This Christmas would, she knew, be just as enjoyable. It was snowing and Shuttleworth Hall always looked blissfully beautiful under snow. Will Patchett had cut armloads of holly and he and Paul had set up the most enormous Christmas tree in the drawing room. Her grandfather had expressed a fancy for seeing a pantomime in Harrogate and Hester, who had arrived with Hugo two days ago and who had never been to a British pantomime, had been so keen to go with him that Adam had made a family block-booking for all of them.

What Claus was going to say when he found out he’d been roped in to enjoy an evening of Aladdin and Widow Twanky custard-pie humour was anyone’s guess, but he’d go along with it. Everyone always went along with everything at Shuttleworth Hall. It was why being there was always so special.

At the prospect of Claus spending a whole ten days in Yorkshire she negotiated Little Ridding’s snow-covered streets singing ‘We Three Kings’ at full belt. Her father, Lotti and Ilse would be with him and she was looking forward to seeing all of them, but Claus was different. For her, Claus had always been different. As a child she had been his shadow, never letting him out of her sight. As a teenager, she had decided she would marry him when she was old enough and, now she was nineteen, was happily aware she was old enough any time now.

The really glorious thing about her ambition was that it was an ambition shared, for his mother had made no secret of her belief that as Claus would one day inherit the House of Remer, a wife who was already a Remer would be far more suitable than a fortune-hunter who wasn’t.

She skidded slightly on the ice, drove into the skid unpanicked and straightened the car. The nature of her relationship with Claus was such that she had also made no secret of her belief that she would make him an ideal wife. Playing things cannily simply wasn’t in her nature.

Four months ago, when she had last been in Berlin, they had become lovers. She had been the one who had deliberately set out to change the nature of their relationship. To her, it had been an obvious thing to do. She was going to marry him and, as it wasn’t likely he would ask her to marry him if he continued viewing their relationship as Max and Lotti viewed theirs—that they were intensely close cousins and nothing else—she had determined a dramatic step needed to be taken. And had taken it.

They had been out for the evening to the opera and had returned home to find the vast drawing room deserted.

‘Everyone must be either out, or in bed,’ he had said, switching on lamps and taking off his bow tie.

She had stood very still, knowing what it was she was going to do and knowing that if he didn’t respond to her as she prayed he would, her life might as well be over.