Wait? To hell with that, he decides.

Chapter 27

‘Not shooting today?’ The King registers Elizabeth’s tweed skirt and pale blue blouse with concern.

‘No, I thought Philip and I might go for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ Her father looks suspicious. ‘With Philip?’

‘Yes.’

Elizabeth has heard all about Philip’s visit to her father’s study. ‘Damned impertinence,’ the King had grumbled. ‘Things are far too precarious in Greece at the moment, as Philip must very well know. Besides, I’m not ready to lose you, darling Lilibet. It’s so comfortable with just the four of us, isn’t it? I don’t want that to change. There’s plenty of time for you to think about marriage. I told Philip the time’s not right and that he should wait.’

Her father hasn’t told her to wait.

Elizabeth has been patient. She has been dutiful. She has been careful not to rock the boat. But now she is ready to act. She is ready to change her life.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ is the only explanation she offers her father.

And it is. It can be like this in Scotland. Day after dreich day of relentless rain or blustery showers until you wake up one morning without warning to find the sky a brilliant blue and the mountains serene in the crystalline air.

‘Where are we going?’ Philip asks as they set off. Elizabeth has a cardigan slung around her shoulders; he is in flannels and an open necked shirt. Susan snuffles ahead, her fat bottom waggling with pleasure. The air is fresh and well rinsed after a week of rain. The warmth of the sunshine draws out the coconutty smell of the gorse and the peaty tang of the earth while linnets twitter busily in the birches and beady-eyed blackbirds hop along the ground in search of worms.

‘There’s a small loch, more of a lochan really, up there,’ she says, pointing. ‘It’s a little way, but worth the walk, I think.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ says Philip. ‘Especially if it’s in the other direction from your father. He wasn’t in the best of moods when I left him last night.’

‘No,’ Elizabeth agrees in a dry voice.

‘Did he tell you?’

She nods. Loyalty makes her find an excuse for her father. ‘He does get very tired and irritable. There’s no let up from the red boxes, even here at Balmoral. It’s a lonely job, and it’s not one he ever wanted. It’s … hard for him.’

‘And the last thing he needs is some pushy young fellow badgering him about the daughter he doesn’t want to lose?’

She smiles faintly. ‘Something like that.’ She isn’t quite ready to talk about what her father’s objections might mean to them. ‘How’s your blister?’

‘Much better since your tip about the fleece,’ says Philip, tacitly accepting the change of subject. ‘I got my own shoes back from the cobbler, too, so I’ll go as far as you want.’ He takes a deep breath of the sweet air and looks around him. ‘All those days plodding after Murdoch through the rain,’ he remembers. ‘You wouldn’t think this was the same place at all.’