‘Ugly old dragons,’ she said with fierce feeling beneath her breath, remembering the rumours they had helped to spread in the wake of Harry’s suicide.

‘Excuse me?’ The Kaiser looked startled.

Her luscious lips curved into a seductive smile. ‘I was thinking out loud about dachshunds, sir. Like all things German, I find them delightful.’

The gleam in the Kaiser’s eyes told her that he, like many other men, found her exotic beauty fascinating.

That her looks were so striking, especially in a country where the women were predominantly fair-haired and blue-eyed, was something that both pleased and infuriated her. It pleased her to be admired, but she found it infuriating that with her night-black hair and dark eyes she could never look typically German. Making the matter worse was that Vicky, who had no desire at all to be mistaken for a German, was as golden-haired and sapphire-eyed as a Rhine Maiden.

‘It is time to cut the cake, Zelda,’ Josef said in his habitually brusque manner.

Her smile deepened. Many people found Josef intimidating, but she didn’t. She found his dominating personality intensely arousing—especially when it came to love-making.

As she and Josef cut the cake to applause, Zelda wondered what was keeping Vicky away from the reception for so long. Berthold had said she’d needed to rest, but that had been nearly two hours ago and she still hadn’t put in an appearance. Could it be that the baby was on its way?

Thinking that her father-in-law might have been told something she looked towards him to see if he was displaying any signs of unusual tenseness. Shock stabbed through her. He looked ill. Was ill. She continued to hold her cake-cutting pose for the photographer who, his camera on a tripod, his head under a cloth, had yet to take the first photograph. As she nerved herself for the mini explosion and flash, Harald Remer let out an agonized cry and, clutching at his chest, pitched forward across the table, sending wine glasses and china crashing to the floor.

For a split second no one moved and then there was uproar as footmen, waiters and the guests closest to him all rushed to his aid.

‘Fetch a doctor!’ Josef shouted to the family’s horrified butler. ‘Immediately!’

Her uncle was on his feet almost as quickly, striding not towards Harald Remer, but towards Paul.

Amid a great deal of clamour her husband helped Berthold and Ernst Schulenburg lift the semi-conscious Harald Remer away from the table and lay him on the floor, and it occurred to her that there were going to be other disruptions to her wedding arrangements, for how could she and Josef leave for their honeymoon when his father’s collapse had been so public?

‘I suspect he’s had a heart attack,’ her father said to her grimly. ‘It doesn’t look good, Zelda.’

The Kaiser was long gone, having been whisked away by his entourage within seconds of Harald Remer’s spectacular collapse. Speculation was rife. Where was the doctor? How was it possible that with over three hundred people in the ballroom, not one of them was a medical man? Was it a heart attack or was it a stroke? Was he still breathing or was he, perhaps, already dead?