Piotr must have a mother.

Carolyn Clarke, already devoted to the little half-Polish boy, found it impossible to resist the plea from a dying man. And so she became a stepmother, married a few hours before his death to a man she scarcely knew, and burdened with responsibilities of which she had never dreamed. For, taking Piotr to England to meet his relatives for the first time, Carolyn found a situation very different from what she had been led to expect.

When she learned the terms of Piotr's aunt's will, she realised how suspect her motives must have appeared to the family -- but even this did not account for the strange and hurtful attitude of Alvin Thyssen, a man Carolyn might dislike but could never ignore.