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decide by the end of the month, ma’am?’
    Harriet hadn’t known about this stipulation. It had been thoughtful of the housekeeper, but she found that she thoroughly approved Mrs Norton’s choice of nanny. There was a warmth about the woman that bode well. Having been brought up herself by a nanny who was every bit as cold and stiff as her parents, Harriet didn’t want that for her daughter. And Esther
was
her daughter now; the worry was over. ‘I’m sure you will suit,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Thank you, ma’am, and I can assure you I will devote myself to the baby’s needs.’ Rose had been on tenterhooks, but now she felt herself relaxing. Mrs Wynford was lovely, and that made all the difference in this job.
    Esther squirmed away from the breast and gave a very loud and unladylike burp, and Harriet laughed. ‘I think you can take her now. She’s full, and I might have a nap before dinner.’ She was barely conscious of the nanny leaving the room, as thick billows of sleep drew her down into the softness of the bed, and her last thought was not of Rose or Esther, or even of Ruth. It was of Theobald. With deep thankfulness she knew he had fully accepted that the baby was his. The future was set now, she told herself, golden with promise and fulfilment – the years stretching out like an ever-growing tapestry, full of the happiness that only a child can bring.

PART TWO
    Esther
    1942

Chapter Four
    It was a beautiful day for a wedding. Esther Wynford breathed deeply of the warm morning air as she leaned out of her bedroom window. The July sky was as blue as cornflowers, without even the merest wisp of cloud marring its expanse, and somewhere in the near-distance a fox barked as it made its way back after a night’s hunting. It was wonderful to be home again, even if only for a short while, before she returned to her work as a Land Girl and Monty went back to the air force.
    Monty . . . Esther smiled dreamily, inhaling the heady scent of the climbing roses covering the walls of the house. Montgomery Grant, only son of Brigadier and Mrs Clarissa Grant of Edinburgh. The most handsome, dashing,
thrilling
man in the whole of creation, and soon to be her husband, in – Esther consulted the jewelled watch on her wrist – seven hours. She shivered in delicious anticipation. At one o’clock they were to be married in her parish church, and she couldn’t wait.
    A missel thrush, on an early-morning mission to find breakfast, called a warning as it caught sight of her, and a blackbird shrilled petulantly in reply. Esther turned back to the room, and to the sight of her wedding dress hanging on the wardrobe door. In these days of everyone doing their bit for the war effort, she had been prepared to get wed in a smart frock, as so many girls were doing, and forgo the traditional white wedding; but her mother had had her own wedding dress altered as a surprise, and there it was, a vision of ivory lace and satin. She had tried it on when she got home last night from the farm in Yorkshire, and it fitted perfectly.
Perfectly
. All of a sudden she twirled round and round in an ecstasy of joy until, giddy and breathless, she collapsed on the bed.
    Was it wrong to be so happy, when the world was in such a horrible mess? The thought sobered her and she sat up, flicking back the thick mass of curly black hair from her shoulders. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, especially when in the newspapers last week it was reported that the Nazis had murdered more than one million Jews to date. It had said that in Poland the Nazis weren’t bothering to send the Jews to concentration camps; instead they had special vans fitted as poisonous gas chambers, and they would herd up to ninety men, women and children into them, while other Jewish men would dig the graves. It was unbelievable, but true. And in the Warsaw ghetto, where 600,000 people were dying from starvation and disease, medical supplies were being denied to children under five. How