‘So does your blue nail varnish.’ Though she was speaking to Lotti, Nancy wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at Claus.

He was wearing the kind of clothes that few Yorkshiremen could have afforded and that none would have been seen dead in—a pearl-grey silk suit and, draped around his shoulders, a deep-grey cashmere overcoat with a black sable collar. With his striking fair hair and trimly clipped moustache he looked absolutely splendid, the epitome of sophistication and handsome enough to commit suicide for.

As Berthold and Lotti headed out of the station he fell into step beside her. ‘I hope there’s a traditional Yorkshire tea waiting for us,’ he said. ‘Toasted teacakes and sticky parkin and curd tarts?’

‘Is food the only thing you Berliners think about?’ she teased, happy as a sandboy as his arm slid around her waist. ‘The first thing Lotti said was that she couldn’t wait to tuck into Christmas cake and mince pies.’

The banter was the kind of banter that took place between everyone in the family. The look that passed between them was of a far different nature.

Now, as they walked out of the station towards the car, in answer to her teasing, he said, ‘Food is most definitely not the only thing I think about—as you well know.’

She blushed furiously and as her father stepped into the front passenger seat and Claus held one of the rear passenger doors open for Lotti and Ilse, she was aware of Lotti looking across at her questioningly.

She put the aged Lanchester into gear, her grin deepening. Telling Lotti she was on the verge of becoming her sister-in-law, as well as her cousin, was something she was looking forward to.

*

‘But that’s…amazing.’ Seated on the bed in the guest bedroom she always occupied when at Shuttleworth Hall, Lotti was, for once, almost lost for words.

‘I think the world to be used is “wonderful”,’ Nancy responded chidingly. ‘“Amazing” would mean it’s something you’d never even have dreamed of and as I’ve always known this would happen, it’s not quite the case.’

A journalistic precision with words wasn’t Lotti’s forté.

‘It’s amazing,’ she said again, taking off her hat and running her hands through her dark, sharply bobbed hair. ‘I know it’s what you’ve always wanted, but I always thought the cousin thing would put Claus off.’

‘Why on earth should it?’ Nancy saw no reason to admit that until she’d forced Claus into seeing her as someone other than a cousin, the close familiarity of their cousinship had, indeed, been something of a handicap. ‘Cousins can marry. It will all be perfectly legal.’

‘Yes.’

There was an expression in Lotti’s eyes and voice that Nancy couldn’t quite pin down. It was almost as if a thought had occurred to her that had never occurred before.

‘And so it means that when we get married my relationship to you will be like our mothers’ relationship to each other. We’ll be cousins who are also sisters-in-law. Don’t you think that’s cosy?’