Lieutenant Hughes when he was vulnerable. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to know any more. For Lydia’s sake.”
“What was the thrust of Tilton’s questions?”
“Coloring. If the child was fair, like Juliana, then in theory neither George nor his brother could be the father. While you are fair, and very like your dead sister, if we can draw such a conclusion from that painting.”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. I understand. Thank you all the same. Go on to bed. It’s very late.”
It was dismissal, and I was glad to take it.
I couldn’t read Roger Ellis. Either he was a consummate liar, or he was telling the truth. And I was fairly sure he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
I went slowly up the stairs, remembering that Lydia was determined to leave in the morning. I didn’t know what advice to give her-to go, or to stay and get to the bottom of what if anything her husband was hiding. She had been deeply hurt for a second time, and she couldn’t convince herself that this time it was largely her fault. And I couldn’t imagine Lydia taking Gran’s advice to look the other way. In an arranged marriage, that might be possible, but in a love match, it was the destruction of trust.
I opened the door to my room, glad to have the night to consider what to do in the morning.
Instead I found Lydia lying across my bed, crying.
For an instant I hesitated. And then I backed out as quietly as I’d come in. The wind rattled the window just as I was closing the door as gently as possible. I waited for several seconds, but Lydia didn’t call to me. Turning, I walked down the passage.
Where was I to go? All the bedrooms were occupied. And Lydia was safer where she was. With luck, no one would think to look for her in my room.
The hall was too large and empty and uncomfortable. I wasn’t particularly happy with the thought of sleeping in the room above the hall. Those long windows would be drafty and I’d be cold before morning. In the end I went down to the family sitting room and pulled two chairs together. There was a woolen lap rug over the back of another chair, and I pulled that round my shoulders. The fire here had died down to ashes, but there was still enough of a glow from the embers that I didn’t need to light a lamp. I was just as glad, thinking that at least no one would believe anyone was in here, if the room was dark.
I’d been there for well over two hours, unable to sleep, when George Hughes, in his dressing gown, quietly opened the door. He was looking for the brandy, I thought, but found me instead. He fumbled for the lamp and struck a match, the smell of sulfur strong in the air. Just as the light bloomed, I spoke, so that he wouldn’t be startled seeing me there.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. As if the entire household had no reason to lie awake.
“Lydia is in my room. I think you’d better tell me, Lieutenant. Before this breaks up Lydia’s marriage. I won’t ask you who the father is. Only, where is this child?”
He sighed. “Her mother is dead. She was put into an orphanage. No one seems to know where. That’s all I can tell you.”
“In France?”
“Yes. In France.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. But I saw her when she was only a year old. And she is so like Juliana it makes one’s heart stop. If I’d known-if I’d had any idea-I’d have claimed her myself. Brought her to England and raised her as my own. To hell with Roger. But that’s water over the dam. I remember Juliana, you see. Roger never really got over her death. Nor did I, if you want the truth. I thought when I saw Lydia for the first time that she must have reminded him of Juliana in a way. But he said not. I don’t know.”
“Did he have an affair?”
“I expect he did. How else do you explain the child? My God.”
“And the mother? Who was she?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
“But you said you saw the child?”
“Quite by accident, actually. I was-” He broke off, turning toward the door. “There’s someone outside.”
I got up and went quietly to the door, opening it quickly. But if someone had been there, he or she was gone now. There was no one in the passage outside.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said as I closed the door again. He looked with longing at the brandy decanter, then sighed. “I was sitting there, staring up at Juliana’s portrait, and I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know what happened to that child.” He took a turn about the room, fretful and angry. “I’d waited for Ellis to say something. I’d given him every opportunity. When we were alone in the motorcar. Before dinner. I even mentioned the portrait that first night, to signal that Juliana-and by extension, the child-was on my mind. Instead he avoided the subject. I began to believe there was something he didn’t want to tell me. Had something happened to her? Was she dead? When he sat down near me at the end of the evening tonight, I thought, this was my chance. There might not be another. I intend to leave tomorrow. It will be less embarrassing all round.”
This time he stopped by the drinks table, lifted the brandy decanter, and poured a goodly amount into a glass. But then he set it aside untasted.
“As soon as I’m back in France, I’m going to find her. See if I don’t, by God. I must have been out of my mind to think Roger-” He swore under his breath, picked up the glass, and downed it in one long swallow. “She even smiles the way Juliana did. It was such a shock I stood there unable to say a word. And then they were gone, the nuns hurrying the children away. I caught up with them then, asked what the little girl’s name was. I think they must have believed I had some ulterior motive, that I meant her a harm. The older nun glared at me and told me it was none of my affair. Damn it, I don’t see how he could walk away from his own flesh and blood. But he has.”
“But what if Captain Ellis is telling the truth? You can’t be certain the child is his, just because she reminds you of Juliana. Can you? A fleeting resemblance that touched a chord of memory when you were already tired, under great stress-”
“No, I’m not mad, and I’m not mistaken. Ellis got very drunk one night, talking wildly about someone dying. He’d got a letter, he said, and he’d burned it because he didn’t want to know what was in it. Now he was frantic to read it, and it was gone. I asked him how he knew someone was dying if he hadn’t read the letter, and he told me it was enclosed in another letter. The next morning he was gone. I don’t know how he wangled leave, or even if he did. Three days later he was back, haggard, unshaven, looking as if he hadn’t slept. He asked if I had any money, and I gave him what I had. He left again, and by the time he returned that evening, I’d already lied twice to cover for him. I asked if everything was all right, and he nearly took my head off. A day or so later he told me that if anything happened to him that I was to see that money went regularly to a small convent south of Ypres. He said he was paying for perpetual prayers for someone’s soul.”
He broke off, and for a moment I thought he was going to the decanter again, but he only walked to the door, and as I’d done, opened it quickly and peered out. Satisfied, he closed it again and went on, as if he couldn’t stop himself.
“I was curious, and months later when I found myself within a few miles of the convent, I went there. It was in ruins, and the nuns had moved to a house farther south. Some three months after that, when I was sent to Calais to expedite supplies coming through, I managed to trace the nuns. That’s when I discovered that they actually had an orphanage. I hung about for an hour or more, and the nuns appeared with a crocodile of children. All ages, some of them wounded, others in a state of shock, moving like their own shadows, and a handful of very little ones holding hands. The middle one was a girl in a dress too large for her. Hardly more than a year old, at a guess, and just barely walking well. I noticed her because she kept tripping over her hems, which were dragging on the ground. One of the nuns stopped and hitched the dress up with a ribbon or something. And the child looked up and smiled at me over the nun’s shoulder. I stood there, my mouth literally hanging open. The nuns marched the children several times around the house they were using as their convent, and then led them back inside. I tell you, the likeness was uncanny. Not a faulty memory or wishful thinking. It was real. I went straight to the door before they could shut it to ask about the child, but my French wasn’t all that good, and I think the nuns believed I wanted to take a child away for my own purposes, and they sent me smartly about my business.”
“Did you ask Roger Ellis about her? Did you go back?”
“I said nothing to him then. Well, a man generally doesn’t ask another man if he’s got a bastard child. I stood up with him at his wedding to Lydia, for God’s sake. But I kept an ear open for news of the convent, all the same,
