He trails off. Without warning, his throat has snapped shut, clogged with a hard, complicated knot of memories.

Chapter 11

Elizabeth glances at him. For a time, he had been relaxed talking about his childhood, but clearly some memory has proved too much. A muscle is working in his clenched jaw. He looks furious and she suspects that it is with himself for sharing so much with her.

She is glad that he has. She wants to know more about him. She needs to know more if she is going to suggest marriage.

The thought makes Elizabeth’s heart thump once, painfully, against her ribs. She still isn’t sure that she dares, but seeing him again, talking to him properly, has changed things for her. Before, she can admit that she was infatuated with the idea of Philip. He was young, handsome, a hero. How could she not have been?

But now, now she has a better sense of him. She likes his quickness and his humour, likes his impatience with protocol. He is brusque at times, and arrogant, but he has a presence that Elizabeth feels she herself still lacks.

It is her duty to marry and to have a family. She wants that for herself, too, and why not Philip? He is a prince, after all, and he comes from a family used, like hers, to dynastic alliances. Mountbatten is keen on the idea, her parents less so, that is clear.

Elizabeth has the strong sense that if she wants him, she has to do something about it herself.

So she has decided to say something to Philip. She is desperately nervous about scaring him off altogether but she doesn’t need to make a big production out of it, she has reassured herself. It is not as if he can’t know that his uncle is pushing the idea of a marriage. Why else would he be here, after all?

But nothing has been said formally. Elizabeth is tired of being a dutiful girl, sitting at home in Windsor and waiting for something to happen. She wants to know what Philip thinks.

She is just going to mention the idea and see what he says.

Although … that is easier said than done.

Elizabeth opens her mouth to say that she’d like to talk to him about something, but immediately changes her mind. She cannot spring a discussion like that on Philip without warning.

‘You’re lucky to have such happy memories,’ she says instead, her voice trembling slightly with nerves. ‘But then, I don’t suppose it was all holidays and there must have been times when you would have liked a home of your own to go to.’

‘Sometimes,’ he admits with a grudging look. ‘But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, isn’t it? It’s an alluring idea, but where would that home have been and what would have happened to it by now? And in any case, I’m a restless fellow. I’m like a dog that longs for a basket of its own but can’t settle. There’s a part of me that finds the idea of being tied to one place and one person utterly appalling.’