For a brief moment, before Lotti noticed him, Albert had a clear view of Lotti’s face, and what he read on it took his breath away.
Fear, certainly, or at least apprehension, but also … hope.
Fierce, burning, furious hope.
Then she saw him, and hope vanished, replaced by fear.
Henri turned, glowered and stepped forward to protect Lotti, but Albert made no move towards her.
Instead, Albert stared.
Albert stared, and Albert stared, and Albert stared.
Puzzled, Lotti stepped away from the motorbike, and began to walk towards the house. She reached the porch, then stopped and turned to see if he was following.
Albert continued to stare.
Lotti squared her shoulders. Once again, she reached for the lion’s head, and knocked. Once again, the housekeeper opened the door. For a moment, it looked like she would close it again. But then Lotti held out the ring …
The housekeeper scowled, but she took the ring and went back into the house, closing the door firmly behind her. Lotti waited, her heart in her mouth. At the gate of the villa, Henri and Albert stood side by side now watching.
The door opened and a tiny, silver-haired woman in her late sixties came out. There was a cry – Albert knew that he would never forget that cry.
The cry was surprise and disbelief and longing and joy and grief all rolled into one, but most of all it was love.
The silver-haired woman opened her arms, and Lotti fell into them.
Albert Skinner, with a nod to Henri de Beauchesne, walked away. Back down the hill he went, all the way to his hotel, where he checked out before boarding the next train to Paris, and then the boat train to England and his son.
‘Dangerous,’ Hubert Netherbury had written about Lotti’s grandmother in his last telegram, but now that he had seen Camille St Rémy, Albert didn’t believe it for a minute.
Lotti’s grandmother cherished Lotti in a way Hubert Netherbury never could.
And if there was one thing the war had taught Albert, it was that children were to be cherished.
*
‘He lied to both of us.’
Camille St Rémy and Lotti sat in the back garden on a little terrace under a vine-covered gazebo, holding hands on a wicker sofa Lotti remembered well from scores of summer afternoon naps as a little child. A tray laden with tea and cakes lay before them, brought by the slightly shamefaced housekeeper and untouched because neither grandmother not granddaughter could bear to let go of each other.
‘I wrote and wrote,’ Camille said. ‘All of that first year, every week like I promised, even though you didn’t answer. I thought perhaps you were too little, that I shouldn’t expect a reply, but eventually I wrote to your uncle to ask if anything was wrong, if you were all right. He replied asking me to stop writing to you. He said my letters reminded you too much of your parents, that you had told him you wanted to forget them, to forget me … He said they upset you too much, that you cried uncontrollably when you read them …’
‘But I never did receive them!’ Lotti cried. ‘I wrote to you every week as well. When your letters stopped, I couldn’t understand it. I thought you must not love me any more. He said you didn’t love me any more!’
‘As if I could stop loving you!’ said Moune. ‘Oh, I should have known it wasn’t true, I should have trusted you, but he was so forceful, so adamant …’
‘He must have stopped forwarding your letters to me when I went to school,’ said Lotti, thinking. ‘And at school, the housemistresses read all our letters. He must have ordered them to stop my letters to you. But why?’
Camille sighed. ‘I think I know.’
And then she told Lotti something Lotti had never known – that in their will, Théophile and Isobel had made it clear that should the arrangement with the Netherburys prove unsatisfactory, Camille St Rémy should be given full guardianship of her granddaughter, and take over responsibility for Barton Lacey.
‘But why couldn’t I just live with you in the first place?’ asked Lotti. ‘I would have much preferred that.’
‘Your parents thought it would be better for you to have a younger guardian,’ Camille explained. ‘And also that you would prefer to stay at home in England. Of course, they never imagined that any of this would be necessary … As to your uncle, it was better for him if you and I were separated. He sent you away to have Barton all to himself, then made sure you and I never spoke so I never learned of his cruelty to you. My poor darling, were you really away from home for so long?’
‘Four and a half years.’ Lotti rubbed her cheek, then in a small voice asked, ‘Moune, you won’t send me back, will you? I can come and live with you?’
Her grandmother hugged her very close.
‘I will never send you away,’ she whispered. ‘I promise with all my heart. But now, Lotti, chérie, I need you to explain. How did you come to be here, alone, with this extraordinary haircut and these strange dirty clothes and your papa’s ring? What has been going on?’
Lotti grinned.
‘If I tell, you won’t believe me,’ she said. ‘But first, Moune, there are quite a lot of people I need to introduce you to …’
*
Hubert Netherbury arrived in Armande as expected, late in the afternoon. Furious to discover that Albert had already left town, he ordered his hotel concierge to fetch him a cab and went straight up to the house on the cliff, still bent on preventing a reunion between Lotti and her grandmother.
Hearing voices from the back of the house, he walked a little further along the road to peer through the hedge.
In the garden, a party was taking place. Sitting on the sofa under the gazebo, he saw Camille St Rémy, older than when he last saw her at his sister’s funeral but just as formidable, sitting with … Hubert did a double take … Lotti’s tutor from Great Barton.
Both women were looking very serious. Hubert wondered uncomfortably if they were talking about him.
He looked beyond them to the lawn, where a rowdy game of boules was taking place, led by a dishevelled but splendid-looking man with an eyepatch, and at the heart of the game, dressed disgracefully and with an outrageous new haircut, he saw his niece.
There might be time yet, thought Hubert uncertainly, to get her back. With enough confidence, he could march into the garden and order her away. He was still Lotti’s legal guardian, after all …
From the other side of the hedge, he heard a nasty growl. Looking down, he recognised the horrible little dog he had ordered to be shot at Barton Lacey.
‘Shh!’ Hubert hissed. ‘Go! Go away!’
But Federico did not shush, and he did not go away. Instead he began to bark. At the sound, Lotti looked up. Seeing her uncle, she paled. Ben, noticing, came to stand beside her.
‘We can thump him if you like,’ he whispered. ‘There’s enough of us.’
But Lotti shook her head. Then, raising her chin, she looked her uncle directly in the eyes.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’ve already won.’