‘I promise you, it isn’t a joke. He wrote to me to ask about you.’

‘Why?’ demanded Hélène angrily. ‘Why did he write to you? No, I don’t want to hear. I never want to hear a word about him, ever again.’

Ignoring her outburst and knowing she must go on until she’d told all, Annette said, ‘He wrote to me because I wrote to him.’

‘You wrote to him?’ Hélène was incredulous. ‘Why? When? What for?’

‘I wrote to him back in January, to tell him you were going to marry Simon Barnier. I said I hoped it made him feel as sick as it made me.’

Hélène managed a weak smile at that. ‘Nothing like as sick as it made me,’ she said.

‘Anyway, he didn’t write back,’ Annette went on. ‘I wasn’t surprised, I didn’t expect him to. He didn’t answer the letter Pierre wrote to him, back in the autumn.’

‘Pierre wrote to him? What on earth for?’

‘To ask him why he wasn’t answering your letters.’

‘Well, we know the answer to that now,’ said Hélène bitterly. ‘It was because he was married.’

‘Let me finish,’ Annette said firmly. ‘Let me explain everything.’

Hélène gave a heavy sigh. ‘If you must.’

‘I must,’ insisted Annette, and quietly she began to explain exactly what had happened, about the letters, about Frances, about Kitty and her baby, and finally about Rupert being in Paris.

‘He thought, because of my letter in January, that you were married to Simon now, that you were beyond his reach. He had set my letter aside as he dealt with his father’s illness and death and then the death of his wife and baby. It was only when he came across it again very recently that he answered it, mentioning the three deaths his family had suffered, one of them being his wife. It was his final farewell to you. Pierre and I didn’t know what to do.’ For a moment Annette lapsed into silence.

‘So, what did you do?’

‘We talked it through and in the end decided to write and tell him you hadn’t married Simon, that you’d run away before the wedding and were in hiding.’

‘You didn’t think to consult me?’ Hélène suggested coldly.

‘No, not then. At least, we did think of it but decided against it until we knew more.’

‘And?’

‘I did write and it was in answer to that letter that we received one the other day. It was sent to Pierre at Belair.’

‘What did it say?’ Hélène’s voice was little more than a whisper.

‘He said he was on his way, and to make sure we kept you safely hidden until he got here. Well, he’s here now, in Paris. I saw him today. He came to the market to find me… and he wants to see you.’

‘Well, I don’t want to see him.’

‘He’s given me something for you,’ Annette said.

‘I don’t want it, whatever it is,’ asserted Hélène.