They bought Dunnock Lodge ten years ago, just before Margaret was born, from a wealthy Englishman who’d gone bankrupt on railroad shares. It went unsaid that most of the money for this purchase came from Elfriede, for whom generous provision was made in Gerhard’s will. The house was far too big. In a spirit of great hope, they intended its spacious rooms to shelter not just the four of them, Wilfred and Elfriede and Johann and the new baby, but Johann’s three sisters and, of course, all further babies God might send them in the bright, new days to come. What optimism! When you’re big with child, when your marriage throbs and hums with mutual adoration, anything seems possible. But that was before the horror of Margaret’s birth, the protracted labor, the breech presentation, the botched delivery that nearly killed them both. The blackness that descended afterward, just as the dark, dank Scottish winter set in, how futile. What’s the old saying? Man plans, God laughs. The years went. Charlotte’s whereabouts remained a mystery. Johann grew from boy into man, and Germany inevitably claimed its baron back. And no more babies came along.

Until this one.