‘Will you be all right here while I go and fetch our supper?’ Claudia asked her in Russian. She did not wait for a reply, but left her. Lydia went to the window and looked out. Way below her was a yard and men with horses. The trap in which they had arrived was now without its pony and was tipped up on its shafts. A black and white dog lay outside a kennel. Beyond that was a park whose trees still had a few russet and yellow leaves, but were mostly bare. The ground beneath them was green. Everywhere was green. When they had left Kirilhor it had been white. What had happened in between? She had lost Mama and Papa and Tonya and Andrei, but how? Why was she here? A tear gathered in her eye and rolled down her cheek unheeded.
‘Edward, what am I supposed to do with her?’ Margaret asked as they sat over their dinner. Cook had taken especial care over the meal in honour of his homecoming. There was vegetable soup, roast beef, roast potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, Yorkshire pudding and rich gravy, and that was to be followed by apple pie and cream, a typically English meal and one she knew he would appreciate after being away so long. ‘She is such a strange little thing. Does she speak any English at all?’
‘I can’t say, since she has hardly said a word either in English or Russian, but I doubt it.’
‘Then how am I to communicate with her?’
‘Claudia speaks a little Russian, she will translate until Lydia can learn English.’
‘Learn English! How long do you expect her to stay with us?’
‘Until I find out what happened to her parents. Baron Simenov is returning to Russia on government business and I asked him to find out what he could.’
‘Baron Simenov,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t he the one who found the child in the first place?’
‘He was one of the hands through which she was passed.’
‘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.’