As he looked across at her he positively ached with love. With her silvery-blonde hair, her creamy flawless skin and innate gentleness, she reminded him of a Botticelli angel. He loved her absolutely unconditionally and he lived in daily fear of her marrying Max.

As they went to the first café they came to that had tables set outside under an awning, he reflected that he loved her enough to have happily relinquished her to Max if he had thought Max would make her happy. Max, though, was a man who lived close to the edge—and not only because the times necessitated it, but because it was his nature—and a devil-may-care adventurer was not the kind of husband Ilse needed.

She needed someone like himself; someone who, in normal times, lived within the rules; someone who could provide her with the privileged lifestyle she had always been accustomed to. And though Max’s profession as a banker was seemingly conventional, he doubted very much if Max’s work for Barings was all it seemed.

Just as he and his close friends had a hidden and very dangerous agenda—plotting on how best to remove Hitler from power—so, he was sure, did Max. And though he didn’t yet know what Max’s agenda was, he was quite sure that in the very near future there would be full confidence between the two of them. A confidence that would work to both of their advantages.

As Ilse seated herself at the table and he sat down opposite her, he banished all thoughts of Max from his mind. They only had an hour and he wanted her to talk to him about things that were important to her.

‘Tell me about the play,’ he said when he had ordered a bottle of white wine. ‘I’m not familiar with it. What is it about? Why did Ferdinand poison Louisa when he was obviously in love with her?’

Like a little girl, Ilse clasped her hands on the table. Her beautiful almond-shaped nails were unvarnished, buffed to a high, natural sheen.

‘The play is set in 1776 and is the story of Ferdinand and Louisa. Ferdinand is the son of an unscrupulous nobleman, President von Walter, and Louisa is the daughter of a music teacher.’

She paused as the waiter came for their order. ‘Sauerkraut salad with ham,’ she said, bringing a flush to the waiter’s cheeks as she gave him a smile that would have melted the hardest heart.

‘Potato pancakes,’ Nicholas said, knowing she was quite unaware of the effect she had on people. ‘And what part in the story does the father play, Ilse? I take it he’s the bad guy.’

‘He’s totally bad. He’s trying to curry favour with his prince. First he tries to extricate the prince from a scandalous entanglement with a notorious lady by marrying the lady to Ferdinand, but his scheme comes to nothing because Ferdinand is in love with me.’

‘He’d be a fool not to be,’ Nicholas said with great feeling, pouring her a glass of the chilled wine.