‘It was such a lovely day,’ Hélène said with a sigh, ‘until you got the telegram.’

As he drove back to the village through the gathering gloom, he thought of the brief conversation he had managed to have with Annette, the maid.

‘Look after your mistress while I’m away,’ he’d said.

‘Of course,’ she had replied. ‘No harm will come to her. Pierre and I will see to that.’

‘Send word to me if necessary,’ Rupert had added, giving her his direction at Pilgrim’s Oak.

Once back at the inn he found Parker had packed all his belongings in readiness for the journey, and so he retired to his room, where he spent the night alone with his grief. Justin was dead, the other half of himself was missing and would never return, and having held himself together while he was at Belair, at long last he was able to give vent to his misery.

When the chaise was out of sight, Hélène had turned back into the house. She missed him already, but they had agreed to write and she would send her first letter the very next day and then wait to receive his reply. As she lay in bed, staring out into the night sky, she relived the day, the day which had been such a mixture of sadness and joy, the day she had engaged herself to marry Rupert Chalfont.

Chapter 27

‘He’s on his way home,’ Sir Philip said as he opened the telegram. ‘He’ll be here in a couple of days.’

Pilgrim’s Oak was a house in mourning. The curtains were drawn against the daylight, voices were hushed, footsteps light upon the stairs. Everyone was dressed in black, hurriedly ordered by Fran to show respect for the unexpected death.

Fran couldn’t wait for Rupert to get home. She had had to carry the weight of her parents’ grief alone. Her mother had been prostrate ever since she had seen Justin’s body laid out in the morning room.

‘I shall never be able to go into that room again,’ she had wailed. ‘What can have happened to him? How did he drown? I always hated him fishing!’

Sir Philip had been as strong and withdrawn as any man of his age faced with the death of a son. There was no wailing or tears from him, just a rigidity of body and mind as he had to accustom himself to the fact that Justin would never again walk in through the house in muddy boots, or be scolded by his mother for doing so.

Fran took on the arrangements for the funeral, for the notices to The Times and The Morning Post. It was Fran who consulted with Mrs Darwin about the baked meats to be served at the house to those who returned there after the service; with Mrs Crowley, the housekeeper, about which rooms should be prepared for Lady Chalfont’s sister and her husband, Lord and Lady Devenish, who were coming to stay for the funeral. And all the while she was worried Rupert would not arrive in time. How long had the telegram taken to find him? How long had his reply been in coming back?