‘I don’t mind the rain,’ Elizabeth says. ‘It just means we appreciate days like this all the more when we get them.’

‘That’s true.’ He takes her hand. ‘But not as much as I appreciate being alone with you at last.’

Philip’s fingers are warm around hers, setting Elizabeth’s senses trembling with awareness. It is as if she has never seen the river before, not properly. As if she has never noticed how it tumbles a glossy brown around the boulders, how it glitters as it swirls into the patches of sunlight between the trees in a dazzling display of light and shade, bright and dark. A fish leaps, showering an arc of diamond drops in the air, while a dipper bobs up and down in search of flies and the burble and rush of the water over the stones provides a tranquil soundtrack as they walk in companionable silence.

Turning away from the Dee, they start to climb, pushing through coarse bracken until they emerge onto a hillside scattered with great granite boulders, as if tossed there by some petulant giant. A loch lies half hidden in the curve of a hill. The brilliant light turns its still surface into an enchanted mirror, reflecting back the rugged golden sweep of the hills. A cluster of birch trees fringes the far shore, their leaves a silvery trembling in the slight breeze.

Philip stops as they round the shoulder of the hill. He is silent for a moment, looking at the view. ‘Nice,’ is all he says, but Elizabeth is satisfied that the loch has had the right effect on him.

‘This is my favourite place,’ she says as she leads the way over to where a flattish boulder lies abandoned close to the shore of the loch. Hoisting herself up, she leans back on her hands. The rock is smooth and so warm beneath her palms that it feels like a living thing. ‘I like to come here on my own, if I can. It’s one of the few places where I’m not a princess. I’m just me.’

Philip levers himself up beside her. ‘It must be lonely. There can’t be many people who can think of you as anything other than a princess and a future queen.’

‘There’s no one,’ she says, matter-of-factly. She doesn’t want him to feel sorry for her. It’s just the way it is.

‘What about your family?’

‘Margaret, perhaps,’ she allows. ‘But even then, everything in her life is defined by the fact that I was born first. I’m the one who will be queen, not her, and that’s always there between us. It’s hard for her.’

‘Harder for you,’ Philip comments. ‘The rest of us can mess up but you don’t have that luxury. Aren’t you ever tempted to behave badly, just once?’

She thinks about that. ‘No, but then, I’m not a natural rebel, so perhaps it’s just as well I’m the one who will have to behave.’

He stretches out on the rock beside her and turns to lie on his side, propped up on one elbow so he can look at her face. ‘You don’t ever resent having a life of behaving well mapped out for you?’