She thought of the loss of family wealth that would be attendant on such an action. It would be vast, but whose wealth would it be? As she had pointed out so passionately in her last quarrel with him, her mother hadn’t touched a penny piece of it for decades and neither she, Max, nor Hugo were remotely interested in living off the back of an industry that had made arms during the Great War and was doing so yet again. Lotti had also long since spurned the idea of living off House of Remer wealth, which left only her father, Uncle Josef, Aunt Zelda, Ilse and Claus who were still doing so.

She pursed her lips, deep in thought.

Ilse was so obviously destined to marry into money she doubted if she would mind too much what happened to the House of Remer. It was certainly impossible to think of her battling with Claus if he were to announce he was relinquishing it. It would be different with her uncle and aunt, of course. Until recently, the House of Remer had been their life’s work and though her uncle had signed over the proprietorship to Claus it was unlikely he had ever envisaged living life uncushioned by House of Remer wealth.

The idea of Claus living without such wealth was also unrealistic, but when it came to divesting himself of the House of Remer, he could surely do so in a way that would still leave him and his parents exceptionally wealthy. Private wealth was not something Nancy approved of, but if Claus had to have wealth, exceptional wealth was an improvement on monumental wealth.

All she had to do was to present her case to him yet again, this time taking into account the new set of arguments.

In a flood of certainty she ran from the kitchen and back into the bedroom, grabbed a key, scooped her things from the floor, crammed them again into her bag and hurtled out of the apartment.

Forty-five minutes later, still breathless with haste, she was seated on a train as it pulled out of Berlin heading in the direction of the Ruhr.

Claus tried to concentrate on the discussion in hand but his usually razor-sharp brain kept straying. How long were he and Nancy to continue with their fractious on/off affair? Marriage was quite clearly out of the question. Though the Nazi hierarchy were well aware that his cousins had an English mother and had been brought up and educated in England, and that Hugo and Nancy had been born there as well, it had never yet become an issue. It would become an issue, though, if he were to marry an English cousin. Especially an English cousin who expressed the kind of virulent anti-Nazi views Nancy insisted on giving vent to.

‘This is the proposed new turret design,’ his mining and armaments director said, passing yet another sheaf of papers across to him.

Claus studied it. The turret was a tank turret. Knowing the furore there would be if Nancy were ever to catch a glimpse of it, he nodded his approval. The director began elaborating on the design and, though Claus was listening to him, his thoughts were again on Nancy.