The Other Daughter

by Lauren Willig

  “Perhaps he was afraid of what his future might hold.” Lady Olivia lifted the coffeepot. “Would you prefer coffee or tea?”

  Had her sister just made a joke? Rachel wasn’t quite sure. It had sounded like one, or a tentative attempt in that direction. “Coffee, please.”

  “Oh, good.” Rachel extended her cup as Lady Olivia poured. “The tea’s gone quite cold, but the coffee is still drinkable.”

  “Why not add more hot water?”

  “I don’t like to bother Cook,” said Lady Olivia vaguely.

  Rachel busied herself in reaching for a piece of toast, a variety of comments unspoken on her lips. It was, she realized, like trying to speak a foreign language, one where the grammar was entirely different and the concepts didn’t quite translate.

  Falling back on safer territory, Rachel nodded at the paper next to Lady Olivia’s place. “Not the Daily Yell?”

  “My mother would expire of shock.” Lady Olivia glanced quickly over her shoulder. “No. It’s The Times. My father usually reads it, but as he’s not here…” She extended the paper to Rachel. “Would you like it?”

  The paper was warm to the touch. It must have been ironed, Rachel realized, so that unsightly newsprint wouldn’t transfer itself to aristocratic fingers.

  Rachel shoved it back. “But you were reading it. I wouldn’t want—”

  “My mother doesn’t approve of my reading the paper at the table,” Olivia confessed. “There’s an article about Dr. Radlett’s experiments.”

  Dr. Radlett? It took Rachel a moment to remember. That afternoon at Heatherington House felt like a lifetime ago.

  She had thought her half-sister cold, cold and stiff. There was no denying the stiffness, but Rachel wondered if she might have been mistaken about the cold.

  Rachel leaned her elbows on the white cloth. “What did you think of Dr. Radlett’s lecture? You never said.”

  Lady Olivia poked at her kipper. “It is a noble project.…”

  “But?”

  “It really is rot.” Glancing up, Lady Olivia favored Rachel with one of her fleeting smiles. “I don’t think Dr. Radlett realizes that, though. He seems genuinely devoted to his project.”

  Not to mention John Trevannion.

  “Why didn’t you say, that day?” Rachel dipped her knife into the butter. “When Simon asked?”

  Lady Olivia struggled with her kipper. “He does mean so well,” she said apologetically. “Dr. Radlett, I mean.”

  If that was the real reason, Rachel would eat that kipper.

  Rachel’s knife made a scraping noise as she dragged the butter over her toast. “Is it better, do you think, to be an unwitting charlatan than a witting one?”

  Olivia wrinkled her nose at her kipper. “It’s more honest, at least. That does have to count for something.”

  There was a time when Rachel had considered herself honest. Before her world had turned on its head.

  She took a vicious bite of her toast. “I’m not sure intentions make much of a difference in the end. I hear the road to hell is paved with them.”

  She’d meant it frivolously, but Olivia answered seriously. “Yes, but one does have to live with oneself.”

  “Not necessarily.” Rachel abandoned her toast. She wasn’t feeling terribly hungry anymore. “There are any number of ways to avoid living with oneself. Gin, for example.”

  “Yes, but you’re still there at the base of it, aren’t you? Only with a terrible head in the morning.” At Rachel’s look of surprise, Lady Olivia looked quickly down at her teacup. “At least, that’s what Si—what someone once said.”

  “Mmm.” Rachel took a quick sip of her coffee. She ought, she knew, to be scrounging for information about their father, but she couldn’t help but wonder just what the true nature of the relationship between her sister and Simon had been. “If it’s the same someone I know, then he doesn’t seem to have taken his own advice.”

  “Would you like more coffee?” Olivia busied herself with the coffeepot, giving Rachel a good view of the side parting in her gently waved blond hair.

  “No, I’ve had quite enough.” What would she do if Rachel were to ask her about Simon right out?

  Ring for more coffee, most likely. Or discover a pressing need for fresh toast.

  Her half-sister reminded Rachel of a puzzle box Mr. Treadwell had given her for her birthday one year. If one pressed on the right combination, the box sprang open. It was no use trying to shake it or prod it; that only jammed the delicate mechanism.

  Rachel had detested that puzzle box.

  There was the sound of a voice in the hall. “—tell Anna to bring it to my sitting room. Not the morning room. And I want the car for two. Not ten past.”

  The voice became louder as the door opened and a woman sailed through, still speaking rapidly and loudly, the slap of her solid heels against the floor punctuating her more decided utterances.

  Fashions had changed since John Singer Sargent had immortalized Lady Ardmore in the painting on the stairs. Years had passed. Her hair had dimmed from brown to gray, corseting no longer cinched in her middle to the then-fashionable hourglass, and the large diamonds that adorned her in the painting were undoubtedly stashed away in a safe.

  The woman in the doorway wore a skirt and crepe blouse; her graying hair was carefully marcelled; and her jewels, while large, were what one might pardonably wear during the day, pea-sized sapphires in the ears, a brooch at her collar, and old-fashioned hoop diamonds on her fingers.

  But it was unmistakably the woman in the portrait.

  The woman for whom Rachel’s father had left them.

  Lady Ardmore’s chest puffed out like a pigeon as she stared at Rachel. Her voice dripped frost.

  “And who is this?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Lady Olivia scrambled to her feet.

  “This is—” She started to say something and checked herself. “This is Miss Vera Merton, Mama. She is a friend of Cece.”

  Slowly, Rachel stood, taking the measure of the woman who had usurped her mother’s position, the woman who had barged in with her money, with that smug, pug-like face, and snatched her father away from them.

  Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe he would have left them anyway. But Rachel wasn’t in the mood to be rational about it.

  “Lady Ardmore.” She deliberately let her fringed shawl drape down around her shoulders, her bangles clattering on her arms. “Good morning.”

  “One of Cecelia’s friends?” Lady Ardmore’s nose pinched as though she smelled something nasty. To Olivia, she said, “Well, see that she leaves by the servants’ entrance. We don’t want people to talk.”

  And that was all.

  Rachel was left standing at the dining room table, her hands braced against the white cloth, as Lady Ardmore firmly and pointedly turned her back.

  Olivia’s eyes darted toward Rachel. “Mama…”

  “And you!” The sapphires on Lady Ardmore’s breast glittered meanly as her blouse expanded. She stumped toward the chafing dishes. “Out until all hours, I hear. Never mind that the household is in utter disarray. Never mind that your father runs off to Oxford without so much as a by-your-leave. I am sure we have nothing better to do than to serve as a hostel for each and every one of Cecelia’s dubious acquaintances.”

  With each word, Lady Olivia’s face went a little more blank.

  “I am sorry, Mama,” she murmured, in that quiet voice. “We did not mean to inconvenience you.”

  Lady Ardmore gave an unpleasant laugh. “Oh, I’m sure you never mean it. You just gad on, with never a thought to anyone but yourself. Never mind the sacrifices I’ve made for you, the trouble I’ve gone to to put you forward—”

  Sacrifices? Lady Ardmore hadn’t the faintest notion.

  Rachel was still standing. She heard her own voice saying, loudly, deliberately, “If anyone is to blame, it is I, Lady Ardmore. I forgot my latchkey. Lady Olivia very generously saved me from wandering the streets until da
wn. It was an act of pure kindness.”

  Olivia gave a quick, anxious shake of her head.

  Lady Ardmore’s eyes narrowed. “Our home is not a boardinghouse, Olivia. I do not know what Fanny allows, but you, my girl, have a position to maintain. You won’t be able to play these little tricks when you’re a politician’s wife.”

  “No, Mama,” murmured Olivia.

  It was, thought Rachel, the most incredible act of self-effacement. Olivia seemed to blend back into the richly figured walls, just a shadow among the shadows.

  Slowly, Rachel sank down into her own seat. Her piece of toast was cold on her plate, the edges curling slightly.

  Lady Olivia sent her a grateful look.

  Lady Ardmore carried on, her voice rising with her grievances. “As if I hadn’t enough to worry about! Your brother’s twenty-first in four days—and that wretched Miss Lane has twisted her wrist. Or says she did,” she added darkly. “One can never tell with these people. Malingering in her room, taking up good space in a bed. I am sure she did it on purpose to inconvenience me. And who, I ask you, who is to write up the cards?”

  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.