“I’ll leave that to harder heads than my own.” He was holding a glass filled with a pale amber liquid, but it looked scarcely touched. His voice was as clear as his eyes. “Is this your first visit to the Gargoyle?”
So much for being wicked and worldly. “Does it show?”
“Well…” There was that self-deprecating smile again, lending his otherwise unremarkable features a potent charm. Green and gold flecks danced in his brown eyes. “Let’s just say you don’t have the requisite bags beneath your eyes.”
“Neither do you. You look far too well rested to be out this late.”
“I’m not usually,” her companion confessed. Holding his glass in both hands, he confided, “I’m only here as a favor.”
Rachel struck a pose, cigarette holder in one hand, champagne glass in the other. “I’ve heard that before.”
“In this case, it’s true. I’m only here to make sure my friend is delivered safely home at the end of the night. Last time he was left to himself, he stole a policeman’s helmet and tried to park it on the top of Nelson’s Column.”
Rachel choked on a laugh. “I thought Nelson already had a hat. A rather wide one.”
“Yes, not to mention that he’s rather a ways off the ground. It was pure luck that he didn’t break his fool neck.” When Rachel looked at him quizzically, he said, with a quick grin, “Fortunately for him, he managed to land on the policeman.”
“I shouldn’t laugh, but … poor man!”
“Which one?”
“The policeman, of course.”
“Sympathies here would tend to run in the opposite direction. Pinching policemen’s helmets is the urban equivalent of chasing foxes.” John’s amiable face turned serious. “It’s a damnable waste, all of it.”
“A few hats?”
“It’s more than the hats. It’s the waste of time and talent. Where are all the men who ought to be our natural leaders? They’re frittering away their time in schoolboy pranks. If even half of them would own up to their responsibilities and just do something with their time—How are we to expect the lower orders to do their bit if we don’t do ours?”
Rachel Woodley agreed. Vera Merton wasn’t supposed to. “Isn’t being decorative rather a lot of work? They also serve who only powder their noses.”
“I’m sure Marie Antoinette thought the same thing,” said John grimly.
“Are we to be faced with a trip in the tumbrels, then?” Rachel kept her voice deliberately light.
“It was less than a year ago that we were under martial law,” said John seriously. “We’re only fortunate the general strike ended when it did. As peaceably as it did. Prices are high, wages are low, the Bolshies are stirring the pot from abroad—”
“And here we are,” Rachel finished for him, “fiddling while Rome burns.”
Simon would have made a comment about it being a pleasant enough tune. John looked grim. “Just about, I’m afraid. If we have a summer like the last one—”
“I wasn’t here for the last one,” offered Rachel. “I’ve been abroad. In France.”
“And I’m spoiling your homecoming with gloom and doom.” There was a moment’s pause, and then John said tentatively, “Might I make it up to you with a drink?”
Looking into his warm brown eyes, Rachel felt a little fizz of pleasure. There was something terribly gratifying about being offered a drink by a handsome man.
Rachel quashed it. She wasn’t meant to be flirting; she was here to make the acquaintance of Cece Heatherington-Vaughn. And she had. Once Rachel had secured that all-important meeting with her father, Vera Merton would vanish from London society as though she had never been.
Hoisting her glass, Rachel said, “I still have most of this one. And there are no apologies needed, really. I found it—refreshing.”
There were smile lines at the corners of his lips. “As long as I haven’t put a damper on your evening.”
“Quite the contrary. I enjoyed it tremendously. Not the prospect of the tumbrel,” Rachel added, with mock seriousness. “But the rest. It made a nice change from shouting nonsense over the sound of the band.”
John rested a palm on the banister. “If you don’t like nonsense … what brings you here tonight?”
Rachel opted for a version of the truth. “It was my cousin’s idea.…” She glanced up, and, as if summoned, there was Simon at the top of the stairs. Rachel raised a hand. “There he is now.”
She could tell the moment Simon spotted John. He checked slightly, so slightly that Rachel almost missed it. When he resumed his downward progress, it was with an exaggerated grace that was all the more aggressive for being so controlled.
“Trevannion.” Simon’s voice was smooth as cream; he practically purred. “I see you’ve met my cousin.”
“Montfort.” Mr. Trevannion wasn’t purring. His back was very straight. Turning to Rachel, he bowed stiffly, from the neck. “Miss Merton. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“And yours,” said Rachel, but she spoke to his retreating back.
Simon glanced down at Rachel. His lips were smiling, but his eyes were cold. “Well, well,” he said softly. “Still waters.”
Rachel pulled her chiffon wrap around her shoulders. “Did you see your man about a dog?”
“Yes, a great barking mastiff. But you seem to have found even larger quarry.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? That, my dear, was John Trevannion.”
The name meant nothing to her. “Yes?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Simon’s lips twisted in a crooked smile. “Angels waltz…”
“Angels,” said Rachel sharply, “aren’t doing anything of the kind. Not here. What on earth are you on about?”
“No,” agreed Simon. “Here they do the Charleston. They shuffle and shimmy and soil their little wings.”
His eyes rested thoughtfully on Mr. Trevannion. At least, Rachel thought it was he. It was hard to distinguish one dark-coated man from another in the swiftly moving crowd.
“Is there something I’m meant to know about Mr. Trevannion? In plain English this time.”
“In plain English.” Simon raised his glass in a silent toast. “John Trevannion is your sister’s fiancé.”
NINE
There was no reason to feel quite so defensive, but Rachel did, as though she’d been caught out in something illicit and more than a little sordid.
Her sister’s fiancé?
It wasn’t as though she’d known. And if she had …
Rachel’s mind groped after that thought and failed. If she’d known, she’d most likely never have spoken to him. He wasn’t at all what she would have imagined for the polished, marcelled girl in the picture in The Tatler. He had been … pleasant. That was all. Pleasant.
And there had been nothing at all sordid about it.
Rachel took refuge in flippancy. “Can he get me into Carrisford Court, then? It will save me the bother of fortune-telling for Cece.”
“Save your seductive wiles,” said Simon sardonically. “Only the countess issues invitations to Caffers.”
Rachel bristled. She’d just been speaking politely to the man; she’d hardly tried to vamp him. “And yet she invited you.”
“My situation was somewhat unique.” Before Rachel could press him, he raised his voice to call out over her shoulder, “Waugh! I’ve fodder for your column. Vera, this is my competition at the Daily Express.”
Rachel forced a social smile onto her lips as a slender man dressed with dandyish attention to detail paused on his way down the stairs.
“Not anymore,” he said. “They’ve given me the sack.”
“In that case,” said Simon drily, “I won’t spell my cousin’s name for you.”
“No, but be sure you get mine right.” Waugh started down the stairs and paused. “I say, since I can’t use it … Did you hear what happened to Sybil and Mamie?”
“Other than the usual
debauchery?” Simon spoke as though they had all the time in the world.
Rachel glanced longingly toward the base of the stairs.
Waugh leaned an elbow on the banister, settling in for a good story. “They left their latchkey at home—and they haven’t a night porter, you know. So they knocked up a neighbor from home.” There was an impish glint in his eye. “His London residence just happens to be … number ten Downing Street.”
“The prime minister?” said Rachel incredulously.
“None other.” Waugh appeared well pleased with her reaction. “Can you imagine the horror on the part of the provincial conservative women’s caucuses? Society beauties at the door at midnight! Orgies at number ten! The Leader of the Opposition up in arms, miners protesting … Let’s hope it doesn’t bring the government down.”
“You’d best save it for your book,” said Simon lazily. “It’s too hot for my column.”
“Oh, I shall, I shall.” Wafting a hand in their general direction, the other man continued none too steadily down the stairs. “Don’t worry; I’ll find a place for you in there, too, Montfort.”
“Oh, joy, oh, rapture,” murmured Simon. “Like everyone else, Waugh is working on a novel.”
“Yes, that’s all very well.” Rachel couldn’t be less interested in a stranger’s scribblings. “You say your situation was unique. How did you procure your invitation to—to Caffers?”
“Very nice,” said Simon approvingly. “You almost said the name as though you meant it. Try it again, this time without the pause.”
Rachel handed Simon her empty champagne glass. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“Am I?” Setting the glass down on a tray, Simon led her down the stairs, saying conversationally, “Have you had enough for one evening, or would you like to join Cece on the rounds of the nightclubs?”
Rachel could feel the kohl around her eyes melting with the heat. Her chiffon flounces felt limp, and there was a blister forming on one heel. “There’s more?”
“All right, Cinderella.” Solicitously, Simon placed a hand on the small of her back, ushering her inexorably down the stairs. “You’ve done very well for your first time out. I’ll see you into a cab.”
They paused on the doorstep, the cool night air against Rachel’s damp skin making her shiver. “What about you?”
There was a group of revelers piling out of a cab, somewhat clumsily, talking and laughing and stumbling into one another. A woman stepped on her own hem, tearing it with a loud rending sound. They all seemed to find this hysterically funny.
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 o
f 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.”
The Other Daughter Page 11