The Other Daughter (10 page)

Rachel cast him a withering look. “I don't think the one necessarily leads to the other.”

“Crushed,” drawled Mr. Montfort. “Let's try it and see, shall we?”

He held open the door of the salon with a flourish.

There was something terribly lulling about Mr. Montfort's calculated rudeness, about the mockery he made of the normal rules of behavior. Like a court jester, constantly mumming. But she'd be a fool, Rachel thought soberly, to let herself be taken in by that. Beneath the banter lay something else entirely, something dark and dangerous and disconcertingly serious.

And she was, by her own choosing, placing herself in his power.

“Of course,” said Mr. Montfort blandly, “if you would rather just go home…”

Home. Home to Netherwell, where her belongings were sorted into stacks. After that, the alluring prospect of a cold-water flat, with a meter for electricity and a loo down the hall, shared with a half dozen other industrious souls, bickering over who had used whose cake of soap. Cabbage smells from the kitchen and stale biscuits for tea.

“Don't get your hopes up,” said Rachel, and swept past him into the salon. “I mean to see this through.”

The hairdresser was swift. Hanks of hair fell around her. Rapunzel hair, long ropes of it. The hairdresser lifted the cloth from her shoulders, using a soft-bristled brush to sweep the last strands of hair from her back.

Rachel's head felt strange, the back of her neck naked. She couldn't help glancing at the hair on the floor, years and years of it, gone in an instant.

Dropping his paper on the bench, Mr. Montfort strolled over to her. She'd half expected him to leave, his box and message delivered, but he'd stayed, one shoulder propped against the wall, keeping up a running patter of sardonic commentary on the day's headlines as the hairdresser did arcane things to the back of Rachel's head.

“Cheer up,” came Mr. Montfort's voice from behind her. “You've hardly sold away your soul.”

“No, just my hair.” The hairdresser swirled the chair around, holding up a mirror so that Rachel could see.

Mr. Montfort was right; the short cut did highlight her cheekbones.
You have the cheekbones to be a Vera
.

Rachel didn't know who the woman in the mirror was, but she rather liked her.

She looked up at Mr. Montfort, who stood, frowning down at her.

“Well? What do you think?” Rachel demanded cheekily.

“You'll do,” he said curtly.

Rachel gave her head an experimental shake, enjoying the way her hair swished across her jawline, the lightness, the freedom of it. “Keep paying me compliments like that and my head will be too big for my hat.”

Mr. Montfort didn't take the bait. He bundled his paper up under his arm. “How soon can you come up to town?”

Rachel scrambled down out of the chair. A business relationship, he had said. He was certainly all business now. She hurried after him, toward the door. “I need another week to get my affairs in order.” A week to transfer her old life into boxes and bags. “You seem very keen all of a sudden.”

Keen wasn't quite the right word. More like a man hurrying to the dentist for a tooth extraction. It was hardly, thought Rachel wryly, a flattering comparison.

But, then, she couldn't blame him, could she? It was his reputation as well as hers on the line. If it came out that he'd tried to pass off a nobody and failed … he'd have to endure a great deal of ribbing, at the very least.

Could he lose his job at the paper over it? Rachel wasn't sure.

Mr. Montfort shrugged. “I don't like letting I dare not wait upon I would. Unless … you're getting cold feet?”

“Only from standing here.” Resolutely, Rachel took the large box from him, squinting into the sunlight. If it were done, it was best done quickly. “Shall we say a week Thursday?”

*   *   *

“This the place, love?” The taxi driver pulled up by a modern block of flats on South Audley Street.

“Yes, thank you.”

Rachel dropped the right number of coins into the cabbie's waiting hand and emerged from the taxi, her French heels clicking against the pavement, her pleated skirt swishing just so against her knees. In the sunlight, she could see herself reflected in the window of the florist's shop opposite, a walking fashion plate from her blue hat down to the matching heels. Her silk stockings—real silk, not rayon—were decadently slippery against her legs.

There was a porter encased in a glass box. Rachel started in his direction—she had her speech memorized—but before she could reach him, Mr. Montfort emerged from the vestibule.

“Cousin Vera!” He pecked Rachel on both cheeks with the awkward earnestness of a long-lost cousin. “I trust you had a safe journey?” In an undertone, for her ears only, he added, “If you gawk like that, they'll know you for a fraud before you open your mouth.”

“
Dearest
Cousin Simon.” Rachel rose on her toes and pressed her crimson lips to his cheek, leaving a defiant smear of red. The lipstick hadn't been a part of Mr. Montfort's package. That she'd added herself, courtesy of Woolworth. “You
are
a pet to meet little me.”

Mr. Montfort squeezed her waist. “When the mater demands … Hullo, Simms. Do you think you might give us a bit of a hand with the trunks?”

“I'll have them sent right up, sir.”

Pausing, Mr. Montfort turned back, waving a hand at Rachel. “Oh, and this is my cousin, Miss Merton. She'll be staying at the flat.” To Rachel, he added, “You don't want to get on the wrong side of Simms, my dear. He knows where all the bodies are buried.”

Simms smiled indulgently. “Don't mind Mr. Montfort, miss. He will have his little joke.” He touched a hand to his cap. “I trust you will have a pleasant stay.”

“Yes, thank you, Simms. I am sure I shall.” She sounded like a schoolgirl, too prim and polite.

Rachel avoided Simon's eyes, concentrating on not tripping in her unaccustomed heels. A dress rehearsal, she told herself. A bad dress meant a good first performance.

“If you will allow me?” Mr. Montfort possessed himself of Rachel's arm, steadying her.

“Thank you,” Rachel murmured as he led her to the lift. This had seemed much easier in theory than in practice. In the taxi, in her fashionable frock, she'd felt so sure of herself. But it was one thing to look the part, and another to be it. It was a self-operated lift. The doors closed behind them, leaving them entirely alone.

The bread and cheese she'd gobbled down on the train turned over in Rachel's stomach; her hands felt slick inside her expensive gloves. She missed the weight of her hair, the solid bulk of it at the back of her head, anchoring her.

Leaning over, Mr. Montfort murmured, “There's no need to look quite so Sabine, darling. I'm hardly going to ravish you in the lift.”

Rachel snatched back her arm, managing an uneven laugh. “I'm merely reeling from your cologne.”

“Guaranteed to make the ladies swoon,” said Mr. Montfort smoothly, “or so the advert would have us believe. Would you like to provide a testimonial?
It made me go all weak at the knees
, says society beauty Miss Vera Merton.…”

“Yes, like the Thames on a hot day.” The bread and cheese settled back into Rachel's stomach; the sense of blind panic lifted. There was something oddly steadying about Mr. Montfort's nonsense.

“They've done wonderful work cleaning up the Thames.” The lift doors opened, depositing them on a landing with four doors. Mr. Montfort gestured Rachel to the door on the far right.

“I still wouldn't want to swim in it,” retorted Rachel.

There were two locks on the door, shining and new.

Mr. Montfort slid a key into the first lock. “Better not,” he agreed blandly. “Those are deep waters. With swiftly moving currents. Unless you're a stronger swimmer than you look?”

The second lock shot free and the door swung open.

“I can keep my head above water,” said Rachel, and strode across the threshold. She was so busy making a point—and trying to balance on her heels—that she was several yards in before she looked, really looked, at the flat that was to be her home for the next month. “Good heavens.”

“Like it?” Mr. Montfort leaned comfortably in his favorite pose, propped against the wall, pleased by her reaction.

“I'm blinded.” Sun slanted through the long windows, glittering off a glass-topped chrome-legged table. A sofa of dazzling whiteness sprawled beneath a Venetian glass mirror that looked as though it had been squeezed into shape by a crazed geometer, all unexpected angles.

Rachel had thought she was accustomed to the whimsy of the wealthy. The Brillac town house in Paris had dazzled with gilded walls and ormolu embellishments and enough mirrors to put Louis XIV to shame.

But this—this was something different.

Nothing in the room, Rachel realized, was quite what it seemed. The wall began in shades of navy blue at the base, but lightened nearly to white by the time it touched the ceiling, all shading so seamlessly together that it took one a moment to realize that the color changed every time one looked at it. The effect made Rachel's eyes ache. And that was only the start of it. The doors of a respectable-looking eighteenth-century chinoiserie cabinet were propped open to reveal a hidden bar, boasting a daunting array of cocktail implements, sleek in silver. A gramophone horn peeped coyly out of a Louis XIV commode, while Chinese vases of impossible antiquity shared space with elongated figures cast in porcelain.

It was all designed to make one look and look again, a vast visual tease.

Cautiously, Rachel ventured onto the white carpet. “Will it crack if I set my bag down?” she said, indicating the glass-topped table.

“Don't be provincial,” said Mr. Montfort, and tossed it down for her.

“I don't want to risk seven years' bad luck.”

“That's only mirrors, not tables.” He made his way unerringly to the chinoiserie cabinet that housed the impromptu bar. “What will you have?”

She'd had the odd bit of sherry over the years, but cocktails were a mystery. “You choose.”

“How very trusting of you.”

“Hardly. If you'd meant to ravish me you would have done so already.” The words were out of her mouth before Rachel could reconsider them. Frankness had always been her besetting sin. One of them, at any rate.

Gin bottle in hand, Mr. Montfort raised a brow. “Perhaps I was merely waiting until I had you in my lair.”

“And muss the white carpet?”

“That's what the maid is for. She scrubs up after all my orgies. Lovely woman.” Mr. Montfort was busily pouring potions from glass bottles into a silver shaker. “A little Jeyes Fluid, and, voil
à
! Virtue restored.”

“So long as there's no Jeyes Fluid in my drink.” Whatever he was pouring certainly smelled astringent enough.

“We haven't quite been reduced to that. Unlike the States, where they'll quaff rubbing alcohol if you pour it into the right sort of glass and mix it with bitters.” Glass and silver tinkled. “I believe you'll find this reasonably potent.”

His smile as he held out the drink was so natural, so friendly, that Rachel found herself, for a moment, wobbly on her unaccustomed heels, the world out of balance.

Rachel's fingers closed around the cold glass, the outside already slick with condensation, and Mr. Montfort turned away again, back to the bar, and the world settled back into place. It was the slanting shape of the mirrors, the shifting colors of the wall, Rachel told herself; they were enough to make anyone dizzy. There was no point in letting herself be so undone by a momentary show of—what? Ordinary kindness?

Mr. Montfort was many things, but she doubted he was kind. She'd do best to remember that.

They were business partners, that was all.

If he'd noticed her momentary confusion, Mr. Montfort made no sign. He was busy mixing another drink, dashing in a bit of this and a bit of that with a practiced hand. All the same, clasping her hands behind her back, Rachel made a show of examining the paintings on the walls, striving for a sophistication she was far from feeling.

Most of the paintings were modern, abstract to the point of incoherence. All except for the portrait dominating one wall. It featured a woman in the costume of the turn of the century, her hair piled high on her head, her neck impossibly long. Her arms curved around a child in a white lace smock, his head an angelic mass of curls.

On the face, it was a sweet domestic portrait. But when one looked closer, Rachel thought she could see a familiar glint of mischief in the moppet's dark eyes. Black eyes, eyes so dark one couldn't detect the difference between iris and pupil.

“How too precious.” Rachel masked her nervousness with mockery. “Was that you?”

“Was and is.” Mr. Montfort poured out his drink with a professional twist of the wrist. “Minus the curls, of course.”

“And that is your mother?” The picture was too stylized to provide a good sense of likeness, but there was something very like Mr. Montfort about the cheeks and chin. It was a striking face, but not necessarily a restful one.

“Brilliantly spotted,” drawled Mr. Montfort. He dropped a cherry into Rachel's drink. “Most beautiful debutante of her generation and international scandal.”

Rachel lifted her drink, sniffing it warily. “We have that in common, then. Scandalous mothers.”

“Mine married them. One after the other.” Before Rachel could decide whether or not to take offense, Mr. Montfort nodded to her drink. “Are you going to drink it or merely admire it?”

Rachel looked doubtfully at the murky liquid, the cherry bobbing in the midst. “What is it?”

Mr. Montfort raised his brows, his expression a dare. “A Montfort Original, of course.”