“This might be our best bet right now,” she said. “At least I know the mice haven’t got at this bed. But it’s haunted. I hope you don’t mind that. A young female ghost. Tends to yank the covers off the bed of people she doesn’t like. She’s fine with family members.” She looked up at me then. “Or almost family members, I expect.”

Then she laughed at my stricken face. “I didn’t buy that ‘just one of my friends from London’ speech for a minute. Casual friends don’t trek out to the middle of Ireland to be with a pal. So it’s more than that, isn’t it?” She gave me a long quizzical stare, then added, “I saw how he looked at you.”

“He didn’t want me to come,” I said. “He was afraid the newspapers would pick up on it. In fact he tried to break off with me altogether, because he didn’t want to put me through the unpleasantness.”

“But you showed you are made of sterner stuff. Good for you.” Oona nodded with satisfaction. “I can see he’s chosen the right girl. But why would the newspapers care?”

“Because I’m the king’s cousin,” I said, wincing.

Oona clapped her hands together. “Now I know why you looked familiar. One of the Rannochs. Of course. I was lady-in-waiting to your grandmother for a while before I married Dooley. You have the look of her.”

She had once been described as the least attractive of Queen Victoria’s daughters so I didn’t exactly find this flattering.

“And now I see Darcy’s point,” she said. “It might well have been wiser not to come.”

“But I couldn’t leave Darcy to face this alone, could I? Not when his father is being so beastly and unhelpful.”

“Of course you couldn’t. I would have acted in the same way if it had been Dooley. Leave your suitcase for now. We’ll get Branson to bring up some peat for a fire when he brings in the duck. This room will be warm as toast in no time at all.”