From the shelter of the half-open dining room door, Fran watched him leave the house. She stole across the hall and silently slipped her hand into the postbag. There were three letters waiting to go, and glancing at them, she removed the one addressed to the girl in France.

Even as she went quickly upstairs with the letter in her pocket, she felt sick at what she was doing, but it was too late to go back on everything now. She already had two letters from France hidden in her dressing table. How long before Rupert came to accept that the girl wasn’t going to write to him, that the romance had meant nothing more to her than a mild flirtation? In many ways Fran wished she had never started the deception, but it was too late to repine. After all, she was doing all this with the best of intentions; she was doing it for her family. Rupert might never forgive her if he ever found out, so she must ensure that he never did, but it was Rupert’s duty to marry Kitty and all she was doing was helping him to make the right decision. She had never opened the letters; they were still private. He could never accuse her of prying, she wouldn’t dream of reading anyone else’s letters… and thus she tried to salve her conscience. She was doing the right thing.

Chapter 33

Rosalie stayed in Paris for a week before returning to Belair. To begin with Hélène was buoyed up with the thought of Rupert’s letters, but as the days passed and nothing was heard from him, she began to worry. Without letting her mother know, she had written to him again, getting Annette to post the letter in the village rather than putting it in the household postbag. She had no reason to think that it would not have been posted that way; it was simply that she had disobeyed her mother in not waiting for another letter from Rupert before writing again. She realised that he must be extremely busy with everything he needed to do at Pilgrim’s Oak, with perhaps no time to write, and she hoped that another letter from her would cheer him, but as the days turned into weeks and she heard nothing further, she began to believe that he had changed his mind and forgotten her; her heart ached and her spirits sank lower.

Rosalie saw the change in her. She had, of course, noticed that there had been no letters from England after the one which had arrived in Paris. She wondered if another had been directed to the Avenue Ste Anne and was simply waiting to be picked up. She wrote a brief note to Georges and asked him to go to the house next time he was in Paris and see what post, if any, was there. Within three days she had a reply from him, saying there was nothing.

Were you expecting something important, Maman? he wrote. I shall be in Paris again very soon and can go to the house again to see.