‘You’re not to die!’ Her throat was choked with grief. ‘You’re not to!’

He gave a very slow, dismissive blink of his eyelids. ‘It’s too late, Liebchen,’ he croaked, ‘it’s already happening. I just wanted to say…to say how much I’ve always loved you. The miscegenate thing…’

He struggled for breath again and she wanted to scream at him not to remember such a thing at such a time, and then he said, ‘The miscegenate thing…it always brought me a lot of pleasure. Your beauty. Your hair…so black. Night-black. You wouldn’t have been you without the Iroquois in you, Zelda. All my life, every time I’ve looked at you, I’ve been unable to believe your beauty. Just the sight of you has always given me such pleasure…such pleasure…’

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t because of the sobs in her throat—and then she knew it was too late for speech, for she was alone in the room and all her most fervent prayers had gone unanswered.

Chapter Thirty-One

Yorkshire, March 1944

‘Thank God we’ve both got forty-eight-hour passes coming up,’ Hugo said wearily to Tony Walsh, his navigator, as he flew their Mosquito towards the blessed shores of England after a night raid on Aachen. ‘What are you going to do with yours? Head home?’

‘I doubt it. I don’t have any family apart from a sour-faced aunt. When I have a forty-eight I usually hang around the base.’

Hugo looked towards him, appalled. Well known for being a loner, he usually didn’t take the slightest interest in the lives of those he flew with, which was why he hadn’t previously known of Tony’s family situation. He tried to imagine what his own life would be like without Shuttleworth Hall as a sanctuary to retreat to every few months, and couldn’t.

‘I’m heading to Yorkshire,’ he said, as they flew over the coast. ‘My family home is a great rambling affair on the banks of the Ure. My mother turned it into a nursing home for wounded soldiers during the First World War and still fills it full of people at the least opportunity, evacuees and Jewish refugees at the last count. She likes guests and new faces. Why don’t you come with me for the weekend? You’ll be very welcome.’

It was such an unexpected invitation that Tony’s jaw dropped. Being the oldest and most experienced pilot in the squadron, Hugo Remer’s skill as a pilot was legendary, but he wasn’t a man known for conviviality. He kept his private life private and didn’t take kindly to jokes. When someone in the mess had made a harmless joke about him having the same name as that of a giant Ruhr steelworks he had bitten the poor guy’s head off.

‘Thanks,’ he said uncertainly, hoping to God Hugo didn’t want to get him into deepest Yorkshire in order to make a pass at him. ‘Your mother sounds great. I’d like to come.’

When Vicky saw Hugo stepping out of a taxi in Shuttleworth Hall’s daffodil-massed drive with a friend in tow, she was overjoyed.