‘We waited until now to tell you,’ Gladys said. ‘Because Max asked us to wait. He said we were to let you get the worst of your grieving over, for you couldn’t have coped with a child until now.’

‘I…What are you saying?’ Rose’s fingers clenched involuntarily into her palms. Of course she couldn’t have coped with a child. Not when she’d been fighting to earn her way though vet school. Not when she and Max had been battling his illness. And not now, when she was struggling to earn enough for this tiny vet clinic to support them all.

‘But now it’s time,’ Gladys said, and she smiled.

‘Time?’ Rose managed. ‘For what?’

‘It’s his sperm,’ Bob said, and the elderly man’s voice was eager. ‘It’s Max’s sperm, Rose. When he first got sick, years and years ago, he was naught but a lad, but they told us that the treatment might make him infertile. Even then we thought who’d inherit this life? Who’d take this place forward?’

Who indeed? But Rose wasn’t asking the question. She was staring at them in dawning horror.

‘So we had it frozen,’ Gladys said. ‘And we wanted it to be a surprise. It’s his two-year anniversary present. From Max to you. Now you can have his babies.’

Five hundred miles away in London, in the illustrious international law firm Goodman, Stern and Haddock, another surprise was being played out.

Nikolai de Montez, barrister-at-law, was staring at the elderly man across his desk in stunned silence.

He’d walked in five minutes before the scheduled appointment he’d made a week earlier, neatly dressed, stooped with age, and with hands that trembled. The card he’d handed over had said simply: ‘Erhard Fritz. Assistant to the Crown.’

‘My question is simple, really,’ Erhard said without preamble. ‘If it meant you were to inherit a throne, would you be prepared to marry?’