Rachel’s lips curved. “I couldn’t help thinking of poor Lord Nelson.”
“Lord Nelson passed the night unmolested,” Mr. Trevannion assured her. They were nearly to the top of the stairs, where a very important-looking personage held the door open for the arrivals. “Your cousin isn’t with you?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be along eventually,” said Rachel, glancing behind them. Middle-aged ladies in pearls and droopy frocks, an elderly man stomping along with the help of his cane.
Blast it all, where was Simon? A nightclub had been one thing; anyone could go to a nightclub, provided they paid the fee. This was different. The people, the accents, the massive portraits at the bend of the staircase, the smell of beeswax and lemon oil and expensive perfumes, all proclaimed this as a world apart, one of the inner sanctums of Mayfair to which only the elite were admitted.
With a lightness she was far from feeling, Rachel said, “I hope Lady Frances won’t think I’m gate-crashing. Simon was meant to introduce me.”
“Was he?” Mr. Trevannion’s mouth set in grim lines. Glancing at Rachel, he started to say something, looked away, and then said, abruptly, “You’ve been abroad, you said?”
“Yes,” said Rachel warily. Just so long as he didn’t ask where or with whom. She parroted the story she and Simon had concocted. “I’ve been away for some time. My mother wasn’t well, you see.”
Mr. Trevannion looked at her with troubled eyes. “Then you wouldn’t know.”
They had slowed nearly to a stop. The others eddied around them. Rachel looked up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. “Know what?”
Mr. Trevannion mustered an unconvincing smile. “Lady Frances, of course.”
It was, Rachel was quite sure, not what he had originally intended to say.
Before she could press him, Mr. Trevannion placed a hand beneath her elbow. “Allow me to perform your cousin’s office.”
It was one thing to bilk Cece, but Rachel felt a bit guilty about Mr. Trevannion. In introducing her, he made himself responsible for her. And if she were caught …
“You are very good,” she said soberly.
He gave a short laugh. “Not as good as I ought to be. But I can make you known to our hostess.”
Mr. Trevannion led her past the butler, into a front hall dominated by a massive marble staircase, which branched out in either direction, adorned by a vaguely Moorish-looking colonnade. Their hostess stood at the foot of the stairs, sending people up the staircase in ones and twos.
The line filed slowly forward, the people in front of them blocking Rachel’s view of her hostess. Rachel took a deep breath, resisting the urge to fiddle with the paste pearls in her ears. She looked the part, there was that at least. Simon hadn’t led her wrong with the white-and-navy foulard. But there was more to it than wearing the right frock. Her diction was impeccable, her mother had seen to that, but she didn’t know their idioms, their slang, their private jokes.
If Lady Frances pegged her as an imposter …
Too late. The line had filed forward, and Mr. Trevannion was saying, in his pleasant tenor voice, “Lady Frances, may I present Miss Vera Merton?”
That was Lady Frances? From Simon’s description, Rachel had imagined a dowager with a bosom like a pouter pigeon, her neck encased in a boned collar à la Queen Mary.
Instead, Lady Frances was a slight woman, half a head shorter than Rachel, her brows tweezed, her hair elegantly waved, her expensive skirt just skimming a very well-preserved pair of knees. Next to her, Rachel felt distinctly gawky.
“How do you do?” Lady Frances’s eyes were the same pale blue as her daughter’s, but far sharper. Sapphires glittered in her ears. “You must be one of my daughter’s friends.”
Rachel’s throat felt dry. She summoned up her best tea-at-the-vicarage manner. “My cousin, Mr. Montfort, was kind enough to introduce us. I’ve only just returned from abroad—”
“Montfort…” Lady Frances nodded to herself. Rachel had the disconcerting impression of entries being filed in a mental ledger. “Are you one of Callista’s girls? Or one of Penelope’s?”
Behind Rachel, the line of invitees was beginning to pile up; she could hear their voices behind her. If she was ejected from Heatherington House, the humiliation would be public and final.
“It’s a more distant connection than that, I’m afraid,” Rachel began, when a voice came from behind her.
“Hullo, Vera.” Skirting the waiting guests, Simon loped over to Lady Frances’s side. Possessing himself of Lady Frances’s jeweled hand, he made a show of lifting it to his lips for a resounding kiss. “Dearest and most generous Cousin Fanny. Forgive my tardiness?”
“If I do, it will only encourage you to do it again,” said Lady Frances, but the sharp words were contradicted by the squeeze she gave his arm. “How is the general?”
“The pater is as ill-tempered as ever. He threw a boot at me last week.”
“I’m sure you deserved it. And Hypatia?”
“Still gallivanting about the colonies with my esteemed stepfather.”
“Tell her I demand her return immediately. London is too dull without her.” Turning back to Rachel, she said impersonally, “I do hope you enjoy the little talk, Miss Merton. Such an important topic, don’t you agree? Ah, Helen! How darling of you to join us.”
Rachel let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“Move, wigeon,” breathed Simon in her ear, and Rachel automatically moved along with him, up the staircase to the first-floor landing.
Rachel smiled sweetly up at her so-called cousin. “Half past three?”
Simon bared his teeth right back. “Punctuality is so confining.” As they drew to a stop on the first-floor landing, he nodded to someone behind her. “I see you’ve entertained yourself in my absence. Hullo, Trevannion.”
Rachel hadn’t realized, until then, that Mr. Trevannion was right behind them.
Detaching herself from Simon, she moved to Mr. Trevannion’s side. “Mr. Trevannion was kind enough to make me known to my hostess in your absence.”
“It was the least I could do,” Mr. Trevannion assured her, looking pointedly at Simon.
“Well, well,” drawled Simon. He leaned against the marble balustrade in an attitude of exaggerated repose. “How very chivalrous of you, Trevannion. Of course, I would have expected nothing less.”
“Should we secure seats?” Rachel said swiftly. She could feel the tension between the two men like a gathering storm. “I shouldn’t wish to miss the lecture.”
“Oh yes, you would,” said Simon, without bothering to lower his voice. “It’s bound to be pure drivel. The man thinks he can cure criminal behavior by injecting pigs’ glands into the livers of potential felons.”
“You’re joking.” Looking from Simon to Mr. Trevannion, Rachel realized he wasn’t. Quickly she said, “I hadn’t realized that pigs were such miracles of good temper.”
“Provided they have a bit of mud in which to wallow,” said Simon caustically.
There were pots and there were kettles. Rachel wasn’t letting him get away with that. “Brought to them courtesy of the gossip column of the Daily Yell?”
Simon lowered his chin in acknowledgment. “A hit, a palpable hit. The principle is largely the same.” He gestured over the parapet, toward the people milling about in the hall below. “Bread and circuses make for a happy mob. Or, in this case, slime and slander.”
“It doesn’t actually turn people into pigs,” said John patiently. “I can’t claim to understand the science of it—”
“Dr. Radlett’s theories are about as scientific as bleeding to balance the humors.” Simon struck a pose. “Does your neighbor have too much bile? Are you detecting signs of choler in your spouse? Suffer in silence no more. Pig spleen will soon set them right.”
“A vast simplification.” Mr. Trevannion spoke only to Rachel. “The tests—”
“Simples for the simple.”
&nbs
p; Mr. Trevannion’s smile was ragged around the edges. “Even you, Montfort, must allow that the potential uses are inspiring.”
“Must I?” Simon extracted his cigarette case from his jacket pocket. “I, personally, would prefer to not be shot full of extract d’oink.”
Mr. Trevannion pointedly turned his back on Simon. He turned to Rachel, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “For centuries, we have grappled with the baser parts of our natures.”
“Maybe you do,” murmured Simon. “I like to cosset mine and take it out for tea.”
Rachel had to disguise her laugh as a cough, hiding her smile behind her hand. She doubted that Mr. Trevannion shared her amusement.
Speaking only to Rachel, Mr. Trevannion said, “Right now, the best we can do is punish the wrongdoer. Our prisons overflow with men who were a prey to their worst instincts. But if we could find a way to negate the impulses that cause such behavior…” One lock of hair tumbled across his eyes. He pushed it aside, his face glowing. “Just think of the advances we might make! Imagine a world without crime—without war.”
Simon snorted. “Not until man is made out of some other metal than earth. In the meantime, the best defense is to hit as hard and as fast as one can, before the other chap can get his fist in.”
“That’s rather biblical, isn’t it?” protested Rachel. “An eye for an eye?”
Simon breathed out a plume of smoke. “Not if you blind them first.”
Mr. Trevannion looked disapprovingly at Simon’s cigarette. “That’s the old way of thinking. It didn’t do very well for us last time, did it?”
“Last time,” said Simon grimly, “we tried to play by Queensberry rules. War is a gutter game, not a gentleman’s sport. Once the cabinet gets that into their heads, we’ll be a damned sight better off.”
“The point,” said John patiently, “is that there needn’t be any war at all. What happened last time was regrettable—”
“Regrettable?” Simon choked on a mouthful of smoke. “Do tell me more, dear boy.”
“—but if violence is a disease, then it can be cured.”
He seemed to be waiting for Rachel to respond. “It’s certainly an attractive notion, but … what of all the diseases we haven’t cured?” She could still see the gray churchyard, the bells tolling. “If we can’t stop the influenza, how do we change the fundamental nature of man?”
“We don’t,” said Simon bluntly. “Men do vile things because men are fundamentally vile.”
Mr. Trevannion’s lips thinned. “If you’re so set against it, Montfort, why are you here?”
Simon flicked his cuffs. “Why do people visit circus sideshows? It’s always edifying to see the freaks being put through their paces.”
The sheer viciousness of the comment took Rachel aback. She looked at Simon in surprise. “Surely—”
Neither man took any notice of her.
“At least,” said Mr. Trevannion, with visible restraint, “some of us attempt to do something to improve the lot of man.”
“Such touching concern for the masses”—Simon leaned back against the balustrade, the point of his cigarette glowing red as he took a long drag—“from a man about to marry an earl’s daughter.”
The words dropped like a stone between them.
In the resulting silence, Rachel heard the patter of heels on the stairs and a breathless voice, saying, “John?”
Turning, she saw what Simon had already seen.
There was a woman making her way up the stairs, her face flushed with the exertion, her hair escaping in wisps beneath her hat. She hadn’t seen Simon, leaning back in the shadows against the balustrade, and, if she had seen Rachel, her presence didn’t register. The woman’s attention was entirely for Mr. Trevannion.
“I’m so terribly sorry to be late,” she was saying, and Rachel didn’t need the little smile playing around Simon’s mouth to tell her who the other woman was.
Lady Olivia Standish.
Her sister.
TEN
Half-sister.
Lady Olivia held out her hands to John Trevannion. Such small hands, dainty in their pale-blue leather gloves. “Aunt Fanny told me you had gone up.”
She was smaller than Rachel had expected. In the papers she had looked taller, a trick of perspective and newsprint. In person, she was petite, a good head shorter than Rachel. Everything about her was muted, from the pale blue of her frock to the soft contours of her face. It was, thought Rachel, as though she had been painted in watercolors rather than oils. Her hair wasn’t golden; it was ash blond, too soft for shine.
Like their father’s.
There was a sick feeling at the base of Rachel’s stomach. Part of her, perhaps, had still hoped it wasn’t true, any of it. That this was all a bizarre sort of game. But she could remember, in one of those rare, sunbathed memories of childhood, her father, bareheaded, in their garden. He must have been holding her, because her small hands were fisted in his hair. She could remember, in the tips of her fingers, in the palms of her hands, the texture of it, so different from her mother’s or her own.
This interloper, this Lady Olivia, had the gall to have their father’s hair.
“Olivia,” began Mr. Trevannion, his eyes shifting toward Simon and Rachel.
Lady Olivia didn’t notice. In a rush, she said, “You were so kind to take care of Jicksy last night. I can’t think what might have happened otherwise.”
Through the humming in her head, the words only just vaguely registered. The friend—the one with designs on Lord Nelson’s hat—that was who it had been? Lady Olivia’s brother?
Her brother.
Rachel’s head was beginning to ache; she felt as she had years ago when she’d stayed too long on the pond with Alice on a hot July day and been sent to bed by her mother in a room with drawn curtains and a cold compress on her brow. Everything ached, and little lights shifted in front of her eyes.
“Nothing too terrible, I’m sure,” said Mr. Trevannion with false heartiness.
Lady Olivia shook her head. “If there were another scandal … I don’t think Father could have borne it.”
The heightened color in her cheeks brought out the unusual shade of her eyes, a pale gray. The same eyes that Rachel saw in her mirror every morning, a paler-lashed version to be sure, but otherwise the same, her own eyes in a stranger’s face, a stranger with the right to everything she lacked.
Rachel found herself, suddenly, prey to a wave of pure loathing, loathing for Lady Olivia, in her frumpy frock, with her undistinguished features and her baby-round face, Lady Olivia, who didn’t have to try to be anything but what she was.
Her father’s daughter.
Awkwardly, Mr. Trevannion said, “Olivia. I don’t believe you’ve made the acquaintance of Mr. Montfort’s cousin. Miss … Merton?”
That slight, studied hesitation felt like a slap. Taking a deep breath, Rachel pasted a bright social smile on her face like crimson lipstick. “Yes. Lady … Olivia?”
After the first startled look, Lady Olivia’s features seemed to flatten, as if she were a children’s book illustration or a picture in a fashion paper, a two-dimensional image. “Forgive me,” she murmured. “I hadn’t … How do you do, Miss Merton? Mr. Montfort. I had thought you were … away.”
Her voice was soft, and just a little husky, with a certain hesitancy about it which made her sound, thought Rachel, even more removed from the world, a product of marble halls and nurseries ruled by white-aproned nannies.
“I was away,” said Simon blandly. “I came back.”
“Like a bad penny,” contributed Rachel brightly. She had to keep bantering or she might simply fold in upon herself, like a cheap paper doll. “One simply can’t get rid of Simon.”
“No matter how you chuck me in the gutter,” said Simon, sliding a cousinly arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “I always manage to crawl out again.”
His tone was all that was genial, but something in the words made Lady Olivia color faintly
and look away.
“Have you been to Heatherington House before, Miss Merton?” Lady Olivia asked in a restrained, polite voice.
“This is my first visit.” Rachel detested having to make the admission, particularly to Lady Olivia, who clearly had had the run of the house from birth. “Before you arrived, we were just discussing Dr. Radlett. What do you think of his theories?”
“I am afraid I am not very well informed—” Lady Olivia was the picture of aristocratic reserve.
“Admit it,” broke in Simon. “You think it’s rot.”
“The Inquisition thought the same about Galileo.” Mr. Trevannion moved to stand closer to Lady Olivia.
“My heart bleeds for Galileo,” said Simon drily. “The poor man is exhumed in the interest of every charlatan with an implausible theory. Lady Olivia? We know what Mr. Trevannion thinks. What about you?”
Lady Olivia fiddled with the pearl buttons on her gloves. “I think,” she said primly, “that Galileo must be an inspiration to anyone with an interest in the natural sciences.”
Simon essayed a mocking half bow. “Spoken like a true politician’s wife.”
It might have been a compliment. It didn’t sound like one.
Apologetically, Lady Olivia said, “I shouldn’t like to judge without knowing more.”
“Of course,” agreed Simon smoothly. “An opinion is a dangerous thing to have.”
Lady Olivia lifted her large gray eyes to Simon’s, and, like a shock, Rachel could feel the connection that ran between them, a silent communication that said far more than their words. This was, she realized, no casual acquaintance. There was something there, something that ran deep.
“Wouldn’t that depend on the opinion?” said Lady Olivia softly.
“I try never to have opinions before cocktails,” announced Rachel loudly. Her voice sounded too loud, too brash; it echoed off the marble columns. She turned to her sister’s fiancé. “What about you, Mr. Trevannion?”
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Trevannion, with a rueful smile that brought out the green and gold flecks in his eyes, “that opinions are part of my stock in trade. Although I prefer to call it having the courage of one’s convictions.”