Chapter Twenty-Two

Despite Oliver's protests, he arrived for dinner dressed in an immaculate dark suit, and he looked so handsome that pretending to be desperately in love with him seemed suddenly all too easy.

"Blame Barker," he muttered when I commented on how nice he looked. "Seems to have taken advantage of my absence and ordered me a whole new wardrobe from the tailor, now that we're entertaining." He tugged at his necktie in annoyance.

"I think that sounds very enterprising," I said, sipping the glass of wine that Barker had poured for me when we sat down at the table. "You're fortunate to have him."

"Should have known you'd be on his side," Oliver grumbled, leaning back in his chair at the head of the table. His gaze raked over me for a moment before he added, "Your hair is different."

I lifted a hand to my hair, which Beth had carefully plaited and pinned so that for once my unruly curls were swept into an elegant chignon, only a couple of tendrils left loose to frame my face. The lemon-yellow dress into which I'd changed was one of my best, and the wide neckline left my shoulders bare, the loose strands of hair brushing them gently.

"Thanks to Beth's interventions." I grinned. "She's a marvel too."

"I must say," Mrs Lavigne interrupted, clearly overhearing this part from where she sat across the table between her husband and her daughter. "That style suits you very well, Miss Bloom. And what a bold dress too. You cut quite the figure. I feel almost dowdy by comparison." Her laugh was musical.

"You could never be dowdy," I said lightly, trying hard to ignore the familiar prickle of her honeyed words, the same Simon would have used in her place, I'm sure. "You and Helene carry everything off with such elegance."

And this was not a lie; both women looked very well in different shades of pale blue, pretty and demure.

"I think we gentlemen may consider ourselves fortunate to be in the company of so many lovely ladies." Mr Lavigne beamed, his fingers stroking his luxuriant moustache.

"Extremely fortunate," Mrs Finch agreed serenely. Her own dress, a beautiful deep crimson silk had reduced me to a puddle of envy when I first saw her this evening.

"My dressmaker is a genius," she had said to me with a small, pleased smile. "I will introduce you, if you like."

"Yes, please," I had replied vehemently – finding a dressmaker who knew how to dress bigger bodies with such flair was rare indeed.

"What do you think, Mr Lockhart?" Mrs Lavigne pressed now, dragging my attention back to the moment.

"About what?" Oliver asked, glaring down at the plate that Barker placed in front of him. As much as I liked Beth, it was hard to disagree with Oliver's assessment of her culinary skills as I peered at the piece of brown meat (beef?) dressed with some sort of brown sauce and various limp accompaniments.

"About the ladies' gowns, of course!" Mrs Lavigne laughed teasingly. "Do you think Miss Bloom puts us quite in the shade?"

"What the devil should I kn—" Oliver began, but I kicked him in the ankle, and he flinched, turning to me with accusing eyes.

I used my own to try to remind him that we were supposed to be deeply in love.

Oliver sighed. Then he looked at me again. This time the look lingered, ran along the lines of my gown, skimming from my exposed shoulders up to my face, and I felt a jolt of unexpected heat rush through me.

"I think Miss Bloom sets everyone in the shade," he said finally with awkward gallantry. "She looks like…" Here he hesitated, looking at me as if for guidance. "A lemon drop," he finished with an air of desperation.

I laughed. "A lemon drop?"

"Yes," Oliver said more firmly now. "Lemon drops are my favourite. And they're pretty. Like you."

Something peculiar seemed to be happening in my chest.

"Well," Mrs Lavigne tittered, "I suppose now we can all see the poetic side of Mr Lockhart's character."

Oliver returned to scowling down at his food, colour touching his cheeks, and I resisted the urge to fling my fork at Mrs Lavigne.

Instead, I took a deep breath, toying with a carrot – at least I thought it was a carrot – on my plate. Mrs Finch had managed to get very little out of the Lavignes in mine and Oliver's absence, and we had both agreed that dinner presented the perfect opportunity for a politely veiled interrogation. After all, idle chatter was one of my particular skills.

"I hope you won't mind my asking," I said, looking over the table and past the warm flicker of candlelight to the Lavignes, "but I must admit I'm absolutely desperate to hear the story of how Helene and Mr Lockhart came to be reunited. As you can imagine" – I fluttered my lashes at Oliver – "Mr Lockhart has been rather scant on the details, and it is such a romantic tale."

"Miss Bloom." Mr Lavigne chuckled. "And here I thought it was your sister who was the novel reader."

"I think anyone would find it hard to resist being swept up in a story like this, and one with such a happy ending." I picked up my wine glass and sipped casually. "I understand the accident was in Paris, Helene? Do you know why you and your mother were there?"

Helene cleared her throat. "No, I don't. There is much that I still don't remember about that part – only pieces of the journey. We were on a boat, and Mother was very sick."

"She always did suffer from terrible seasickness," Oliver put in. "She couldn't even go out in a rowing boat on the lake without turning pea green." It was another fact to add to the tally of what Helene knew.

Helene nodded. "The accident itself is nothing but a blur. Only the image of the inside of the carriage, a sharp noise, I think, loud and frightening. Then everything goes … blank."

"For which I think we can all be extremely grateful," Mr Lavigne said firmly.

"Yes." Mrs Lavigne covered her daughter's hand with her own and squeezed. "I'll always be glad that part of the experience is lost to you."

"It must have been awful," I said gently. "You were so young. Your parents are quite right that missing that particular memory can only be a blessing."

Mrs Lavigne's face softened at this. "From what we have been able to piece together, Helene's accident took place in an area called Le Pecq, just outside Paris."

"It's a place where the river loops round," Mr Lavigne continued, gesturing with his hand to indicate the serpentine path of the water. "It seems that during the accident Helene was thrown quite some distance from the carriage and ended up in the water. She had suffered a nasty head injury and travelled down river some way, before being washed up on the banks somewhere to the north. From there, she wandered, disorientated, towards the village of Herblay, where we were living at the time."

"I remember none of this," Helene said. Oliver was watching with an expression that was impossible to read.

"When she was found, a ten-year-old child, bleeding from her head" – Mrs Lavigne's face contorted with emotion – "she answered questions in French, but didn't seem to remember anything but her name – Ellen, which the people who found her took to be Helene."

"You must understand," Mr Lavigne said earnestly, leaning forward, "that we tried to find out where Helene had come from, but it didn't occur to anyone that she would be connected to an accident that happened over ten miles away, involving a Spanish woman who was presumed at the time to be travelling alone."

"From what I have been able to discover," Oliver added, "the authorities were under the impression that my mother had travelled to Paris by herself. By the time they realized Ellen had been in the carriage, it was easy to assume her body had been washed away, and my father was perfectly happy to accept this explanation."

My opinion of Oliver's father continued to sink lower and lower.

"We were unable to have children of our own," Mrs Lavigne said with a tremble in her voice. "When Helene appeared, she seemed like a gift from God. She was alone in the world, and we took her in, raised her as our own. For months we spoke only French, and we tried to piece together information about her past, but Helene remembered nothing."

"It was all … a blank space," Helene said quietly.

"We didn't even realize she spoke English at first," Mrs Lavigne said, eyes wide. "And, if I'm truly honest, after a while we stopped asking questions. We couldn't stand the thought of finding anything out that would mean Helene was taken from us." She lifted her napkin to her face and dabbed her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said tearfully. "It has been hard." Here, her husband's hand came down on her shoulder, while she clung to Helene's fingers.

They made an affecting picture, the three of them holding on to one another. I felt my own throat tighten.

"About two months ago, Helene had another accident." Mr Lavigne picked up the thread of the story. "A silly domestic scene involving a basket of apples and a loose floorboard. Helene hit her head, and although she was soon perfectly well, she began having these strange … visions, like waking dreams."

"The first thing was a room with a rocking horse in," Helene said. "It was old and missing one of its eyes, so I used to comb its mane over to cover it. Threaded my ribbons through the hair to make it pretty. I could remember it so clearly; hear the sound it made as it moved, a sort of soft creak."

"My rocking horse," Oliver said, his gaze frozen on Helene's face.

She smiled tremulously. "Yes, that was why I wouldn't let anyone get rid of it, even though we were too old to ride it any more. You said the eye was lost in battle."

"That's right." A smile flickered on Oliver's lips now.

"It took a while for us to realize these images were memories," Mr Lavigne said. "Memories of her life here." He looked around the dining room.

"Is such a thing really possible?" I murmured, caught up in the story they were weaving.

"The doctor we consulted in London certainly seemed to think so." Mr Lavigne shrugged ruefully. "When we realized what was going on – that what she was seeing was not a strange dream or hallucination, but rather memories that had been somehow unlocked; we wanted to consult with an expert before turning up and upending the life of Mr Lockhart."

Quiet fell over the table as everyone absorbed these words, and Beth appeared, clearing the plates in front of us, while accepting our murmured thanks for the meal she had prepared.

"But let us turn to more pleasant things," Mrs Finch encouraged.

"Yes." I sent a friendly smile across the table towards Helene. "Do tell us about your life in France. It is clear it has been a happy one."

"Oh yes," Helene said, returning my smile shyly. "Very happy."

"We have not been able to give Helene the life she might have had here, of course," Mrs Lavigne said, a defensive note in her voice. I couldn't help feeling frustrated. I was certain I could get Helene to open up more, but her parents seemed always to want to speak over her. I couldn't work out if it was because they liked the sound of their own voices, or because they were trying to keep Helene from saying too much.

"But we did our best," Mrs Lavigne continued. "We lived a quiet life; my husband had several investments that paid well, and we could afford to send Helene to a very good boarding school. His work as a merchant meant that we travelled a lot, and it was good for Helene to have that stability. Especially after what she had been through."

"Oh? Which school was that?" Mrs Finch asked. "I have a niece who attends Lycée Fénelon."

"Lycée Sainte-Geneviève is not actually in Paris." Mrs Lavigne sat taller in her chair. "But it is a very respected school for young ladies just outside the city."

"Of course." Mrs Finch smiled, as Barker and Beth laid out delicate plates that held a mess of cream and fruit, and a crumbly substance that might have been sponge cake. "After all, they have a walking advertisement in the form of Helene here. Anyone can see she is a well-brought-up, educated young lady of refinement."

Mrs Lavigne seemed placated by this, visibly relaxing under the compliment.

"Well, I for one am glad that such a difficult story has such a happy ending," I said, lifting my glass in a toast. "And that we can all be here together sharing this lovely meal."

"Hear, hear," Mr Lavigne echoed vehemently.

We raised our glasses and then tucked into our desserts, which were surprisingly tasty. It seemed that adding a good deal of sugar to things made them much more palatable.

"I wonder, Miss Bloom, if—" Mrs Lavigne began, and I found I was steeling myself for what would come next, but nothing did because Oliver stood abruptly from the table, his face a mask of panic.

"Stop!" he yelled.