The conversation had suddenly turned dark and Paul was just about to ask her if she thought Hitler really would go to war over the Sudetenland when another Mercedes rolled to a halt and Emily Elise tumbled out of it, Hester and Hugo close behind her.

‘I’ve been practising to be a bridesmaid, Cousin Lotti!’ she squealed, throwing herself into Lotti’s opened arms. ‘And my dress is a fairy dress. All pink and white with frills and ruffles everywhere. I must tell Mummy how pretty it is.’

As Lotti led the way back into the Schulenburg mansion, Emily Elise skipping along at her side, Paul fell into step beside Hugo and Hester. He was deeply fond of his cousin’s wife and, because she and Hugo lived in London, didn’t see as much of her as he would have liked. ‘It’s nice to see you, Hester,’ he said, smiling down at her, well aware that being in Berlin again couldn’t be easy for her. ‘There are about a hundred guests already in residence here, most of them ex-royal Wittelsbachs and Hohenzollerns. Tonight’s party is going to be quite an event.’

Hester’s answering smile was as sweet and sunny as always, but she didn’t respond with gay chatter. Her thoughts were on the surprisingly intimate conversation she had just had with the bride-to-be.

‘I’m totally happy,’ Ilse had said to her when the two of them had had a few moments alone at the church rehearsal.

‘And so you should be,’ she had responded, laughing. ‘Tomorrow is your wedding day. No one would imagine you to be anything else but totally happy.’

‘Oh, they might.’ A faint shadow had touched Ilse’s lovely face. ‘Max will be here—and people have long memories.’

It was then she’d realized that this was a serious conversation; that there were things Ilse wanted to put into words before she married Nicholas.

‘It’s been over two years since you ceased being romantically involved with Max,’ she had said tentatively. ‘That’s a long time, Ilse. You’re not beginning to have doubts about that decision, are you? Because if you are—’

Ilse’s response had been to cut her short with a vehement shake of her head. ‘No,’ she’d said with certainty. ‘From the minute I realized it was Nicholas I should be marrying, not Max, I’ve never had a single moment’s doubt. Not because of the incident that triggered that realization, but because of all the things that I suddenly saw clearly in the months afterwards; things had only been vaguely troubling up to then.’

‘What things?’ she’d said, deeply intrigued.

Ilse had looked to where Emily Elise was being shown where she would be standing once their bridal procession had reached the altar and said with startling candour, ‘I was always jealous of Lotti. I was always terrified that Max loved her more than me and even if I was wrong about that—and I don’t think I was—I realized that the kind of matey camaraderie they enjoyed would always exclude me. It simply wasn’t something that had ever existed in my relationship with him. All through my childhood I had adored him and he had been the attentive elder cousin, taking me out for treats and indulging me, but we had never been co-conspirators in the way he and Lotti had always been. And the very nature of my childhood relationship with him marred our relationship when he fell in love with me.’