Once again, laying the ghosts of all the wicked stepmothers since time began, Minna travelled to and fro, read to the child, sang to her, went back to Heslop to entertain the American troops stationed nearby, saw Tom and the second son, Geoffrey, off to war.

When Geoffrey was killed at Paschendale, Minna lost her look of youth for ever. But the gods were appeased, Ollie was cured and returned to Heslop. The fact that one leg was shortened and in callipers was a small price to pay. She was alive.

Lifting her out of the Crossley and setting her down on the gravel, Rupert gathered that Muriel, in response to his call last night, had been in touch with her already. For Ollie, her big blue eyes glinting behind their round spectacles, was clearly in a state of ecstasy.

‘Rupert, she rang my mother. Muriel did. She rang Mummy and she said you wanted me for a bridesmaid and she wanted me too. It’s true, isn’t it? I’m going to be a bridesmaid, aren’t I? It’s really true?’

‘Yes, Moppet, it is,’ said Rupert, taking her hand but making no other attempt to help her up the steps to the front door. Helping the Honourable Olive with the simpler tasks of life was not a thing one did twice.

‘I’ve never been a bridesmaid before. Never,’ said Ollie. ‘There are going to be two others, Mother says, grown-up ones and me. And you know what I’m going to wear?’

‘I don’t, Ollie. But I should dearly like to know. Or is it a secret?’

Ollie sighed in ecstasy. ‘Muriel told me. Rose-coloured satin. It’s true. That’s pink, you know,’ she added obligingly. ‘And a matching rose-coloured velvet muff stitched with pearls.’ She stopped for a moment, quite overcome. ‘And in my hair — honestly, Rupert — a wreath of roses and steph… something with “steph” in it that’s white and smells lovely. And to go to the church, a white cloak lined with the same pink and trimmed with swansdown.’

Rupert looked down at the little upturned face with its mass of freckles and marigold curls and a wave of tenderness for Muriel engulfed him. She could so easily have wanted to choose someone of her own.

‘I think you’re going to be absolutely beautiful,’ he said.

Ollie, who perfectly agreed with him, nodded her head. ‘Can I go and tell Proom and Cookie and James while you talk to Tom? And Peggy and Louise?’

‘Of course. You can tell Anna too,’ said Rupert pensively. ‘She’s a new maid and she’s Russian.’

Ollie was impressed. ‘Like the ballet?’ she said. ‘Mummy likes the ballet very much. She’s going to invite them down.’

‘Very like the ballet,’ said Rupert gravely.

It was fortunate that Peggy, polishing the brasswork in the hall, had overheard this interchange so that by the time the Honourable Olive reached the kitchen and had been installed on her favourite stool beside Mrs Park, everybody was suitably primed.

‘Guess what I’m going to do!’ said Ollie, when she had had her traditional spoonful of plum jam, felt James’s brachial muscles and been introduced to Anna.

The servants looked at each other in simulated amazement.

‘Go to a birthday party?’ suggested Mrs Park.

‘No,’ said the Honourable Olive, her eyes gleaming with importance.

‘Go away on holiday?’ suggested Louise.

‘No!’ said Ollie, wriggling with excitement. ‘Better than that!’

‘Go to the pantomime?’ hazarded Proom.

‘No!’ So intense was her delight that she seemed likely to slide off the stool altogether. ‘I’m going to be a bridesmaid!’

‘Never!’ exclaimed Mrs Park.

‘Not for his lordship’s wedding?’ said James in awed tones.

‘Yes.’ Ollie’s smile shone through the kitchen like Inca gold. ‘And guess what my dress is going to be made of.’

Once again, the staff shook bewildered heads.

‘White muslin?’ suggested Mrs Park.

‘No. Better than that.’

‘Yellow organdie?’

‘No.’ She waited, holding back with an innate sense of drama while they floundered hopelessly among lesser materials and commonplace outfits. Then yielding at last, ‘Rose pink satin an’ a pink muff with pearls and a head-dress of roses and a cloak with swansdown on it!’ She paused, suddenly anxious. ‘You will be there?’ she said. ‘Won’t you? You’ll all see me?’

‘We’ll be there,’ said Mrs Park, giving her another spoonful of jam. ‘There isn’t one of us as you could keep away.’

While Ollie was holding court in the kitchen, Tom Byrne was offering his stepmother’s help in introducing Muriel to the neighbourhood.

‘She wants to give a ball at Heslop in Muriel’s honour. She thought a few days before the wedding, so that house guests could stay for both. Would Muriel care for it, do you think?’

‘I’m sure she would! I can’t imagine a greater compliment.’ Rupert was flattered and touched, for Minna, like many unassuming and self-effacing women, was a marvellous hostess.

‘She’d have come over today to discuss it with your mother but she’s gone up to Craigston to see Hugh.’

‘How is Hugh these days? Happier?’

Tom’s young brother had paid for his happy home life with excrutiating attacks of homesickness when he first went away to school. Rupert’s last memory of him was of a small, carrot-headed boy in a brand new uniform being wretchedly sick on a clump of waste-ground behind Mersham Station.

‘Oh, he’s fine now, he’s really settled at last. He’s made a new friend this term who seems to be a paragon of all the virtues. He’s bringing him down to stay after the end of term. If the wedding’s on the twenty-eighth he should be here in time for it — and for the ball.’

‘In that case, would he like to be an usher, do you think?’

‘He’d love it, I’m sure. Thirteen’s just the age for that to be a real honour. Now tell me exactly what you want me to do. Lavinia Nettleford’s chief bridesmaid, I gather…’

The talk became practical. It was only as he rose to go that Tom, his cheerful, freckled face very serious, suddenly said, ‘I haven’t told you how very happy I am for you. Really. For all of us at Heslop there’s nothing and nobody too good for you.’

Rupert flushed. ‘Thanks, Tom. To tell you the truth, I can’t quite believe in my own luck. And knowing that it’s not just for me. That because of Muriel all the people here will be looked after.’

‘You’d have had to sell otherwise?’

‘I think so. I promised George I’d hang on, but quite honestly I saw no hope.’

‘And you’d have minded?’

‘Not for myself,’ said Rupert who had recently and regretfully refused an invitation from his erstwhile tutor to join him in an expedition to the cave monastery near Akhaltsikhe on the Black Sea. ‘Not even for Mother; she’s always said she’d be happy in a cottage. Only… when I was thinking I’d have to sell I kept remembering such silly things. Once I came back on leave and there was Proom in the pets’ cemetery — you know, that place behind the orangery where all our dogs are buried. He’d dug a new grave and he was burying a pair of unspeakable khaki socks that Mother had knitted for the troops. They were past unravelling, he said, and our soldiers had enough to contend with!’

Tom laughed. ‘Yes, Proom’s a paragon all right.’

‘And when I was still at Cambridge there was this maid — a spindly, pert little thing. Louise. She’s head housemaid now but she was very young then. I once found her coming out of Uncle Sebastien’s room with her cap all askew and it was obvious he’d been pestering her. I was really angry and I began questioning her. And she snubbed me — oh, so politely, so chivalrously. And she was right, of course, he means no harm. He just went on loving women when he should have stopped and somehow she understood this. It’s people like that I didn’t want to “sell”.’

‘Yes, I can see that. You’ll be a good master for Mersham, Rupert. Better than George though you’ll hate me for saying so.’

‘Don’t! If you knew the guilt I feel. Just to be alive…’ He broke off, seeing Tom’s face, remembering Geoffrey, Tom’s shadow, blown up at Paschendale. ‘God, what an idiot I am! Forgive me.’

Tom shook his head. ‘We’re both in the same boat, I guess. Guilt for the rest of our lives.’

‘If it teaches us humility…’

Tom smiled. ‘You don’t need teaching it, Rupert. It was always your gift. Come, let’s find Ollie.’

They found the Honourable Olive already sitting in the Crossley, in a state of evident bliss, holding a cardboard box on her knees.

‘It’s a baby hedgehog. Anna found it and she’s given it to me. She’s got it to drink milk from a saucer so it’s old enough to go out into the world, she says. She’s very nice, isn’t she? I think she’s beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ said Rupert, and there was something in his voice which made Ollie look at him, her brows furrowed.

‘Yes, she is. And I like the way she talks and she told me a poem in Russian because I asked her. It’s about a crocodile walking down the Nevsky something. She’s going to teach it to me next time.’

‘Who is this girl?’ asked Tom, looking curiously at Rupert.

‘A new maid.’ Rupert was still brusque.

‘I should like to meet her.’

‘You will,’ said Rupert. ‘It’s almost impossible not to meet Anna somewhere in this house.’

3

On the following day Rupert returned to London to fetch his bride and Anna and Peggy were sent upstairs to make ready Queen Caroline’s bedroom, which had been assigned to Miss Hardwicke until the wedding.

It was in the midst of these preparations that Anna received a letter from her beloved Pinny:

My dear Anna, I am writing to give you some news which I know will delight you. Your cousin, Prince Sergei Chirkovsky, is safe! When the White Army was routed at Tsarytsin he managed to escape and reach Odessa and eventually made his way to London. He arrived last week, very exhausted, of course, but basically in good health. As you know, his parents are still with Miss King and their joy as he walked in may be imagined. Sergei wouldn’t stay more than a few days since it is true that Miss King’s flat is rather overcrowded and he has gone off to look for some kind of employment — out of London, if possible, since the grand duchess does not seem to have abandoned her scheme for marrying him off to that dumpy lady-in-waiting of hers. He called to see us and was particularly anxious for news of you. I told him where you were but not what you were doing. You know how protective he has always felt about you and I had visions of him posting off to Wiltshire and challenging your employer to a duel!