He made an involuntary gesture of comfort, holding out a hand-and then he pulled it away. What was he thinking of? He needed as little contact here as possible. He couldn’t possibly comfort this woman.

‘I need the release papers to allow me to take Henry back to Broitenburg.’

She thought about that. ‘Lara did have a child?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t know.’ She looked up at him, her eyes bleak with shock. ‘I didn’t know anything about a baby.’ It was a despairing wail. ‘Surely if she’d had a child she would have contacted me. If she was in trouble…’

‘Your sister wasn’t in trouble,’ Marc told her. ‘She married Jean-Paul and she had everything she’d ever wanted. A royal marriage. Servants. Luxury you can’t begin to imagine.’

‘She never would have wanted a child.’

Marc nodded. That fitted with what he knew of Lara, but there was an explanation. ‘Jean-Paul needed an heir,’ he told her. ‘He was Crown Prince of Broitenburg. He wouldn’t have married Lara if she hadn’t been prepared to give him a child.’

Tammy thought about that, too, and it almost made sense. Maybe with Lara’s warped sense of values marrying royalty would be worth the cost of having a child. She knew her mother and Lara so well. She knew the way they thought. Money and status were everything. For Lara to be a royal bride… Yes. It was a price Lara might well have been prepared to pay.

‘So she had a child? Henry?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you said Henry was here. In Australia. In Sydney.’

‘Lara sent him back to Australia about four months ago.’

‘Why?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes, it does matter.’ Anger and sadness were surging back and forth, and now anger won. ‘You tell me my sister married and had a baby, and was royal, and is now dead. You tell me you want the baby. And when I ask questions you say “Does it matter?”’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you here? Obviously my mother didn’t think it was worth telling me of my sister’s death. And my sister didn’t bother to tell me of her marriage or the birth of her child. So why are you here now? What are you demanding that I sign? What does all this have to do with me?’