And everywhere there were bowls of fresh, hot-house flowers spilling their bright colours and fragrant scents into the room, which glowed at this hour with the muted light from crystal lamps shaded in pink silk.
The superb bedroom was made all the more superb by the art. Her eyes came finally to rest on the paintings by Auguste Renoir, and she admired them yet again, and as usual she was awed. How magnificent they looked against the pale green walls. Two were paintings of nudes, another was a portrait of a mother with her two daughters, and the fourth depicted a garden in summer. To Ursula their tints were breathtaking: shell-pink and pearl, deep rose and lustrous gold, soft pastel blues and greens and the most glorious of yellows. All were light-filled, warm and sensuous, quite wondrous to behold. They were part of the Westheim Collection which had been started by Sigmund’s grandfather Friedrich in the late nineteenth century, immediately following the historic first Impressionist showing in Paris in 1874, and she considered it a privilege to have them hanging here in her home.
Sighing under her breath, Ursula roused herself, aware that Sigmund had returned from the bank some time ago, and that he was already dressed in his evening clothes and waiting for her downstairs. Now she must hurry. Punctual himself, he disliked tardiness in others. She went to the Venetian mirrored dressing table positioned between two soaring windows that floated up to the high ceiling, opened the black leather case resting on top of it, glanced at some of the magnificent jewels which lay glittering on the black velvet.
Automatically, almost without interest, she put on a pair of simple, diamond earrings, slipped on her diamond engagement ring next to her gold wedding band, and closed and locked the case. She would wear nothing else, none of her important pieces. She loathed ostentation at the best of times and these were the worst. And why encourage the envy of others, she added under her breath.
Stepping away from the dressing table, Ursula gave herself a final cursory glance, smoothed one hand over her short, wavy blonde hair before turning, walking over to the wardrobe where her coats and capes were kept.
There was a knock on the door, and before she could respond it flew open and her personal maid Gisela hurried into the room. ‘You are ready to leave, Frau Westheim? Which fur will you wear?’
Ursula’s smile was as lovely as her face, and in her low, cultured voice she said, ‘I’m not taking a coat. The velvet wrap will do nicely, Gisela. If you would be good enough to get it out for me, please. Oh, and I will need a pair of white kid gloves. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll be right back.’
‘Yes, Frau Westheim.’
Ursula stepped out into the bedroom corridor, pushed open the door exactly opposite hers and went inside. A night light on the bedside table glowed faintly in the dim and shadowy room. She tiptoed over to the bed, looked down at the small boy sleeping there so peacefully with one of his small chubby hands resting under a pink cheek. Bending over him, she stroked his blond hair, gave him a light kiss.
The boy stirred. A pair of eyes opened and a sleep-filled voice murmured, ‘Mutti? I’ve been waiting for you, Mutti.’
Ursula filled with a rush of surging warmth, and she smiled inwardly. She experienced such infinite joy when she was with this child. There was a chair near the bed and she pulled it closer, sat down, took his other hand in hers. ‘I was dressing, Mein Schatzi. Papa and I have to go out this evening.’
‘Papa came to kiss me. He’s buying me a pony next summer,’ her small son confided, suddenly wide awake. His brown eyes gleamed brightly with excitement as they fastened so intently on hers.
Ursula leaned forward to kiss him again. He nuzzled his warm little face against her cheek and a pair of tender young arms went around her neck and he clung to her. She held him close, stroking his head with one hand. She loved this four-year-old boy so very much. Her only child. Her heart. She was so afraid for him. Nothing must happen to him. She must protect him with her life.
Pushing away the troubled thoughts with which she now lived on a daily basis, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Your pony will be waiting for you when we go to the villa in the Wannsee next summer. Papa will have it taken there for you.’
‘Mutti?’
‘Yes, Maxim?’
‘Will Papa show me how to ride it?’
‘Of course he will,’ she said, smiling.
‘What’s the pony’s name?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t found the right one for you yet. But we will. Come now, it’s time to go to sleep.’
Still holding her child in her arms she leaned forward, laid him against the snowy linen pillows, but he did not want to let go of her, clung to her more tightly than ever, almost fiercely. Gently she unclasped his arms, straightened her back, and sat up. Touching his face lightly with her fingertips, she spoke to him with great tenderness. ‘You’re such a good little boy, Maxim, a sweet boy, and I love you very, very much.’
‘I love you, Mutti.’
‘Goodnight, Mäuschen, sweet dreams,’ she murmured against his cheek.
‘Night.’ He yawned and his eyelids began to droop, and Ursula knew he would be fast asleep before she even reached the door. She crept out on silent feet, returned to her bedroom where she collected her wrap, gloves and evening bag from her maid.
‘Goodnight, Gisela,’ she said, pausing in the doorway and turning around. ‘And please don’t wait up for me.’
‘But Frau Westheim, I always help you to –’
‘No, no, it’s not really necessary,’ Ursula interrupted softly. ‘I can manage by myself, but thank you anyway.’ With these words she walked along the corridor to the staircase.
This swept grandly down to the vast baronial entrance foyer of the Westheim house, a mansion on the Tiergartenstrasse, near the Tiergarten, in a charming residential area of Berlin.
Halfway down the stairs, Ursula stopped, stood stock still listening, her head on one side.
Sigmund was playing the piano in the music room, and the melodic strains of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata came wafting to her on the warm air. It was beautiful … delicate … but so ineffably sad. Her throat ached with unexpected emotion, and inexplicably tears sprang into her eyes. And she realised that tonight for some reason this particular piece of music seemed to move her especially, perhaps more than it ever had before.
She stood for a moment longer, composing herself and marvelling at Sigmund’s touch. It was magical. If he had not been an investment banker she believed he could easily have become a classical concert pianist, such was his talent. But banking was in his blood. Centuries of it. Passed down from father to son, ever since Jacob Westheim, the founding father of the dynasty, had opened the original merchant bank in Frankfurt in 1690. The entire family had moved to Berlin over a hundred years ago, and the Westheim private investment bank in the Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin’s financial district, dated back to 1820. Like his father and their illustrious forebears, Sigmund had a brilliant financial brain, and he loved the bank and his work, but had he been born into any family other than the Westheims he might easily have turned out to be a musician by profession.
The clock in the foyer began to chime and the pendulum struck six times, announcing the hour and cutting into her thoughts. She hurried down the stairs, deposited her things on an antique loveseat underneath a Gobelin tapestry, then crossed the black-and-white marble floor, heading in the direction of the music room. Here she paused in the doorway, stood regarding her husband, thinking how handsome he looked in his dinner jacket and black tie.
The moment he saw her, Sigmund stopped playing, sprang up, came swiftly to meet her. Brown-haired with bright blue eyes and a warm, sincere smile, he was about five foot eleven, slender, compact of build, a good-looking man with a strong, well-defined face. He was thirty-six years old, and he had been married to Ursula for fifteen years.
Ursula walked towards him.
They