‘Why didn’t he keep her, then? He’s Russian. It would have been better for her.’

He sighed, trying to conceal his impatience. ‘Darling, I explained why he did not. He thought I would find the count and his wife before I left. And he was taking his wife and son to a new home in England, knowing he would almost certainly be asked to return to Russia. He did not know until we reached England that I had not been able to trace the count or his wife.’

‘Are you sure you were right to bring her out of Russia?’

‘What else was I to do? Leave her to the Bolsheviks? She is an aristocrat, perhaps even a Romanov, and I am told her father is a White Army colonel. The Reds would have no compunction about doing away with her.’

‘How did you manage to bring her out with you? Did no one ask questions?’

‘I said she was my daughter.’

‘Your daughter!’ Margaret had stopped eating and was staring at him in consternation. ‘But everyone in the diplomatic corps knows we have no children.’

He smiled crookedly. ‘It was assumed she was the result of a Russian liaison…’

‘Edward, how could you!’

‘It was easier not to disabuse the authorities of that idea. They would have refused to take her on board.’

‘Why is she so important to you? Are you sure you have told me everything?’

‘Darling, of course I have. If you had been there, seen the chaos, seen the state she was in, covered in blood and numb with shock, you would have done the same as I did.’

‘There are homes for displaced children.’

‘I know. I could not shunt her into one of those. We have this great house, ample funds and no children. I thought, hoped, you would welcome her.’ He reached out and put a hand over hers where it lay on the table next to his. ‘Give her a chance, darling. I am sure you will come to love her.’

‘Do you? Love her, I mean.’ It sounded like an accusation.

‘I do not know her well enough yet,’ he said carefully, alerted by her tone. ‘But she touched a chord in me when I first saw her and I could not bring myself to abandon her.’

‘Some might say you abducted her. Her parents might, even now, be searching desperately for her.’

‘I know, but it was the only way to keep her safe. The situation in Russia is truly dreadful. If the Kirilovs are related in any way to the late tsar, they may have shared his fate.’

‘What makes you think they might be related?’

‘Only what I have been told and that big jewel Lydia had sewn into her petticoat. I have shown it to other Russian émigrés and they recognised it as part of the Kirilov collection. One of them gave me a photograph of the late dowager Countess Kirillova wearing it on the front of a tiara at a court function. I am told it is called the Kirilov Star.’

‘It could have been stolen, along with her clothes, and put on her to deceive the authorities – deceive you, too. She hasn’t been able to tell you about it, has she?’

‘No, but perhaps she will when she feels more comfortable with us.’

A maid came to clear away the dishes and bring in the apple pie and the subject of Lydia was dropped, quite deliberately by Margaret, who went on to talk about village matters. She was resigned to giving the strange little Russian child a home, at least for the time being, but that did not mean she had to love her. In spite of her faith in her husband’s fidelity, a tiny doubt began to take root and she found herself wondering if Lydia really was Edward’s child, especially as he was so vague about who she was. She could not believe he knew as little as he said he did. You simply did not pick strange children up off the street and bring them home for no reason.

He could have fathered her during the war when he was on the ambassador’s staff in Moscow and kept her existence a secret. It would have stayed a secret if it hadn’t been for the Civil War and the exodus of refugees. Had the Kirilovs ever existed? And if they had, was Lydia their child? Why was she so sceptical? Could it be her own inability to give Edward a child, her failure, after three miscarriages suffered in the early years of their marriage, to be a complete wife, her failure to be a mother? He had wanted a child so desperately. Not as desperately as she had, though. It might have been why Edward had been so taken with Lydia. She was torn between believing there was no other motive than Christian charity and the dreadful fear that he had turned to someone else. If he had, then it was the height of cruelty to bring the child here to torment her.

* * *

Lydia and Claudia set out to explore after breakfast next morning, creeping from room to room and talking in whispers. The schoolroom had a desk and a table, cupboards and bookshelves and on the wall a huge map of the world, most of it coloured pink denoting the British Empire, Claudia told her. It was here Claudia was expected to give her lessons and to teach her English. A little further along the corridor were several servants’ bedrooms. Down the next flight of stairs there were what seemed like dozens of bedrooms, though they did not dare open their doors, and two bathrooms. The front stairs, of carved oak, led down to a huge hall. There were two large reception rooms leading off it which could be opened up to make one vast room, several smaller sitting rooms, a large and a small room for dining, though the smaller was called the ‘breakfast room’, Claudia told her. At the back of the house there were rooms for washing dishes, a laundry room full of steam, a dairy where a maid was busy churning butter and a huge kitchen with a big black range and a long dresser and hooks everywhere.

Seeing Lydia the staff began talking to her, and though she could not understand a word, she thought they were making her welcome, for they smiled a lot and gave her a jam tart. ‘She’s a bonny wee thing, isn’t she?’ Cook said to Claudia. ‘Does she speak any English at all?’

‘No,’ Claudia said. ‘Fact is, she hardly opens her mouth.’

‘I expect she’s shy. She’ll soon get used to us. What are you doing today?’

‘I don’t know. I thought we would go for a walk and explore.’

‘Yes, you do that. But don’t go too far and get lost.’ She opened the back door for them and they found themselves in a courtyard. ‘Luncheon is at one,’ she called after them.

They crossed the yard to the stables where the grooms were working and an almost identical conversation took place. Lydia was nervous of the black and white dog and hid behind Claudia. ‘Bless you,’ a man in a thick tweed jacket and jodhpurs said. ‘Bessie won’t hurt you. Soft as butter she is. Come and stroke her.’ And he took Lydia’s hand and put it on the dog’s rough fur. The dog wagged its tail and licked her other hand, making her smile.

‘That’s the first time I ever saw her smile,’ Claudia said.

‘Ah, well, that’s animals for you.’

They left the stables and walked through a garden and out of a gate into the park that surrounded the house. Here there were walks carved out of the grass and they followed one to a lake and stood looking across the water. A light breeze ruffled the water and set the reeds swaying to and fro and made the leaves of the water lilies bob up and down. Some ducks were swimming a little way out, but seeing them, paddled towards them quacking noisily, expecting titbits. ‘We must bring some crusts next time we come,’ Claudia said in English, and when Lydia looked enquiringly at her, repeated it in Russian, adding, ‘Time to go home. Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh might be looking for us.’

Home. The word obviously meant something different to Claudia.


In the days that followed, Lydia’s young brain shut out the awful death of her brother and their nurse except in horrendous nightmares. The loud ticking of the nursery clock was an unheard background to gunshots, galloping horses, sleet and snow, the dark, menacing forest and a vision of brave little Andrei, his life’s blood spilling all over her white dress, wine-red and sticky. It was a terror so huge that it surrounded her like a stifling blanket which had somehow wrapped itself around her and covered her face in her sleep, so that she could hardly breathe. She would wake up screaming and be comforted by Claudia.

They kept to their own quarters, except when they went out for walks with Bessie trotting along with them and sniffing in the hedgerows, and they saw little of Lady Stoneleigh. Her ladyship was not cruel, but she was not especially kind to her. It was a kind of indifference, a standing apart, on the sidelines, as if she were watching a play from the wings and at the end of it the actors would take their bows and go home. Lydia could not put this into words, but sometimes she wondered if Lady Stoneleigh really liked having her.

Sir Edward was different. He would come up to the nursery suite almost every day and talk to her in Russian and sometimes he joined them on their walks. He understood her bewilderment at being without her family, in a strange country surrounded by strangers speaking a language she could not understand. He and Claudia were the only stable things in her life and it was through his gentle perseverance that she slowly came to accept her new life, but she was desperately lonely and homesick for Mama and Papa and had not given up the idea of being reunited with them.

It was something Margaret wished for too.

‘Edward, have you made any progress at all about finding that child’s parents?’ she asked him one day, just before Christmas. They had finished dinner and were sitting in the drawing room. She was on the sofa with a piece of embroidery in her lap but was making no attempt to ply her needle. He was in an armchair reading a newspaper. He put it down.

‘No, I’m afraid not. These things take time.’

‘Surely people, especially landed gentry, do not just disappear into thin air.’

‘They do in Russia at the moment,’ he said grimly. ‘The situation is chaotic and the stories coming out are horrendous. Both Reds and Whites are perpetrating unimaginable horrors. If the count and countess have survived, heaven knows where they are.’

‘I believe there is a charitable society in London that takes care of displaced Russian children. It is run by a Russian lady married to an Englishman. You could take her there.’

‘Why? Do you want to be rid of her?’

‘Edward, she does not belong here.’

He was disappointed. He had hoped, by bringing her to Upstone Hall, he would be making a loving home for her, but it had not turned out like that. Lydia and Claudia were like ghosts in the house, occasionally seen flitting here and there, sometimes heard talking quietly in a mixture of Russian and English, but never real, never part of the household. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, he heard Lydia screaming. He would slip on a dressing gown and go up to stand outside the nursery door, listening to her sobbing and Claudia soothing her. Unable to do anything for her, he would go back to bed, feeling helpless, wishing Margaret could bring herself to be a mother to her.

‘She is not a nuisance, is she?’ he asked.

‘No, she is very quiet – too quiet, I think. She would surely do better among her own kind.’

‘Darling, it would be cruel to uproot her again so soon after bringing her here. Can’t you imagine what the poor child has been through? Her nurse and brother were shot in front of her eyes. Her clothes were covered in their blood when she was brought to me. It will be a long time before she gets over that.’

‘You are determined on keeping her here, aren’t you?’

‘What else would you have me do? I brought her here, accepted responsibility for her and that responsibility is ongoing.’

She gave up. He was not going to change his mind, which only went to confirm her worst fears.


The household was gearing itself up for Christmas, doing a lot of cooking, buying and making presents, discussing the decorations and the parties they meant to attend, and though they talked to Lydia about it, she understood very little. She knew it was a happy time when wishes were granted to good little girls. Her wish was that Mama and Papa would come, which would be the best present of all, but when she told Sir Edward, he took her between his knees and kissed her. ‘The trouble is, my little one, I still do not know where they are.’

‘Are they lost? Or hiding?’

‘You think they may be hiding?’ he asked, surprised that she had thought of it.

‘We were hiding at Kirilhor. We had to be quiet all the time and stay in the kitchen and back parlour. When the bad men were coming, we had to leave. Papa said we would go on a big ship.’