As the chaplain joined their right hands together the butterfly remained with them and when they walked back down the aisle as man and wife, it danced ahead of them, leading them out into the sunshine.

‘A photograph,’ Nancy demanded, holding up her hand to bossily prevent them from moving a step farther.

The butterfly was again on her bouquet and as they happily posed for a photograph, Lotti was aware of Berthold edging nearer and nearer to her. Her eyes took on a determined glint. On this day, of all days, her uncle was not going to add to his collection.

Bending her head, she softly blew on the delicate blue wings and then, her hand tucked in the crook of her husband’s arm, watched elatedly as it shivered and shimmered and then flew high, dazzlingly, gloriously free.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Yorkshire, June 1946

Vicky tied an apron around her waist to protect the oyster-silk dress she had married in twelve years earlier and that she still wore on special occasions, and began checking on the salads she had made earlier that morning.

‘But when will they be here?’ Emily Elise demanded, her coppery-red hair held away from her face by a velvet headband.

Her school’s regulations demanded that when she was at school her mane of hair was tightly plaited, something she bitterly resented now that she was fourteen. Today, because it was a family occasion—and a very special family occasion—her waist-length hair cascaded in a pre-Raphaelite torrent of curls and waves.

‘If the London train is on time reaching Harrogate, the train they are likely to catch from Harrogate to Little Ridding is the eleven-ten.’ Vicky tweaked a lettuce leaf unnecessarily.

‘Can I go with Lotti and Max and Daddy to meet them?’ Emily Elise took a raspberry from a bowl piled high with them.

Vicky, expectation and nerves wound to a fine point, tapped her hand. ‘Please do not do that,’ she said admonishingly. ‘You’ll get raspberry juice on your fingers and then on your dress. Where is Zelda? Is she still sunning herself in the hammock as if there’s all the time in the world before they arrive?’

‘Aunt Zelda says that if you’re in such a state today, what are you going to be like tomorrow, when it’s the wedding day?’ Emile Elise said, adroitly avoiding answering the question. She wasn’t a grass and she adored her exotic and unconventional aunt.

‘If the cake doesn’t arrive as promised from the baker’s and if Leo has to return to London because there’s an important vote being taken in the House of Commons, I shall be in a flat spin.’

It wasn’t true. Nothing put her in a flat spin, not even caring for Berthold and Bertha who were now living in the west wing and had become quite a feature of Little Ridding as they happily ambled the countryside around it, searching for butterflies. A flat spin today, though, wouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest, for she couldn’t remember any time in her life when it had been so important to her that everything should be perfect.