Nounou was thoughtful and a smile curved her lips.

“She was a clever girl. She liked things to go the way she wanted them to.”

“Most people do, don’t they?”

“They want them, but with her—she thought they ought to, because she was so beautiful. If they didn’t go the way she wanted, she’d make them.”

“That must have been trying for him.”

“Well, she was a handful. Didn’t I know it? There were times when she drove me to distraction. But it didn’t change my feelings for her … one little jot. She was mine … and there was no one like her. She told me everything … or most things. I was always there—old Nounou—to help sort out her troubles.”

“Did she tell you about her quarrels with her husband?”

“There was very little she held back from me.”

I took a chance and said: “I am not sure that he was as besotted about her as you think.”

“Why do you say that?”

I decided that I could be on the verge of discovery, and for Gerard’s sake I was going to do everything I could to find out what I wanted to know, even if it meant distorting the truth a little.

I began: “The day she died …”

“Yes?” said Nounou eagerly.

“One of the servants heard them. There was a quarrel. He told her to go. He had had enough of her. It doesn’t sound as though he were so desperately in love with her.”

She was silent for a second, and a slow smile crossed her face.

“It’s true,” she said. “But that was what she wanted. Here.” She rose and went to a cupboard. “Look at this.”

She opened a door and disclosed a travelling bag.

“That’s her bag,” she said. “Can you guess what’s in it? Her jewellery … some special clothes. I tell you, she was clever. He did tell her to go. But that was what she meant him to. She led him to it.”

“Then why was she so upset?”

“Upset? She wasn’t upset. She had it all worked out. I knew. I was in on the secret. She played on him. He was meant to say what he did. She provoked him into it. It was all working out as she’d planned. Don’t you think I knew? She told me everything. I knew what was in her mind.”

“Why did she want him to tell her to go?”

“Because she was the one who wanted to go. She wanted to be free … but she wanted it to come from him. She’d been bringing things over to me and I was keeping them for her. She wanted him to turn her out. She didn’t want it to be said that she’d left him for another man. But that was what she was going to do. I can see her now, her eyes alight with mischief. She said, ‘Nounou, I’m going to make him turn me out. I can do it. Then I shall go to Lars. Lars wants it that way. He doesn’t want it to seem as though he’d come between us. He wants it to be that I go to him after Gerard has turned me out. Lars doesn’t want trouble. And this is the way.’ I’ve seen this Lars. A fine, upstanding young man. More her sort than Monsieur Gerard. Of course, Monsieur Gerard had the family … the standing … but he was too serious for a girl like her. She’d have been better off with Lars. But let me tell you, it was her arranging. She wanted Monsieur Gerard to turn her out, and she got her way, I reckon. She and Lars worked it out between them. Lars could say, ‘Well, you let her go … and so no hard feelings.’ You see, they were friends … living close to each other. Oh, it would have been a good way … and then that to happen.”

“So the quarrel was arranged by her,” I mused.

“I’m sure of that. She told me, didn’t she? I reckon he cursed himself for saying it after. But she was a siren. She could get anyone to say anything she wanted them to.”

“And she was going off to her lover?”

“All the things she wanted to make sure of keeping were here, waiting for her. In a day or so, he was coming down to fetch her.”

“But … she died. It wasn’t because she was so worried about being turned out that she was reckless.”

“Not her. She wasn’t worried. She was full of joy. I could picture her, laughing and singing to herself … galloping along. At least she died in triumph.”

“So it was excitement at the thought of the future that made her careless. She was thinking of being with her lover … of her lucky escape from her husband …”

“There’s not a doubt of it! I knew her. She’d do reckless things. She’d have been so pleased by the turn things were taking. She could be reckless at times. I know. Who knows better? She thought she had a charmed life. Everything had gone her way … and there she was, on the threshold, you might say, of the life she wanted. She’d always had a fancy for that Lars. And then … right when she was ready to start the life she’d been wanting for a long time … death came.” The tears were on her cheeks. “I’ll never forget her … my bright and beautiful girl.”

I was elated. I thought: I will go to Gerard tomorrow. I will tell him that he was mistaken. She had been planning to go to Lars Petersen. They had been lovers for some time. I would tell him about the sketches and the picture I had seen in Lars’s studio.

Surely now I could wipe out his guilt.

I did not go to Paris, for the next day the news came to us.

The Emperor with his army had surrendered to the enemy at Sedan, and he was a prisoner of the Prussians.

The days now seemed like a hazy dream, for we had only vague ideas of what was happening. Fragments of news did reach us now and then, but we were very much in the dark.

Before the end of the month, Strasbourg, one of the last hopes of the French, had surrendered, and we knew that sooner or later there would be an onslaught on Paris. We were very worried about Gerard and Robert and Angele.

The Germans were advancing across France, fighting pockets of resistance as they went. They were all over the North of France, and Paris was under siege. Each day we expected the invading forces to come our way.

Mademoiselle Dupont feared for her mother in Champigny and went to join her; we waited in trepidation for what each day would bring.

Marie-Christine and I had grown even closer during that period. She was now fourteen years old and mature for her age. I tried to make life as normal as I could and gave her a few lessons every day. It kept our minds from wondering what was happening in Paris and when we would be drawn more closely into the war. Sometimes we heard gunfire in the distance, and we were rarely apart.

During those months, I began to realize how much my life here had meant to me.

A hundred times a day I assured myself that I would marry Gerard if we came out of this alive. I would make him see that he was in no way responsible for Marianne’s death. Nounou had made that clear enough. I would try to forget Roderick. I would make a new life for myself. Marie-Christine would be very pleased if I married her father, and she had become very dear to me.

At least the terrible catastrophe which had struck France had made me see which way I must go.

Each day I wondered how long this situation could continue. We heard that Paris had been bombarded, and I could not stop thinking of the studio and wondering what would happen there. Would the friends congregate there now? They would not be talking of art now … but of war. They would be thinking of food, for we heard that hunger was stalking the streets of the capital.

We were lucky to escape the army. We were surrounded by Prussian units, though we did not see them, but we knew they were there. We could not stray far from the house and we lived in expectation of death every hour of the day; but we survived.

Then we heard that the Prussians were in Versailles. It was January when Paris, threatened by famine, surrendered.

It was a bitterly cold day when Marie-Christine and I drove into Paris.

One of the coachmen took us. He had a daughter living there and was eager to find her.

That was a day of bitter sadness.

We went to the house first. It was no longer there. There was just a gap and a pile of broken bricks and rubble where the house had been. There were a few people in the street. No one could tell us what had become of those living in the house. It seemed there was nothing very unusual about such a house. There were many in a similar condition.

“Let us go to the studio,” I said.

To my relief, I saw that the building was still standing. I had been terrified that that, too, might have been destroyed.

I mounted the stairs. I knocked at the door. There was no answer. I went across to that other door. To my immense relief Lars Petersen answered my knock.

“Noelle!” he cried. “Marie-Christine!”

“We came as soon as we could,” I said. “What has happened? The house is gone. Where is Gerard?”

I had never seen him solemn before. He seemed like a different person.

“Come in,” he said.

He took us into the familiar studio, with its easels, the tubes of paint, the cupboard in which were the portrait and sketches of Marianne.

“Is Gerard not here?” I asked.

He did not speak.

“Lars,” I said. “Tell me, please.”

“He would have been all right if he had stayed here.”

I stared at him blankly.

“But … nowhere in Paris was safe. It was just bad luck.”

“What?” I stammered. “Where?”

“He was at his uncle’s house. He was worried about his mother and his uncle. He wanted them to get back to the country somehow. But it wasn’t possible. Not that there was any safety anywhere in France. War is terrible. It destroys everything. Life was good … and then the Emperor quarrels with Bismarck. What is that to do with people like us?” he finished angrily.

“Tell me about Gerard.”

“He was there. He never came back. The house was destroyed with everyone in it.”

“Dead … ?” I whispered.

Lars looked away. “When he did not come back for two days, I went there. I found out. Everyone in it was killed. There were nine people, they said.”

“Gerard, Robert, Angele … all the servants. It can’t be.”

“It was happening all round us. Whole families … that is war.”

I turned to Marie-Christine. She was looking at me blankly. I thought: This child has lost her family.

I took her into my arms and we clung together.

“You should go back,” said Lars. “Don’t stay here. It’s quiet now, but Paris is not a good place to be.”

I can’t remember much of the drive back to La Maison Grise. The driver had been jubilant when he arrived to take us back. He had found his daughter and her family. They had all survived the bombardment of Paris; but when he heard what had happened, horror took the place of his delighted relief.

As for myself, I could only think that I should never see Gerard again; I could not stop thinking of my good friends Robert and Angele … gone forever.

I felt an extreme bitterness towards fate, which had dealt me one blow after another. My childhood had been made up of fun and laughter and so soon I had been brought face to face with tragedy … not once, but three times. Those whom I had loved had been taken from me.

I felt desperately lonely, and then I reproached myself when I considered Marie-Christine. She was robbed of her family; she was alone in a world of which, because of her tender years, she could know very little.

She became in a way my salvation—as I think I did hers. We needed each other.

She said to me: “You will never go away from me, will you? We’ll always be together.”

I replied: “We shall be together as long as you want it.”

“I want it,” she said. “I shall always want it.”

And the weeks began to pass.

It was March when peace was ratified at Bordeaux. The terms were harsh. France had been utterly humiliated, and there was a great deal of uneasiness and resentment. Alsace and part of Lorraine were to be ceded to the German Empire, and France was to pay an indemnity of five billion francs, and there would be a German occupation until the money was paid. The Emperor had been released and, as there was no longer a welcome for him in France, he had gone to join the Empress in exile in England.

France was in turmoil. In April there was a communist uprising in Paris and a great deal of damage was done to the city before the rising was suppressed in May.

Things were beginning to settle.

We heard that a cousin of Robert’s had inherited the house and estate. It did not pass to Marie-Christine, as the old Salic law, which ordained that female members of the family could not inherit, seemed to apply to the families of the nobility.