Metaphorically? 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?”

  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.”