The commanding officer of the American troops was Colonel Foxworth, from Texas, and he was very pleasant, and apologized profusely for putting his men in her stables. But the rest of them pitched tents, and used the caretaker’s cottage she had so recently vacated, and even the local hotel. They didn’t put her out of her house again, so soon after she’d moved back into it with Emanuelle and Phillip.

“We’re used to it by now.” She smiled about the men in their stables. And he assured her that they would do as little damage as possible. He had good control of his men, and they were friendly, but they kept their distance. They flirted a little with Emanuelle, but she had no great interest in them, and they always brought candy to Phillip.

They all heard the church bells toll when the Americans liberated Paris in August. It was August twenty-fifth, and France was free at last. The Germans had been driven out of France, and her day of shame had ended.

“Is it all over now?” Sarah asked Colonel Foxworth incredulously.

“Almost. As soon as we get to Berlin, it will be. But it’s over here at least. You can go back to England now if you want to.” She wasn’t sure what to do, but she thought she should at least go to Whitfield and see William’s mother. Sarah hadn’t left France since war had been declared five years before. It was amazing.

The day before Phillip’s birthday, Sarah and Phillip left for England, leaving Emanuelle at the château to watch over it. She was a responsible girl and she had paid her price for the war too. Her brother Henri had been killed in the Ardennes the previous winter. But he had been a hero in the Resistance.

Colonel Foxworth and his counterpart in Paris had made arrangements for Sarah and Phillip on a military flight going to London, and there had been a great deal of hush-hush talk, telling the air force to expect the Duchess of Whitfield and her son, Lord Phillip.

The Americans provided a jeep to Paris for her, and they circumvented the town as they headed for the airport. They arrived with only moments to spare, and she swept Phillip into her arms, running for the plane, carrying their one small suitcase with the other. And as she reached the plane, a soldier stepped forward and stopped her.

“I’m sorry, madam. You can’t get on this plane. This is a military flight … militaire …” he said in French, thinking she didn’t understand him. “Non … non … ” He wagged a finger at her and she shouted at him above the din from the engines.

“They’re expecting me! We are expected!”

“This flight is only for military personnel,” he shouted back, “And some old—” And then he realized who she was, and blushed to the roots of his hair, as he reached out to take Phillip from her. “I thought … I’m really sorry, ma’am … Your, er … Majesty …” It had dawned on him too late that she was the promised duchess.

“Never mind.” She smiled, and stepped into the plane behind him. He had been expecting some old crone, and it had never dawned on him that the Duchess of Whitfield would be a young woman with a little boy. He was still apologizing when he left them.

The flight to London didn’t take very long, it took them less than an hour to cross the channel. And on the way over, several soldiers spoke to her admiringly for having weathered the Occupation. It seemed odd to Sarah as she listened to them, and remembered how relatively peaceful her life had been, during her four years in the cottage, protected by Joachim. When they arrived in London, an enormous Rolls-Royce was waiting for them. She was to go directly to the Air Ministry for a meeting with Sir Arthur Harris, the commander in chief of Bomber Command, and the King’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, who was there by order of the King, and also to represent the secret intelligence service. They had flags and little insignia to give to Phillip, and all the secretaries kept calling him Your Lordship. It was a good deal more ceremony and respect than he was used to, but Sarah noticed with a smile that Phillip definitely seemed to like it.

“Why don’t people at home call me that?” he whispered to his mother.

“Like whom?” She was amused by the question.

“Oh … Emanuelle … the soldiers …”

“I’ll be sure to remind them,” she teased, but he didn’t hear the humor in her voice and he was pleased that she agreed with him.

Several of the secretaries and two aides kept Phillip busy for her. When she went into the meeting, she found herself with Sir Arthur and Sir Alan. They were extremely kind to her, and what they wanted to tell her was what she already knew, that for two and a half years there had been no word of William.

She hesitated, trying to compose herself, and to get up the courage to ask a question. She took a deep breath and then looked at them. “Do you think it’s possible he’s still alive?” she asked softly.

“Possible,” Sir Arthur said deliberately. “But not likely,” he added sadly. “By now we would have heard something from someone. Someone would have seen him in one of the prisoner-of-war camps. And if they know who he is at all, they’d be parading him all over. I think it’s most unlikely they don’t know who he is if they have him.”

“I see,” she said quietly. They talked to her for a little while longer, and then finally they all stood up, congratulating her again on her courage in France, and the fact that she and her son had come through it. “We lost a little girl,” she said in a small voice, “in May of this year…. William had never seen her.”

“We’re terribly sorry, Your Grace. We didn’t know….”

They ushered her back outside eventually, and restored Phillip to her, and then drove her ceremoniously to Whitfield. The dowager duchess was waiting for them there, and Sarah was amazed by how well she looked. She was thinner and very frail, but she was eighty-nine now. She was really quite remarkable, and she had even done whatever she could for the war effort around Whitfield.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said as she embraced Sarah, and then stood back a step, leaning on her cane to look at Phillip. She was wearing a bright-blue dress, the color of her eyes, and Sarah felt a wave of emotion wash over her, thinking of William. “What a beautiful young man. He looks a great deal like my husband.” She smiled. It was exactly what William had said when Phillip was born, that he looked so much like his father.

She took them both inside then, and fed Phillip a cup of tea and homemade shortbread cookies. He watched her in awe, but he seemed surprisingly at home with her. And afterwards, one of the servants took him outside to show him the horses and the stables while the dowager duchess chatted with Sarah. She knew she’d been to the Air Ministry that day and she was anxious to know what they’d said to her, but she wasn’t surprised that the news was disappointing. In fact, she was a great deal more philosophical about it than Sarah was, which surprised her.

“I don’t think we’ll really know what happened to him until after Germany falls, and I hope it does soon. I think there must be someone who knows, but for whatever reason they’re not talking.” On the other hand, he could have died hanging from a tree when he parachuted in, or been shot by a soldier who never knew who he was, and left him there to be buried by a farmer. There were a lot of ways he could have been killed, and fewer explanations for him being alive, Sarah realized now. She was beginning to realize that it was less than likely that her husband was still alive, and still she clung to some small shred of hope, particularly now that she was back in England. And much to her chagrin, she had just learned, when she called Jane, that Peter, her brother-in-law, had been killed at Kiska, in the Aleutians, and Jane sounded as devastated as Sarah was without William.

At Whitfield, William seemed so much a part of her life. Everything here reminded her of him. It touched her particularly the next day when her mother-in-law gave Phillip a pony for his birthday. He was so excited, and so happy. Sarah hadn’t really seen him smile like that since Lizzie died, and Joachim left. And here, Phillip was so much a part of his father’s world, and the life he had been born to. The child thrived just being there. And he told her adamantly that he wanted to stay, when she finally announced that they were going back to France in October.

“Can I take my pony back to France with us, Mama?” he asked, and Sarah shook her head. They were going back to France on another military flight, and there was no way she could transport a horse with them. And some of the Americans were still at the château, there was too much turmoil in their lives even to think about taking back a pony. And behind the turmoil, Sarah was beginning to feel real grief now over the loss of William. Coming back to Whitfield had made his absence more real, and she missed him more than ever.

“We’ll be back soon, sweetheart, and Grandmother will keep the pony for you here.” He was sad not to be bringing it back to France. It was amazing, though, to realize that all of this was going to be his one day. But it cut her to the quick when the servants began calling him Your Grace by the end of the trip. In their minds, William was gone, and Phillip was the duke now.

“I still believe we may hear something from him,” William’s mother said the night before Sarah left. “Don’t completely give up all hope of him,” she urged. “I shan’t.” And Sarah promised that she wouldn’t either, but in her heart of hearts, she was beginning to mourn now.

They went back to France the next day, and the War Office had arranged for transportation for her once she got there. Things seemed more orderly than when they’d left six weeks before, and everything was in order when they got back to the château. Emanuelle was in residence, and the colonel had kept his men in good control, and most of them had left now. Some of the men who used to work for her returned to do some gardening, and after their return, she began working on some of the boiseries again, and making repairs after years of neglect by the Germans. But thanks to Joachim’s vigilance they had actually done surprisingly little damage.