Enemies of the Heart

Enemies of the Heart

REBECCA DEAN

HARPER

For Carol Smith

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Berlin, June 1909

‘You can’t possibly decide to marry a man you haven’t yet met.’ Vicky Hudson’s voice held an underlying trace of North Yorkshire vowels—and a wealth of affection and amusement.

Her American-born cousin, five years her senior, looked at her through an ornate dressing-table mirror as her maid put finishing touches to her elaborate chignon. ‘I can when he’s heir to a steel empire that makes the Pennsylvanian steel empires back home seem child’s play in comparison,’ she said drily, uncaring that a chambermaid was also present and that she was talking about the eldest son of the house in her hearing. ‘My father says Harald Remer has one of the finest financial brains he’s ever come across, which is why he was so insistent that Uncle Arthur pay him this visit.’

Vicky walked across to the nearest of the large windows that looked down over the tree-lined Unter den Linden. Zelda’s father was a New York banker and his assessment of Harald Remer’s financial abilities was, presumably, based on hard evidence.

It was early evening and carriages and smart motorcars thronged the already gas-lit boulevard. Because she was not husband-hunting—and wouldn’t be interested in a heel-clicking, stiffly formal German even if she were—Harald Remer’s eldest son’s eligibility was of little interest to her. For Zelda, widowed three years ago when she was twenty-three, the situation was different.

Zelda’s father was rich on a scale that far exceeded her own father’s comfortable lifestyle as a Yorkshire mill-owner. As a matter of course Zelda had married a man of enormous wealth and, now that she was a widow, had no intention of marrying anyone whose fortune didn’t exceed her own. Even within mega rich New York society this narrowed the field of possible husbands—and something that narrowed the field even further was the unfortunate manner of her husband’s death.

After an evening dining at Delmonico’s, Harry Gould had committed suicide by throwing himself into the East River from the central span of Brooklyn Bridge. As there was no obvious cause for his action—no financial catastrophe, no sordid scandal attached to his name—rumour had whispered that perhaps his exotically beautiful wife was the cause of the despair that had driven him to take his life. Though nothing was ever said to Zelda directly, she was aware enough of the gossip to have welcomed the opportunity of leaving New York for a trip to Venice, Florence and Rome as part of Vicky’s twenty-first-birthday celebrations.

Now, for the first time, it occurred to Vicky that Zelda might have had a part to play in their detour to Berlin.

Zelda glanced down at the diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist. ‘Be an angel, Vicky, and say goodnight to Paul for me, would you? I haven’t decided what gown to wear and Germans are so obsessive about time I daren’t run the risk of being late—not if I want to be considered daughter-in-law material.’

Already dressed for dinner in a powder-blue silk gown that skimmed her satin evening shoes and fell into a small train, Vicky turned away from the window. ‘Yes,’ she said agreeably, not understanding how Zelda could delegate such a precious ritual. ‘Of course I will.’

As she left the room she reminded herself of how modest her own lifestyle was in comparison to Zelda’s. Their late mothers, Georgiana and Christina Harland, had been sisters, but whereas her mother had lived all her life in the peaceful serenity of the Yorkshire Dales, Zelda’s mother, Christina, had gone to New York, married a merchant banker and lived a life of ostentatious luxury.

Zelda had never lived in anything other than a vast Fifth Avenue mansion and she was accustomed to Paul occupying his own nursery suite and being in the care of not only his nanny, but a shoal of nursery maids. She certainly wasn’t accustomed to his travelling with her. That he was doing so now was to please Vicky and her uncle.

The corridor that led towards the suite of rooms allocated to Paul and his nanny was walled and floored in dark red marble. Zelda thought it pleasingly grandiose. Vicky thought it oppressive and ugly. As she circumvented a life-size statue of Hercules she wondered if the other mansions on the Unter den Linden were equally overwhelming and gloomy.

Entering the nursery and seeing Paul seated in the centre of a vast high bed, his face rosy from his recent bath, his dark hair curling damply, was a welcome contrast to all the museum-like statuary.

‘Goodness, Paul,’ she said, laughter in her voice as she crossed acres of floor to reach him. ‘You remind me of the fairy story of the princess and the pea.’

He giggled. ‘Is that the story of the princess who could feel a hard lump in her bed no matter how many mattresses she slept on?’ he asked as his Scottish nanny, accustomed to Vicky’s bedtime visits, left them on their own.

‘It is.’ Vicky hitched up her evening gown and clambered onto the bed beside him. ‘And because she was able to do so the handsome prince, who was looking for a wife, decided she must be a very special princess, a really royal princess, and that she was the princess he would marry.’

‘Tell me it again, Aunt Vicky.’ He cuddled up against her, smelling of soap and shampoo. ‘Tell me it from the beginning.’

‘Once upon a time…’ she began, putting her arm lovingly around him, wondering for the first time if, like Zelda, she too should be thinking of looking for a husband. It would be nice to have children of her own—in fact, she couldn’t think of anything nicer. The trouble was she’d never met anyone she could even begin to imagine living with for the rest of her life. All the eligible young men she had met so far had been the hale and hearty sons of Yorkshire mill-owners, their only interests the wool industry and the brass to be made from it.

None of them had appealed to her. She wanted a different kind of husband, a husband who would take pleasure in the things she took pleasure in: music and books and flowers and gardens. Most especially she wanted a husband who would take pleasure in family life, not one who would regard his family duty fulfilled simply because the home he provided was grand and the lifestyle enjoyed in it was luxurious.

There was a tap on the door and a maid entered. ‘Excuse me, Fräulein,’ she said, accompanying the words with something that looked embarrassingly like a curtsey. ‘Dinner is about to be served.’

Vicky gave Paul a kiss. ‘I must go, sweetheart,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Goodnight. God bless.’

‘Night,’ he said. As she slipped from the bed, he snuggled down against mammoth goose-feather pillows, saying sleepily, ‘I love you, Aunt Vicky.’

‘And I love you,’ she said, her throat tightening with emotion.

She closed the door gently behind her and hurriedly made her way along the long corridor and down the marble and bronze stairway to the reception room, finding with relief that Harald Remer and her father and Zelda were still there and that she hadn’t disgraced herself by being late. With them were two young men.

Harald Remer made the introductions.

Josef Remer was introduced to her first and, as he clicked his heels and bent low over her evening-gloved hand, her immediate impression of him was that he was, in almost every way, the image of his father. Handsome in a way that didn’t appeal to her, he had the same short Prussian haircut, the same hard blue eyes, the same thin-lipped mouth beneath an immaculately clipped moustache.

Berthold Remer looked nothing like him and, as he too heel-clicked and bowed, she reflected that Zelda would be vastly relieved he wasn’t the elder of the two brothers. Not very tall, with mousy hair parted unflatteringly in the centre and wearing thick-lensed spectacles, he lacked the forceful presence of his father and brother.

As he raised his head, she saw with a stab of surprise that the expression in his light-coloured eyes wasn’t merely one of Teutonic politeness, but was genuinely warm and welcoming.

‘Is it true that Count Zeppelin’s airship nearly crashed on its record-breaking flight when it came in to refuel?’ her father asked Harald Remer with interest.

‘At Stuttgart, yes,’ his host said, obviously not best pleased at being reminded that Germany’s magnificent achievement had had its hiccups. ‘But it was nothing, Herr Hudson. The only consequence was that Count Zeppelin was unable to fly on to Berlin and be received here by the Kaiser.’

He frowned suddenly, seeing something at the far end of the reception room that violently displeased him. Reverting to German he harshly snapped an order at the manservant standing nearest to them.

The manservant ran off in haste and scooped a little dachshund into his arms. The dog, offended by the action, wriggled furiously.

‘It belonged to my late wife,’ Harald Remer said apologetically to his guests as the still-struggling dog was carried from the room. ‘An annoying animal that never knew its place, even when she was alive.’

Vicky saw Berthold Remer’s mouth tighten, but whether it was because he was as annoyed as his father, she wasn’t sure.

The small-talk conversation she had interrupted in the reception room continued as they went in to dinner where, to her relief, she found herself seated between Berthold and her father while Zelda, at the far side of the massive dining table, was seated next to Harald and Josef.

‘Though Count Zeppelin didn’t have the pleasure of meeting with the Kaiser when his airship landed,’ Harald Remer said as turtle soup was served, ‘I had the honour of being among those invited to the planned reception.’

‘To the reception at which the Kaiser would have been present?’ There was nothing feigned about the vibrant interest in Zelda’s sloe-dark eyes.

‘The House of Remer plays a large part in the economy of our Fatherland,’ Harald Remer said pompously. ‘And I have often had the honour of entertaining Kaiser Wilhelm at Schloss Niedernhall, my family home in Baden-Württemberg.’

Zelda was suitably impressed and Vicky knew exactly what her cousin was thinking. Schloss Niedernhall would be even more vast than the Berlin mansion. Schloss Niedernhall would be palatial on a breathtaking scale.

As if reading her thoughts Berthold leaned towards her slightly. ‘It’s a two-hundred-room castle perched on a high crag, Fräulein Hudson,’ he whispered. ‘And quite, quite hideous.’

Vicky fought the desire to giggle, glad that his English was so flawless; glad that, unlike his father, he possessed a sense of humour.

‘No one has been able to live in it for years,’ Berthold continued as, for her father’s benefit, his father launched into a tediously detailed account of the differences between the German Navy League and the German Colonial League. ‘It is built entirely of steel and stone with cavernous rooms as high-ceilinged as steeples, and no one has ever been able to devise a satisfactory method of heating it. My late mother always referred to it as the biggest mausoleum in the world.’

The corners of Vicky’s mouth dimpled in a smile she couldn’t suppress. ‘And the gardens?’ she asked. ‘It must have enormous gardens.’

‘It has, but they are the worst kind of Italianate. All gravel and statuary.’

Vicky shuddered and this time it was Berthold’s turn to smile. He had, Vicky decided, a very sweet smile.

She said confidingly, ‘At my home in Yorkshire my father grows roses—and he doesn’t grow them the fashionable way, in neat and tidy beds. They rampage up the sides of the house and into trees and scramble down the banks of the river we look out on to.’

‘Wunderschön. And whereabouts in Yorkshire is this paradise? Is it in the Dales or on the edge of the moors?’

‘You’re familiar with Yorkshire?’ She was so surprised she abandoned toying with the carp fillets that had long since followed her soup.

He flashed her his sweet smile once again. ‘I finished my education at Oxford. As a result I have a great affection for England and the English countryside.’

It explained his excellent English and Vicky was just beginning to settle down to an enjoyable conversation with him, telling him of how her home, Shuttleworth Hall, was in Wensleydale—and of how pretty Wensleydale was—when she was interrupted by Harald Remer exclaiming loudly: ‘Ja, natürlich, Herr Hudson. Natürlich. Remer factories are not only one of Germany’s biggest producers of steel—second only to the House of Krupp—but we are also next to the biggest producer of clothing for the army and the navy. If Yorkshire wool is as superior as you claim, we will put large quantities to good use. Isn’t that so, Berthold?’

As Berthold was drawn reluctantly into the general conversation, Vicky felt a rough little tongue lick her ankle. Reaching down beneath the overhang of the lace tablecloth she touched the top of the dachshund’s silky-smooth head.

Knowing how speedily the dog would be removed if Harald Remer were made aware of its presence, she didn’t attract attention to it, hoping that if Zelda noticed the uninvited guest she would also say nothing.

On the far side of a giant silver epergne, Zelda was showing no sign of being interested in anything other than Harald Remer’s conversation. As she listened to him with flatteringly rapt attention, she too was being given undivided attention. Not from Harald Remer, but from Josef.

Vicky could quite understand why, for Zelda’s looks were striking. Though she didn’t like it spoken of, her paternal grandmother had been a Native American, an Iroquois, and Zelda had inherited not only her high cheekbones and cat-like eyes, but also her flawless olive skin and night-black hair. The vivid yellow gown she was wearing had been made in Paris and was cut in the very latest neoclassical style, low at the bosom and falling daringly straight to her feet. It was the perfect foil for her voluptuous beauty, and Vicky was well aware that her own gown was unfashionably provincial in comparison.

She was happily uncaring. When it came to clothes and jewellery, competition with Zelda was impossible. The five-string choker of diamond-clasped pearls and the dazzling array of diamond bracelets on Zelda’s wrists and arms were, for instance, no ordinary pieces of jewellery. Zelda had dressed to impress, wanting the Remers to be in no doubt she was a member of New York’s most exclusive social elite—a social elite that was at home mixing with kings, presidents and, given the opportunity, kaisers.

She also realized something else. The food on Berthold Remer’s plate was disappearing fast—and not because he was eating it. As he continued to take part in the conversation that now included his brother and her father, his hand would, every so often, move across his plate and then drop beneath the table.

Laughter fizzed in her throat.

The dachshund had known exactly whose feet to sit beside.

‘Wiener Schnitzel seems to be a very popular dish, Herr Remer,’ she said impishly. ‘Almost as popular as the side dish of little dumplings.’

‘Ah, those are called Nockerl. They are an Austrian dish much loved by north Germans.’