She paused on the steps of the church and considered what she should do. Annette said it would be mad to risk going to the house, but she was so close. She hadn’t set out to come here, but somehow her feet had brought her nonetheless. She knew Annette was right, she could not simply walk up to the front door; anyone might see her, and when the door was opened, all the servants would know that she had come home. Even if her mother did not speak of it, there would be no keeping her reappearance from her father or Simon. Perhaps she should simply turn round and go back to her refuge in the apartment in Batignolles.

But what if…? As she stood hesitantly on the church steps, she had an idea. When she had been hiding in the stables during the siege, her brothers, Georges and Marcel, had always come and gone by way of a small wooden gate set in the high stone wall that surrounded the garden. The gate opened onto a narrow lane outside; it was the way that Jeannot always used when he came visiting Pierre.

I could go in that way, she thought now. No one would notice me going into the stable yard. I could wait in the stables for Pierre and perhaps he could fetch Maman. I could see her in the stables and no one else in the house would even know I’d been there.

She looked down at the shabby clothes she was wearing, bought by Annette from a market stall. She hardly looked like the daughter of the house. Anyone seeing her in the street would assume she was a maid bringing a message. All she had to do was to walk along the road and turn into the lane that ran down the side of the house and it would be most unlikely that anyone would give her a second glance. She could simply slip in through the garden gate, and if that were locked, she might use the port cochère where the carriage turned into the stable yard.

She descended the church steps, and having looked carefully about her and seen only an empty street, she set off towards the house and turned into the lane. From the opposite side of the road, a pair of eyes watched her. Despite her confident walk or maybe because of it, there was something about her that drew their owner’s attention and he watched her first try the garden gate, which was locked, and then slip into the yard through the port cochère.

Interesting, he thought. Would she come out again the same way, or would she remain in the house? Either way, he would be able to report her arrival to the man who employed him. He settled down again to wait, as he had waited for several long weeks. Waiting was something he was good at, especially if he received solid coinage for doing so.

Having found the garden gate locked, Hélène had to risk using the wider gates of the port cochère. The yard was empty, and with an anxious glance at the house, she slipped out of sight into the stable block. Pierre was grooming one of the carriage horses and he looked up in surprise.