The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig

good first performance.
    â€œIf you will allow me?” Mr. Montfort possessed himself of Rachel’s arm, steadying her.
    â€œThank 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.”
    â€œGuaranteed 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.…”
    â€œYes, 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.
    â€œThey’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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œLike it?” Mr. Montfort leaned comfortably in his favorite pose, propped against the wall, pleased by her reaction.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œDon’t be provincial,” said Mr.