Page 1 of The Vanished Sister

Prologue

1866

In the antique bassinet, baby Penelope slept under a Honiton lace–trimmed blanket, her lips slightly apart, her cheeks round and pink.

Joanna Redmayne gazed at her daughter, tears spilling down her face.

No great misfortune had befallen either herself or Penelope. To the contrary: Joanna had been singularly blessed. She, not the greatest musical theater actress, had gone on to an enviable career as a demi-mondaine. And now, His Grace the Duke of Wycliffe, her protector and Penelope’s father, was about to make her the de facto mistress of Eastleigh Park, his sprawling country seat.

But this opportunity, as all opportunities did, came with a cost: Penelope would not be there. She and her nanny would lodge in a cottage several miles away and Joanna would be lucky if she could spend an hour a day with her child.

The duke’s declining health was the reason he no longer wished to travel to visit Joanna; over the objection of his two eldest sons, he would install her at Eastleigh Park. His doctors believed that he had only six months to live, but Joanna had known invalids who outlasted their younger, healthier carers. When the duke’s time finally came, would Penelope still rely wholeheartedly on Joanna, or would she only know Joanna as the harried woman who was always leaving to do other things?

She touched Penelope’s downy head, so soft and still so comically bald, as Joanna herself had been at that age, according to her late grandfather.

A light rap came at the nursery—that would be Polly Banning, one of the housemaids. There was still much to do before everyone could decamp to the country. Joanna wiped her eyes and went to the door.

Polly Banning bobbed a curtsy, her eyes alight with curiosity. “Mum, there’s a lady to see you, a real grand lady.”

That would explain Polly’s interest. Ladies, especially “real grand” ladies, did not call on the likes of Joanna Redmayne.

“She said her name is Mrs. Carstairs,” Polly continued, “and that you’d wish to receive her.”

Joanna blinked. Justina.

Justina had not indulged in hysterics when she learned that her little sister intended to try her luck onstage. Instead she’d issued a cool warning that they’d no longer be family, as she herself planned on remaining eminently respectable.

Several years later, when news reached Joanna that Justina had become a vicar’s wife, Joanna had thought that the pinnacle of respectability. But after the passage of some more years, Justina, widowed and mother to a little girl, had achieved a spectacular remarriage and nabbed the master of Noble House.

Joanna, watching from afar, could only marvel at her sister’s rise in the world. With no small degree of envy.

Belatedly, she realized that Polly was still waiting for an answer. “Yes, you may show her to the parlor. Use the Sèvres. And tell Madame Gascoigne to do her best for the tea tray.”

Not that she could ever keep a house as beautifully as Justina did. And not that it mattered. To the grand ladies of the world, Joanna might as well be a parrot: Even if she recited entire speeches by Cicero, she still belonged to a different and inferior species.

But Justina wasn’t just any other lady of the manor, she was Joanna’s sister. They might not have been inseparable, but they’d still grown up together. And while they had not truly understood each other, no one knew where Joanna came from better than Justina—and vice versa.

Joanna changed into a new frock that had arrived from the modiste only two days ago, a rampage of butterflies in her stomach. She, of course, could never call on Justina to see her children. But a secret visit or two from Justina wouldn’t affect Justina’s standing in the same way.

Could it be? Was Justina here to see Penelope?

She descended the stairs quietly, as if a sudden noise might cause her sister to flee. As she opened the door to the parlor, the woman inside looked up.

An admirer once gushed that Justina made him think of the Taj Mahal at sunrise, an entity of grandeur, delicacy, and symmetrical perfection. That was, of course, an absurd exaggeration, but there was no disputing Justina’s beauty.

Joanna had always turned heads, too. But she had to put in some effort to light up a room. Justina? To be luminous, Justina needed only to exist.

Fourteen years had flown by since they’d last seen each other at their grandfather’s funeral, two black-clad young women with ambition burning in their hearts. Now, for the first time, Joanna understood the comparison with the Taj Mahal.

Then Justina had been too young and, for the lack of a better descriptor, too poor to be likened to a monument that had cost the equivalent of six million pounds sterling. An unpolished diamond, no matter how pure of composition, still resembled a fragment of glass.

Fourteen years later, she was a diamond of untold facets, the worthy centerpiece of a crown.

“What brought you here today, Justina?”

Her sister looked her over, her gaze calm, level. “You look well, Joanna.”

“By the grace of God I have not perished in a London tenement, as you so confidently predicted,” said Joanna a little huffily.