Gradually Hélène explained how she had known Annette when they were children, that they had met again when her mother had employed Annette and her aunt to help over the wedding. ‘Her husband died in the flu epidemic in Paris before her baby was born and she came to work for us until then.’ She lapsed into silence and sat twisting the now-damp handkerchief round and round her fingers. ‘The night… the night of Clarice’s wedding the baby started to be born, but there… there was something wrong with him. He was upside down or something. I don’t know.’ Her voice broke on a sob. ‘The midwife was there, but she couldn’t do anything. He was born dead. Poor Annette has no husband and no baby and is like to die herself.’ She scrubbed her eyes again. ‘My mother knew… about the baby being born that night and made Annette move to the midwife’s house. I saw them take her in a cart, but I thought she was going there to have the baby. I thought she’d be happy. Maman did not tell anyone about the baby being born dead on Clarice’s wedding night. She didn’t tell us the next day either. She still hasn’t told anyone what has happened. I asked Henri the stable lad where he had taken Annette. I wanted to see the baby. I’ve never seen a newborn baby, so when Maman was having her afternoon rest, I slipped out and went to the house. The woman who lives there is called Madame Leclerc and she is the midwife. She couldn’t save the baby, but now she’s trying to save Annette. I think she’s dying. She’s lying in bed. Just lying there, her eyes all blank as if she’s gone blind, only I don’t think she has because she knew who I was all right. But she didn’t speak and her baby’s dead. He’s dead. He was never alive except inside her. I felt him kicking inside her. She let me put my hand on her… on her stomach and through her clothes I felt him kicking. He was alive then, but he came out dead. And Maman knew and she didn’t tell me. Annette’s my friend and Maman didn’t tell me.’

‘She probably didn’t want to upset you,’ suggested Rupert gently when she finally came to a stop. ‘She probably wanted to give your friend Annette time to recover from what sounds like a difficult birth before anyone went to see her.’

‘Madame Sauze went,’ Hélène said bitterly, ‘and she didn’t tell me either.’

‘Who is Madame Sauze?’

‘She is Annette’s aunt. She has come to work at Belair as well. She must know that the baby is dead.’

‘Perhaps your mother asked her not to tell you.’

‘Well, she shouldn’t have!’

Rupert looked at her, the girl he’d fallen in love with, and felt completely at a loss. Even in her distress she was beautiful and he longed to gather her into his arms, to comfort her and kiss away her tears, but there could be no possibility of that. Just sitting here with her in a field could compromise her reputation, and they were discussing things that no gentleman should discuss with an innocent young lady. No one should be talking of babies inside their mothers, or the way you could feel them kick before they were born. Even after marriage, if discussed at all, such matters were kept strictly to the bedchamber.