The Other Daughter Read Free

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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œI 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