Rachel swung to face him. “You mean you’re to keep me from storming off to bother—” She’d nearly said my father. “The Earl of Ardmore.”
Mr. Montfort’s eyes met hers. His were black, true black, so dark that there was no distinction between pupil and iris. “I don’t give a damn about the comfort and convenience of the Earl of Ardmore. But I did promise your cousin I’d make sure you didn’t walk in front of a train.”
The rain was seeping down through Rachel’s collar. Inside, the Fuller’s looked bright and inviting, the windows steaming with warmth.
And even the company of Mr. Montfort was preferable to being left alone with her own thoughts.
“Oh, all right,” Rachel said disagreeably. “It’s too much bother to fight with you.”
“Many people have said the same.” With a mocking half bow, Mr. Montfort gestured for her to precede him through the door of Fuller’s.
Rachel submitted to being ushered to a table, where Mr. Montfort installed her in her chair with the exaggerated reverence due a duchess.
She placed her bag firmly on her lap, determined not to let Mr. Montfort get the first word.
“Do you know”—Rachel couldn’t bring herself to say my father—“the Earl of Ardmore?”
Mr. Montfort seated himself in his own chair, spreading out his long frame, so that he seemed to command far more than his allotted space. Slowly, deliberately, he removed a cigarette case from his breast pocket. “I spent some time at Caffers after the war.” At Rachel’s blank look, Mr. Montfort translated, “Carrisford. Carrisford Court. Home of the Standish family since time immemorial—or at least since the third earl pulled the whole bally thing down and built it up again.”
It all felt impossibly remote. “I know nothing about the family.”
“Don’t you mean your family?”
“Hardly.” Why would she lay claim to anyone who didn’t want to claim her? Rachel had done very well without the Standishes for these twenty-odd years and she would do very well for twenty-odd more. “I’d scarcely heard of them until today.”
“Were you hoping to touch Ardmore for money?” Mr. Montfort regarded her with dispassionate inquiry, as if she were a specimen on a naturalist’s table. “If so, you’re doomed to disappointment. Everything he has is his wife’s. Her father did a brilliant job of tying it all up in settlements.”
Rachel stared at him, the blood roaring in her ears. “Oh, I see. Because I’m a by-blow, I must be venal?” Her fingers closed tightly around her slim purse. “I manage very well on my own, thank you very much.”
Mr. Montfort signaled to the waitress. “We’ll have a pot of the Lapsang.” To Rachel, he said, “You would be surprised what one might do under the influence of an empty stomach.”
Rachel lifted her head proudly. “Mine is hardly empty.”
It would have been more convincing if her stomach hadn’t chosen that moment to rumble.
“And a slice of walnut cake,” said Mr. Montfort to the waitress.
“I detest walnut cake.” Rachel shook out her napkin. “I have a little money. Not what you would call money”—or her father—“but enough to keep me until I find another position.”
Mr. Montfort tapped an unlit cigarette against the table. “Oh? And what do you do?”
“I am a nursery governess,” said Rachel defiantly. “You needn’t look like that. I can’t imagine you have ever spent a day trying to make three ill-mannered children mind you.”
“No,” admitted Mr. Montfort, making no effort to hide his amusement. “I cannot say that I have.” Leaning back in his chair, he extracted a lighter from his pocket. “Gasper?”
Wordlessly, Rachel shook her head, overwhelmed by the oddity of it all, sitting across from this man she hadn’t known from Adam an hour before, the most intimate details of her family history laid out like so much dirty laundry.
She hated feeling so naked, so exposed; everything she’d thought she was turned inside out and upside down, for the delectation of this inscrutable stranger.
“There’s no need to study me so intently,” said Mr. Montfort lazily. “If I had designs on your person, I would hardly be plying you with tea.”
Despite herself, Rachel smiled. In her dilapidated hat and boxy suit, she was hardly the stuff of men’s wanton fancies. “Don’t forget the walnut cake.”
“Food of the gods. The more vengeful sort. Ah, thank you.” That last was to the waitress, who set down the tea and the despised walnut cake. “Shall you be mother or shall I?”
Rachel appropriated the teapot. “I’ll pour.”
“To prevent me putting mysterious powders into your tea?”
“I can’t imagine what you read, Mr. Montfort,” Rachel said coolly. “Sugar?”
“Only on alternate Tuesdays.” Mr. Montfort nodded to the plate. “Eat your cake. You’ll feel better.”
Rachel dug her fork into the cake; refusing to eat merely because Mr. Montfort was being provoking would be foolish. And, whatever she might have said to Mr. Montfort, Fuller’s walnut had always been a favorite.
Across from her, Mr. Montfort sat calmly smoking his cigarette. In half an hour, they would go their separate ways; Rachel to her train, Mr. Montfort to wherever it was that he belonged. It was unlikely their paths would cross again.
And he knew her father. Not well, perhaps, but he knew him.
Quickly, before she could think better of it, Rachel set down her fork. “What can you tell me about my father?”
Mr. Montfort raised a brow.
“You say you know him. I’m unlikely to meet anyone else who does.” It was a disconcerting thought, but true. But for that clipping, she might have gone her whole life never knowing, never guessing. “You have to admit, anyone would be curious. In my circumstances.”
“In your circumstances.” Mr. Montfort stretched out his long legs, those midnight eyes on Rachel’s face, taking in her dowdy hat and tousled hair. “Yes, I imagine one would be.”
Rachel could feel the color rising in her cheeks. “I’m not after his money. I just want—” What? To know who he was? Why he’d done what he’d done? She reached for her bag. “Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. And I’ve a train to catch. How much do I owe you for the tea?”
“I’ll send the bill to your cousin.” Mr. Montfort’s hand, on hers, sent a momentary jolt of electricity through her. “As for your father … Ardmore is held up as the perfect example of an English gentleman. A lord to a lord and a man to a man.”
There was an edge to his voice. Rachel paused in fussing with her purse, looking sharply at him. “Do you not share that view?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” The insult was delivered so casually that it took Rachel a moment to feel the sting of it. “You wouldn’t be quite so shocking if Ardmore didn’t have such a reputation as a pillar of virtue.”
“I could be an imposter.”
Mr. Montfort assumed a meditative pose. “I should think this a gull but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it. Much Ado About Nothing.”
“Yes, I know.” Her father had read Shakespeare to her on winter evenings. Back in the days when she had believed they were a family.
“In plain words,” said Mr. Montfort, lounging back in his chair, “David says it, ergo it must be true. He wouldn’t lie.”
The cake tasted like ash on Rachel’s tongue. “Oh, wouldn’t he?”
Mr. Montfort flicked ash from his cigarette. “We are most likely cousins—in the twentieth degree or thereabouts. Your family and mine came over with the Conqueror together and haven’t stopped reminding anyone since.”
“In other words,” said Rachel smartly, “hangers-on in the train of an opportunist.”
“Baseborn, no less,” said Mr. Montfort, and Rachel realized that she had, somehow, walked herself right into that. “But no one cares about a few marriage lines more or less once one has a crown on one’s head.”
Rachel poked violently at a walnut. “If I had wanted a hist
ory lesson, I would have applied to Cousin David. This is all very entertaining, but—”
“Your cousin David was my tutor,” said Mr. Montfort, taking a leisurely sip of tea. “He’s very sound on the twelfth century but somewhat wobbly when it comes to the Conquest.”
“Oh?” said Rachel. The sudden shift to the neutral was a bit dizzying. “And are you also a don?”
Silly that there was something reassuring about that. Dons were just as prone to poor behavior as other mortals, but one tended to think of them as something akin to monks, closed into their cloisters, their minds on higher things. When they weren’t swilling port in hall, that was.
Mr. Montfort leaned back in his chair. “The hortus conclusus of academe has been closed to me. These are degenerate times. Where once learning flourished, now plus valet pecunia.”
“English, please,” said Rachel. “I’m a nursery governess, not a scholar.”
“I was once one of your cousin David’s students. Now, for my sins, I have to get my own living. I write tittle tattle. For the Daily Yell.” He brushed an invisible speck off his immaculate cuffs. “You’d be amazed at how lucrative a bit of libel can be.”
A gossip columnist. That was what it translated to, in plain English. And Rachel had trotted meekly along like a lamb to slaughter.
Her hands tightened around her purse.
“No wonder you offered to take me to tea.” Rachel did her best to keep her voice calm. Flinging a cup of tea in Mr. Montfort’s face would only provide him more copy. “Lost daughter of earl confides in our columnist.… Full feature on page six?”
FIVE
How could she have been so gullible? He must have seen her coming, Rachel thought wrathfully.
She leaned forward, across the table. “Did Cousin David even ask you to give me a cup of tea? Or was this an investment in pursuit of a story?”
“I haven’t sunk that low.” Mr. Montfort took a quick pull on his cigarette, his dark brows drawing together. “I said I’d be deaf and dumb, didn’t I? Your guilty secret is safe with me.”
“My father’s guilty secret, you mean.” She had needled him; there was some comfort in that. “What reason do I have to trust you?”
“None,” Mr. Montfort said equably. “I won’t do you the injustice of asking you to take my word. Words are cheap. Let’s just say that in this your interest and mine align.”
“I don’t see how.” Rachel poked viciously at her cake. “You need a story. I am one.”
“I’d sooner fish for carp in the corporation garbage dump,” said Mr. Montfort bluntly. “It would create less stink.”
“Stink for me. Not for you.”
Nursery governess one day, scandal the next. What would this do to her hopes of employment? Rachel couldn’t imagine most businesses would want to hire an earl’s by-blow—made notorious in the popular press—to type their letters and file their invoices. They certainly wouldn’t want one living in their homes and educating their children.
“My dear girl.” Mr. Montfort leaned his well-tailored elbows against the table. “My job depends on my victims being willing. They like seeing themselves spread across the pages of the Daily Yell—provided the spread is largely favorable. I write about who wore what, who went where, and who might possibly be engaged to whom.” He paused, lifting his teacup to his lips. “Groundbreaking stuff, I know.”
“Your point being?”
Mr. Montfort sighed. “If it gets around that I’m exposing old scandals, no one will invite me anywhere. And if I’m not invited, I have no copy. It’s as simple as that. Your cousin asked me to see you safely to the train. That’s all.”
Rachel looked at him through narrowed eyes. “I thought he asked you to give me a cup of tea.”
“That as well,” said Mr. Montfort easily.
She wasn’t entirely sure she believed him. But if she didn’t? There was little she could do about it. Mr. Montfort looked like a man who did what he pleased and bothered about the consequences later.
Part of her was tempted to tell him to publish and be damned. A lord to a lord, Mr. Montfort had called her father. The perfect example of an English gentleman. What would the world say if they knew he had a daughter tucked away in Norfolk?
For a moment, Rachel wallowed in the vengeful fantasy of newspaper headlines, black and screaming. Earl’s Abandoned Daughter Seeks Justice!
But who would it hurt in the end? Not her father. Reality stared Rachel in the face, grim and uncompromising. Even if there was a scandal, he had his estates to retire to. He could wrap himself up in his wife’s money. Oh, perhaps there would be an obligatory exile, a villa in Venice or an apartment in Paris, just until the scandal died down, but it wouldn’t touch him, not really. An earl was an earl was an earl.
Mr. Montfort glanced casually at his watch. “I don’t want to chivy you, but I’d best be getting on. I’m due at a house party this evening. Can I give you a lift anywhere? My motor is in the Clarendon Yard.”
She might at least get a ride out of it. “If you could drop me at the station…”
Mr. Montfort scattered a few coins on the table. “I can do better than that. Where are you bound?”
“Norfolk.” She had promised Alice she would join them for supper. What was she to tell Alice? “But you needn’t bother.”
Mr. Montfort ignored her. “I can’t take you as far as that, but I can save you a change, at least. I can drop you at”—a moment of quick calculation—“Loughborough. That should take you direct to King’s Lynn.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Rachel said warily.
Mr. Montfort shrugged. “It’s on my way.”
The rain had lifted to a light mizzle, but the clouds were still heavy in the sky, creating an early dusk. Rachel followed Mr. Montfort blindly through the twisting byways of Oxford, so beautiful from a distance, so dark and narrow when one was in the middle.
If Alice were to find out— Something tightened in Rachel’s chest. Alice was the doctor’s wife, the vicar’s daughter, respectability personified. How would Alice feel knowing that her daughter’s godmother was nothing more than an earl’s by-blow?
Alice would hug her and tell her it didn’t matter, because Alice was like that. But it would matter. It was a small enough village. There would be whispers and mutterings, and all the people Rachel loved would be tainted by her shame.
Her shame. The phrase caught in Rachel’s throat. As if she had done something shameful, when all she had done was be born to the wrong father. All these years, going to church on Sundays, working for good marks in school, working and working to send money home—all of that, now, gone for nothing.
While her father merrily draped his other daughter in diamonds.
“This is my bus.” Rachel was so lost in her own thoughts, she nearly walked right into the door that Mr. Montfort held open for her. The car was black, with a bonnet that seemed to go on forever and bulbous lamps on either side.
Old habits died hard. Rachel found herself hesitating at the door, knowing what her mother would say about accepting a ride with a strange man. It didn’t matter that he was Cousin David’s friend; there was something unsettling about Mr. Montfort, an animal energy tamped down beneath a deceptively languid exterior.
But what did it matter, now? Rebelliously, Rachel clambered into the car, sinking down into the leather seat. If she was already damaged goods, she might at least get a comfortable ride out of it.
“There’s a rug on the floor,” said Mr. Montfort.
“I’m all right.” She had her rage to keep her warm. “Where is it you say my father lives?”
Mr. Montfort slipped into the driver’s seat. “Mostly in the country, at Carrisford.” He pronounced it “Cafford.” He closed the door and turned to face Rachel. “You’re not thinking of trying to storm the castle, are you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Had her father thought of them at all these past twenty-three years? Wondered about them? Or had he merely married his heire
ss and waltzed off on his merry way? “I don’t see what I have to lose.”
“A little more of your pride?” Mr. Montfort’s voice was surprisingly gentle. More practically, he added, “You haven’t much chance of admission. Unless you were to go as someone else. If my cousin, a Miss…” Mr. Montfort glanced out the window and suddenly grinned, a pirate’s grin, all white teeth and red lips. “A Miss Merton were to appear in town … well, that would be another story.”
Rachel had to raise her voice to be heard over the roar of the motor. “Wouldn’t anyone know?”
Mr. Montfort considered the question, his elegant face in profile. “I have a great many cousins, most of them damnably dull. Add in a few removes, and why would anyone bother to untangle the family tree?” His fingers drummed against the steering wheel. “It’s quite an amusing idea, really. If I were to pass a nobody off into society … it would be the stunt of all stunts. The elusive and sought-after Miss Merton—Miss Vera Merton. You have the cheekbones to be a Vera.”
Absurd to feel flattered by that, but she did, just a little. Rachel could picture Vera Merton, with her long red nails, her bobbed hair, her general air of devil-may-care. Vera Merton wouldn’t stay on the wrong side of the green baize door; she would breeze merrily past the butler, greeting everyone with a breathy “Darling!”
Vera Merton would quaff cocktails with Rachel’s cousins; she would know them all by name, whisper intimately in their ears.
What would it be like to be that woman? Not earnest, hardworking Rachel Woodley—the Rachel Woodley who didn’t really exist—but someone entirely different. Someone sophisticated. Someone hard-edged.
Someone who could approach her father on his own terms.
Mr. Montfort waved a dismissive hand. “The clothes and the hair are all wrong, of course—”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Rachel had always been rather vain about her hair, thick, dark, and so long she could nearly sit on it.
“Nursery governess hair,” said Mr. Montfort succinctly.
Hair could be cut. “If I had the right hair and clothes…”
The force of her own longing was staggering, all the more so for being so unexpected. Like a newsreel, the same frayed images played over and over—a garden, in that house she so barely remembered. Her father, flinging her up into the air. Her own squeals of delight. The sunlight glinting off the rims of his glasses.