She Lost Her Name, She Took Back Her Place novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Daughter
Élise walks into the Rocheforts' engagement party as the newly found blood daughter, refuses Bianca's trap in front of everyone, and Adrien asks for the blood daughter by name. Bianca whispers that she remembers too.
The doorman at the Rochefort townhouse ran his finger down the guest list twice and did not find my name.
Behind me, the line of guests in evening dress had stopped moving.
I did not need to see the list.
I had written the first draft of it myself, in another life, when I was the girl inside.
"I'm sorry, mademoiselle," the doorman said. "The family said nothing about another guest."
"Let her through, please."
The voice came from the hall, bright and kind.
Bianca came down the steps in a pale blue gown, her blonde hair pinned up, both hands held out to me.
"This is my sister," she told the doorman. "Let her in. We have waited weeks for her."
She took my hands and squeezed them.
The last time I saw those hands, they were locked around an old man's arm at an altar.
"You must be frozen," Bianca said. "Give me your coat. I have wanted to meet you since the day Papa told us."
She said it so warmly that two women in the line smiled at us.
That was how I knew what she was about to do.
Two weeks ago, a DNA test had told my parents that I was their blood daughter, lost as a baby and raised in a foster home in Lyon.
My mother's message that morning had been short.
Come at nine, darling. We'll find the right moment to introduce you.
Nobody had said to stay out of the front door.
In my first life I was the adopted daughter, loved by this family and engaged to Adrien Visconti since I was fifteen.
Then the real Rochefort daughter was found, and Bianca walked into this house expecting what was hers.
I had been very kind to her.
I had hung her coat myself.
She took mine now, and I watched where she hung it.
Then she led me through the salon and introduced me to everyone as her new sister.
"She's the shy one," Bianca told a banker's wife. "Be gentle with her."
Margaux stood by the fireplace in a gray silk dress, a pin of sapphires at her collar.
Her eyes found me and filled, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth.
Henri stood beside her with a glass in his hand.
He looked at me for a long moment and then looked at the wall.
Bastien raised his glass to me from across the room.
His smile was wary, a brother's smile for a girl he had known for a fortnight.
I smiled back at all three of them.
It cost nothing, and I had practiced it for years.
"Champagne?" Bianca asked, lifting a flute from a passing tray.
"No, thank you. I don't drink at parties."
"Of course. Wait here. I'll be right back."
She was gone for two minutes.
She came back carrying a small velvet box.
"Maman's sapphire pin," she said, and her eyes went to Margaux's collar and back to me, troubled.
"She lost it this afternoon, and she's pretending not to care. I found it in the library."
Her voice was soft and a little pleading.
"I'd take it to her myself, but Adrien is due any minute and I'm supposed to be at the door. Would you?"
"Where?" I asked.
"Her dressing room, upstairs, the second door. Leave it on her table."
I looked at Margaux's collar.
The pin sat there, bright against the gray silk.
The box in my hands was too light.
I knew this trick because it was mine.
In the first life, I put a missing jewel in the new girl's hands and sent her upstairs alone.
Then I let the housekeeper find her in a private room.
Nothing had changed except which of us was holding the box.
I could have gone upstairs.
I could have opened the box in the hall and let Bianca explain that she must have been confused.
Instead I said, "Of course," and I walked straight into the middle of the room.
Conversation thinned as I crossed the parquet.
I stopped in front of Margaux with the box held in both hands.
"Madame Rochefort, Bianca asked me to bring you this," I said. "She said it was your pin."
"Thank you, Élise," Margaux said softly.
"I haven't opened it," I said. "Would you, please? So everyone can see I didn't."
She lifted the lid.
The velvet inside was empty.
Someone near the fireplace laughed, uncertain.
Bianca had stopped three steps behind me, her face open and blank.
"Oh, no," she said. "I must have left it in the library. I'm so sorry, Maman. I was so sure."
She sounded close to tears.
A man near us murmured that she was an angel.
Margaux turned the box over in her hands.
"It's quite all right, Bianca," she said.
Her voice was gentle, gentler than it would have been with me.
I said nothing.
I had not meant to win the room, only to keep the empty box where everyone could see it.
Then the front door opened.
I did not turn around, because I knew the sound his shoes made on the marble.
Talk fell away from the hall toward the salon.
Bianca smoothed her hair and stepped toward the doorway with her left hand held out so the guests could see her ring.
Adrien Visconti walked past her.
He was taller than I remembered, in a black suit, his jaw dark from a long day.
He did not look at her hand.
He crossed the whole room to me and held out a glass.
It was sparkling water with a slice of lemon and no ice.
I took it, and my fingers were not quite steady.
Nobody in this house knew how I took my drinks.
"Monsieur Rochefort," Adrien said, without turning his head.
His voice carried across the salon.
"My grandfather signed a pact with your house thirty years ago. Clause four says the daughter of Rochefort blood. Which of these young women is that?"
Henri's glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
Every guest looked at Henri.
Bianca's smile stayed on her face, held there, and nobody looked at her.
"Élise," Henri said at last. "This is Élise."
"Then I would like to be introduced," Adrien said.
He still had not looked away from me.
Bianca stepped in and hugged me, her cheek against mine and her perfume cold and sweet.
"You remember too," she whispered.
"I saw it on your face when you opened the box. Good. I would have been so bored if you didn't."
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