On the outside, Hubert Netherbury and his wife, Vera, seemed dull but dependable, which was why the St. Rémys had chosen them as guardians years before, when Lotti was a little baby. But underneath their bland exterior they were snobs who hated scandal but loved money. As a young man, Hubert had been ambitious, but the success in business that had made Théophile very rich had eluded him. He and Vera lived in a small house, with only one servant, who doubled as a cook, and over the years even their blandness had faded. By the time Isobel and Théophile died, Vera’s face had become mean and pinched, and Hubert’s had the sly and sullen expression of a bully. They had disliked Isobel and Théophile, and disapproved of their lifestyle, but they were delighted to come and live in their house. Barton Lacey, with its eight bedrooms and string of reception rooms, its famous gardens and extensive woodlands, was exactly the sort of home they felt they had always deserved.

The only problem was Lotti, who just by existing reminded them that Barton Lacey was not really theirs.

They might have tolerated a quiet child, but for weeks after the funeral, Lotti did nothing but cry. She had nightmares and screamed for her parents. She refused to eat. She locked herself in her room with Queen Victoria and would not come out. She informed her uncle and aunt that she hated them.

She gave them her cold.

Perhaps, if life had not disappointed them, Hubert and Vera might have been kind, but it had, and they were not. They did not hold Lotti while she wept or tell her that they loved her. They did not ask Cook to prepare her favorite meals. When Lotti finally came out of her room, puffy with tears, they made her take her meals alone in the kitchen, and they banned Queen Victoria from the house. When this made Lotti cry all over again, they told her she was wicked. And when summer ended they sent her far away to a gloomy boarding school, just after the war had started.

In all of this, only one person had comforted Lotti: her French grandmother, Camille St. Rémy, or Moune as Lotti called her. She came for the funeral, and for a few days Lotti clung to her. When she left, Moune promised that she would write every week, and that every summer Lotti would spend the month of August with her in France in her timber-framed house overlooking the river at Armande, as she had with her parents every summer since she was born.