Captain Mandeville charged back into the room, his cheeks flushed. He swept his fringe away from his face. In his civilian clothes, he was far less imposing than the proud cavalry officer in the painting. Stripped of his finery and braid, and with no sword at his side, he seemed smaller somehow. More vulnerable.

Lou stood up. ‘If it’s all right with your Ladyship, I think I might go to my room.’

‘You won’t take tea?’ Lady Mandeville asked.

‘I don’t feel very thirsty. I’m sorry.’

She made to go but stopped when Albert hollered, ‘Please, put me down.’

Captain Mandeville came to an abrupt halt. He lifted Albert from his shoulders and deposited him on the floor. Albert made straight for the dolls’ house. Reaching inside, he removed the newly arrived, finely dressed lady from the morning room and eased the maid from the wooden box. ‘Do you see?’ he said to her, holding a doll in each hand. ‘One out, one in.’

It took a moment, but Lou’s mind flashed back to another day in this house. A day when it was a charred carcass, its walls caked in mould and dripping water. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, unable to trust her memory.

‘One out, one in,’ Albert repeated. Lou knelt before him. She looked first at the dolls and then into the little boy’s eyes. He smiled, a smile she recognised, even though last time she had seen it, the lips were thin and the teeth not his own.

‘You’re Bert,’ she whispered. ‘Julie’s Uncle Bert.’

He blinked and, still smiling, returned to his game. He placed the maid back into the box and the lady into the house. Lou was only vaguely aware of the babble of conversation around her. Something felt odd. Something that she couldn’t put her finger on. Why had her brain summoned up a little version of Bert who she had met only once before and hardly thought about since?

Instead of returning to her room as she had intended, she settled back on the sofa to watch Albert play with the dolls. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when eventually Sally returned to take him home. At lunch, she spent more time mulling over Albert’s words than eating. One out, one in. Whatever did that mean? And why, of all the things that old Bert had said to her that day in the derelict house, had her memory dredged up that phrase?

When the lunch party dispersed, Lou returned to her room. Sally soon appeared to help her begin the process of dressing for dinner.

‘It’ll be more formal tonight, what with Sir Charles and Captain Mandeville at home,’ Sally said, inspecting the contents of the wardrobe and settling on a lilac satin dress with black straps and a black bandeau.

After her bath, Lou sat at the dressing table, watching Sally’s reflection as she constructed her hair. ‘Albert’s a lovely boy,’ she said.

Sally let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘When he wants to be.’