The Other Daughter (2 page)

Rachel's voice trailed off as she glanced down at the paper. Not from Paris. To Paris. And not addressed to the countess, but to her.

R. Woodley. Hotel de Brillac, Paris.

The message below was in English, not French, transcribed exactly as it had been transmitted.

Mrs. Woodley ill. Influenza. Immediate return advised. J.S.

Influenza! The dreaded word blazed out from the creased page. Influenza had come through Netherwell before, just after the war. Rachel could hear, like an echo, the tolling of the church bell, again and again and again, the endless knell of it, until the bell ringer himself was taken ill, the sudden silence worse than the constant clamor.

But that had been eight years ago. Surely, by now … And Jim Seddon was a good doctor, a modern doctor, a much better doctor than old Dr. Potter, whose general view on medicine appeared to be that if it had been good enough for Hippocrates, it was good enough for him.

Rachel forced the air back into her lungs. Jim Seddon was not only a good doctor but he was also the husband of Rachel's oldest friend. And her mother—her mother was made of steel, lightly covered with a lace collar. The influenza might have killed countless others, but it hadn't reckoned on Katherine Woodley.

But Jim wouldn't be asking for her unless there was reason for her to go.

A train to Calais. If she could get a car to take her to the train, she could take the train to Paris, then from Paris to Calais. A boat from Calais to Dover, then the grim process in reverse, a train from Calais to London, another from London to King's Lynn, then the change to the small local line that ran through Netherwell.

It was Monday night. With luck, and presuming the train workers didn't go on strike between here and Calais, she might be home by this time tomorrow.

Which meant … Rachel glanced down at the telegram, at the date on it. She looked and then looked again, sure that she must have misread the smudged numbers, that the Continental handwriting—that silly habit of crossing their sevens—must have misled her.

But there was no mistake.

The date on the telegram was Wednesday, five days before.

Rachel looked up at Manon in disbelief. “This is five days old!”

Manon's eyes dropped. “Hector brought it with him when he came up with Monsieur le Comte.”

Hector was the count's man, a barrel-chested, swaggering soul whose primary qualification for his present post appeared to be having served as the count's batman during the war. He also fancied himself a ladies' man.

Rachel hadn't fancied Hector, and had made that quite plain, or as plain as a sharp heel to the instep could convey.

Which meant that if a telegram had arrived in Paris for Rachel, Hector would have taken delighted spite in making sure the message took as long as possible to reach her.

Manon twisted her hands in her apron. “He—he said he had other things to do than be a telephone exchange.”

“Oh, does he?” Fantasizing about where she would like to apply a telephone wasn't doing anything to get her home to her mother. And the girls were beginning to turn; Anne-Marie already had that worried look between her eyes. Rachel lowered her voice. “Thank you, Manon. You did well to bring this to me.”

Hector didn't speak English. Neither, as far as she knew, did any of the staff of the Paris house. That didn't stop her from wanting to take the back of a hairbrush to all of them. Surely, a telegram conveyed its own urgency, even if one couldn't understand the words.

Time to plot revenge later. Right now, the important thing was getting herself onto that train, with all haste. Five days' worth of haste.

With painstaking self-control, Rachel said, “Would you take Amelie, Anne-Marie, and Albertine back to the nursery for their baths? I need to speak to madame.”

“You're not meant to interrupt Maman while she's receiving,” said Albertine with a sniff.

Amelie rounded on her sister. “You're not meant to be speaking in French.”

“Hush,
petite
.” Rachel dropped a kiss on the top of Amelie's head. “I'll be back to check your ears. Anne-Marie, you will look after Amelie for me, and make sure she gets her chocolate?”

Anne-Marie was a weather vane for any worry, quick to pick up on trouble, but she straightened her shoulders at Rachel's words and nodded, just a little.

“Good.” Rachel was already moving, down the corridor, toward the back stairs, her brain already occupied with half a dozen details. “
Merci
, Manon.”

She caught one of the footmen as he came out from the hall with a tray of champagne, whispered a few words in his ear. She didn't know the staff terribly well; most of them were from the Paris house, brought up for the occasion. But everyone knew who she was: the girls' English governess. She had grown accustomed to being a curiosity, like a zebra. Only rather more prosaic and with fewer stripes.

The footman went off in search of madame, his tray growing lighter along the way, and Rachel stood in the shadows, out of sight, trying not to jiggle with impatience.

Wednesday. Her mother had been ill since Wednesday, and the telegram had just sat there, crumpled at the bottom of Hector's pocket. And Jim Seddon! Why hadn't he tried again? He might have sent another telegram, or tried to telephone—

The footman returned. If Mees would follow? Madame could spare a moment in the small salon.

The name was a misnomer. The small salon was twice the size of the cottage in Netherwell, decked with gilding and mirrors designed to intimidate and overawe. No surface had been left ungilded, including madame herself, who stood by the mantelpiece, jeweled slipper tapping with impatience.

“What is it, mademoiselle, that could not wait?” she said, looking pointedly at the clock. “If one of my daughters is ill—”

She sounded more annoyed than distressed by the prospect.

“The girls are all well,” said Rachel hastily. Just because madame was away for nine-tenths of the year didn't mean she didn't have maternal feelings. Theoretically. Rachel took a deep breath and pushed on. “It's my mother, madame. She is … very ill.” Saying it somehow made it more real, more frightening. “I must return to England at once. I can—I can be back in a week. Manon will mind the nursery while I am gone.”

Madame de Brillac's gray eyes, flat as uncut diamonds, swept her up and down. “No,” said Madame de Brillac, and turned to go.

The word echoed oddly in Rachel's ears. Or perhaps that was her own voice, repeating, “No?”

Madame de Brillac paused. With great condescension, she explained, “It is not convenient for you to leave at this time.”

And that was all.

Only it wasn't. It couldn't be. Rachel hurried after her. “My mother needs me, madame.” Her mother had needed her days ago. Urgency loosened Rachel's tongue. “There are only the two of us, you see. I am the only one she has in the world. My father—”

The countess didn't care about Rachel's father. “Good night, Miss Woodley.”

Good night? She wasn't paid nearly enough for this, Rachel thought furiously. The countess left her daughters for weeks at a time. She'd scarcely taken the time to interview Rachel, just a glance at her references, a look up and down, and an instruction to try to keep Anne-Marie from squinting so.

But when Rachel needed to go home—for a week! All of a week!—suddenly the countess rediscovered her maternal feelings.

The woman had the maternal feeling of a weasel.

“I am sorry, madame,” Rachel heard herself saying, in cold, elegant French. If she had been teaching, she had also been learning, and her French, by now, was as aristocratic as madame's own. “But that will not do. If you will not give me leave, I will be forced to tender my resignation. At once.”

The countess paused in the doorway, her diamonds glinting coldly in the light of the great chandelier. “You may collect your wages from Gaston.” As an afterthought, she added, “Leave the keys with him when you go.”

Rachel gaped after her. “But—”

Surely it was less trouble to lose one's governess for a week than to hire a new one?

Apparently not. “Good-bye, Mademoiselle Woodley,” said Madame de Brillac, with precisely the degree of condescension due from countess to wayward employee. Another look from those cold, flat eyes. “I trust you will not bother me for a reference.”

A reference? Fury gripped Rachel. What did it matter about the reference? Anne-Marie—Amelie—How was she to tell them?

She could run after the countess; she could beg her to reconsider. And what? And stay at Brillac? Let her mother suffer alone?

The image tormented Rachel: her mother, lying helpless, too wracked with chills to move. There was no phone in the cottage; there wasn't even electricity. The cottage sat at the very end of the village, isolated from the other houses, its nearest neighbor the vicarage. It might have been days before anyone realized her mother was ill, days in which her mother, sweat-damp and miserable, battled the disease alone, too weak even to boil water.

The hall was heady with the scent of hothouse flowers and a cacophony of competing perfumes. Rachel's head swam with the horrible sweetness of it. No time to waste on ifs and might have beens; the train wouldn't wait for her.

There wasn't much to pack in her own little room, only a few skirts and shirtwaists, a handful of books, a hat that had the claim of being a “Paris hat” only by its origin, but not any pretense to style. It all fit in the one carpetbag, a hand-me-down from the vicar.

And then, good-byes.

Anne-Marie, all big brown eyes. “Why are you leaving us?” In French, but it was no time to enforce English, just time to enfold her in a quick hug.

“Because she doesn't like you.” Albertine jeered very effectively, but there was something in her voice, so young beneath the scorn, that made Rachel wish she had tried harder with her, had had more time. It wasn't Albertine's fault that she was so very like her mother.

Rachel tried to put it as simply as she could. “My mother is very ill. She needs me at home.”

“But we need you,” said Amelie. She thought a moment. “Sophie will miss you.”

Oh, Sophie. Sophie was full of pronouncements. Rachel would miss Sophie. She would miss all of them.

Perhaps, once her mother was on the road to recovery—

Rachel squelched that thought. The countess wouldn't take her back. And, even if she did, Rachel had learned, two families ago, that it didn't do to get too attached. Amelie might nestle close to her now, but in another few years, she would be ready to put up her hair and let down her skirts, and Rachel would be on her way to another family, carpetbag in hand.

She might live with them, teach them, even come to care for them, but they weren't her family.

The only family she had was her mother.

By dint of shamelessly lying to the chauffeur, telling him madame had authorized her use of the car, Rachel made it to the station in time for an eleven fifteen train to Paris. The train lurched and swayed; it was deathly cold in the car, the windows so fogged with her breath that she couldn't see out. Outside, she knew, the trees were starting to sprout their first green buds, but she could see none of that, only the ghostly reflection of her own face, her unfashionable hat drawn low around her ears to keep out the chill, her cheekbones too high, her mouth too wide, her hair dark against her pale face.

There was nothing remarkable in that face, just another nursery governess, another woman in a shabby skirt, clutching a carpetbag on her lap. Nothing remarkable except to her mother, who loved her.

On and on through the darkness the train went, the rhythm of the wheels, the puff of the engines, a steady backdrop to her anxiety. Slow, slow, so painfully, horribly slow.

Once, once upon a time, so very long ago, there had been three of them. Rachel could just remember those halcyon days. It couldn't have been summer always, but that was how she remembered it. They had lived in a little house with a garden, and if her father was frequently away, he always came back again, sweeping her up into his arms and spinning her about while Rachel squealed and clutched at his coat.

Until that last time, when he hadn't come back at all.

He had died somewhere, far, far away. He had been a botanist, her father. Something to do with rare plants, or at least that was what her mother had told her. He had fallen ill on one of his collecting trips, in a far-flung country that was just a little spot on the globe, dead of tropical fever.

Sometimes, when she was young, Rachel used to look at those specks in the vast blue of the atlas, specks with names like Martinique and St. Lucia, St. Croix and Mustique, and would wonder on which of them her father was buried. She had, as girls did, spun fancies for herself. Her father wasn't dead at all, just missing. He hadn't been a botanist, but a secret agent, off on a deadly mission. Or the heir to a lost kingdom, one of the smaller European sort, forced to go underground to evade the forces of the rebels who had taken over his homeland.

Her father was a daydream, but her mother was real. She was a cool hand on Rachel's brow when she was ill; a voice reading
Peter Rabbit
; a firm hand bundling her into her coat and off to school. More recently, she was an English postmark on a letter, a package in the post: a pair of warm gloves, a piece of the Christmas pudding for luck. Little things that made Rachel feel less far from home.

Her mother was very good about the little things.

Rachel hunched forward in her seat, urging the sleepy train to move faster. Good heavens, did they have horses towing the blasted thing? What was the point of a train at all if it didn't go any faster than that?

It was past two in the morning when the train decanted Rachel into the chill of the Gare du Nord. The ticket windows were shut, the bookstalls closed. Only a handful of stranded travelers were scattered around the echoing room, sitting on their trunks, sunk into the collars of their coats, their bundles clutched to them.