‘I don’t, actually.’ Philip knows exactly what a tantalising idea a home is.

‘So now we can stay here at Salem with Dolla and Berthold. Georg is going to be headmaster of the school here. Did you hear that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

She glances at him, detecting reserve in his voice. ‘A come down for a Prince of Hanover, you think?’

‘I’m a Prince of Greece and I barely own what I stand up in,’ Philip says. ‘I’m in no position to talk about come downs to anyone, Tiny!’

‘But that would change if you married. You would leapfrog over them all.’

He lets out a half-laugh. ‘Perhaps.’

‘So you could marry someone kind who you like and snub your nose at anyone who’s ever looked down at you?’

‘Has Uncle Dickie been talking to you?’ Philip gives her a quizzical look and she laughs.

‘Of course not. Come, what is the problem? You have a girl who is decent and kind – and let me tell you, kindness is the most underrated of qualities – on top of which, she is a great heiress, possibly the greatest in the world today.’

‘Because she is heir to the throne of England,’ he agrees. ‘Which I know is the point. If she weren’t, Uncle Dickie wouldn’t be pushing so hard for me to marry her. But with the throne goes the court,’ he says. ‘God, Tiny, if you knew what they were like! It’s bristling with moustachioed old men who fought in the trenches. Very honourably, no doubt, but their ideas haven’t moved on since. Things at Buckingham Palace have hardly changed since George V. The whole place needs a good boot up its backside, if you ask me.’

He scowls out at the lake, remembering. ‘They’re all living in the last century with their protocols and God knows what. Half of them are having conniptions because sometimes I turn up to a nursery supper without a tie! It’d be like wading through mud trying to change anything, and it needs to change,’ he insists. ‘We’ve just been through a war. Everything needs to change.’

‘If you were married to Elizabeth you could be part of that change,’ Sophie suggests mildly.

His mouth turns down at the corners. ‘I don’t see that lot letting anything change without a fight and honestly haven’t we all had enough of fighting for now?’

‘Well, all I can say is that I was happy with Chri and I hope to be happy with Georg too. Perhaps as women we don’t ask for so much. That might be true of Princess Elizabeth too. But you must do what feels right for you,’ she says, straightening. She takes his hands and squeezes them. ‘I’m just so glad to see you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you came, Philip.’

‘I’m glad I did.’

Chapter 22

In spite of the tears that make him squirm, it’s true. They have been divided by war, but now they are sitting around a table, a family once more. Philip remembers kindly Berthold, Theodora’s husband, and Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, married to Margarita, from before the war. It is surreal to think that until the year before, they were the enemy, high ranking SS officers. Now they are just Berthold and Friedel again.