Behind them, they heard footsteps.

“Oh, what is it?” cried Clara.

She turned, and gasped.

On the side of the road above the riverbank stood a motorbike. And walking toward them, untying his leather helmet, came its rider …

Henri de Beauchesne looked less splendid than he had on the ferry crossing when he’d first met Clara. His journey from the convent had been fraught. The motorbike had broken down twice, he had gotten lost three times and he had slept in a barn. He was tired, unshaven and his clothes were stained with engine oil. As he strode toward the group by the river, removing his goggles and helmet, he felt suddenly very nervous, unsure of his reception, worried that in coming here he had offended Clara, that he should have stayed away. Nevertheless, he spoke with as much confidence as he could muster the words he had come all this way to say.

“Please, Mademoiselle Clara … may I help?”

The captain, having been quickly apprised of the situation, immediately became efficient.

“I will go to Armande and send a car to fetch you and your belongings,” he declared. “Where should it go? To your grandmother’s house, Lotti? No, that is a bit much perhaps, so many people and dogs at one time, after all these years. The quayside then, which is famous in Armande. And Lotti—no, do not argue, I know how independent you are, but it seems from what you have told me that time is of great importance here—I will take you to your grandmother alone.”

“On the motorbike?” asked Ben, with a stab of envy.

“Of course on the motorbike,” said Henri, very seriously. “Perhaps later if I may be useful to you, I can take you somewhere also?”

He looked at Clara and added, with a return of his earlier nervousness, “Will that be acceptable, Mademoiselle Clara?”

Clara nodded, and smiled, and kept on smiling as, a few minutes later, Henri left on the motorbike with Lotti, bound for her grandmother’s house.

On the quayside at Armande, Albert Skinner waited.

Chapter Thirty-Seven