‘I’m sorry, Ilse,’ she had said, totally out of her depth. ‘But in what way…? How…?’

Ilse’s eyes had met hers with stark frankness. ‘We were in love, but we were never lovers, Hester. At the time I believed it was because he knew I was a virgin and his respect for me was such that he wanted me to be a virgin on our wedding day. Within weeks of my being with Nicholas I knew my reading of the situation had been far too naive—and I also realized that if Max and I had married, our sex life would have been in deep trouble.’

As she’d blinked in disbelief, unable to conceive of any sexual scenario Max wouldn’t be master of, Ilse had said with a wry smile: ‘I know I’m right, Hester. From the day our relationship became romantic, Max stopped staying at the Unter den Linden house and I think that was because his being there, in the house where we had always been family together, was too disturbing to him once we were romantically involved.’ Her smile relaxed and deepened. ‘I’ve never been so happy as I have been these last two years. Nicholas is right for me in a way that Max never could be. Sometimes, with Max, I had to pretend to be far happier than I actually was. With Nicholas, I never have to pretend about anything. We’re perfect for each other and I love him with all my heart.’

‘This is quite an event, isn’t it?’ Vicky said that evening to Paul as, hands aching after being introduced to a veritable army of Schulenburg aunts, uncles and cousins and an even larger army of related-by-marriage Wittelsbachs and Hohenzollerns, they finally sat down to a very formal meal in a grand dining room as vast as a ballroom.

‘And what a relief that all the uniforms being worn are unfamiliar 1914 vintage,’ Paul said, as the aged admiral he and Lotti had seen arriving earlier took his seat on the opposite side of the long table, not far from them.

It was an expression of feeling Vicky was totally in sympathy with. Despite the glittering array of military decorations pinned to aged male chests, there wasn’t a Nazi uniform in sight. As she looked around the enormous, flower-filled dining room it occurred to her that there hadn’t been a family celebration so magnificent since Zelda had married Josef—with Nicholas’s father as his best man—and the Kaiser had been in attendance.

‘I thought my tiara would be over the top,’ Lotti said, leaning in front of Paul in order to speak to Vicky, ‘but I’m completely underdressed. Do you think all the jewels in the room are real?’

‘Mine are,’ her emerald-laden mother said tartly from where she was seated directly opposite her, flanked by Josef and Berthold. ‘And yours could have been if you’d had the sense to have asked to wear Remer family jewellery and not deck yourself out with chorus-girl paste.’