“And fine little girls they are too,” the queen said, beaming. “There would be no shirking of duty with Elisabeth. She has the right stuff, that one. Fell off her pony the other day trying to jump a fence at Windsor. And do you know what she was worried about—whether the pony had hurt himself!” She shook her head, smiling. “Margaret Rose—well, I’m not so sure about her. Delightful child, but a mischievous strain too. Hid her grandfather’s spectacles the last time she was here. He thought it was funny. But we digress.”

She turned back to the duchess. “I’m sorry, Edwina. Please continue.”

I had been sitting frozen through this dialogue, trying to think what to say when they suggested that I’d be exactly the right person to marry a fifty-year-old woman hater and give him an heir.

“Is the current duke your only child then, Your Grace?” I asked.

“I have a daughter, Irene. She married a foreigner—an absolute bounder, a Russian count she met in Paris. He worked his way through her fortune then took off for South America with an Argentinian dancer, if you please. Leaving her with three children, and no money to raise them properly. They are living with us at Kingsdowne Place at the moment.”

The queen leaned closer to me. “Her Grace’s younger son was killed in the war on the Somme,” she said. “A most valiant young man. Awarded the VC posthumously after carrying several of his wounded men out of the line of enemy fire.”

The duchess was now smiling, which completely transformed her face. “My son John. He was always quite a handful but what a charmer. I can’t tell you how many tutors we got through before m’husband sent him to Eton. He was nearly expelled for setting the dormitory on fire, smoking under the sheets. Also got into a spot of trouble while he was up at Oxford. Something to do with cheating on an examination. Johnnie always did like to take risks. So my husband shipped him off to the colonies to make a man of him. He spent a couple of years in the Australian outback doing all kinds of manual work on sheep stations, cattle ranches, God knows what. One rather gathers the lifestyle suited him and if war hadn’t broken out, he might never have come home. But the moment war was declared, he caught the first boat back to England and enlisted in his father’s old regiment. He was killed within the first few months of fighting.”

She stopped, and I watched her fight to compose her features. I waited patiently, wondering what might be coming next.

“So will the title die out with the present duke?” I asked. “Is there no other heir?” I had finished my watercress sandwich and, emboldened by the way that the duchess was stuffing cream cakes, I leaned across and took an éclair. It was light as a feather, with cream oozing out of it.

“That was what we all feared,” the duchess went on. “There appeared to be no male heir even among the most remote of cousins. Under the entailment, the title would die out with my son and the estate would revert to the crown. But then about eighteen months ago, we received the most extraordinary letter. It was from a doctor working in the Australian outback, of all places. The newspapers from England containing my husband’s obituary had just reached him. He saw that my husband’s family name was Altringham—Charles Forsythe Altringham, Duke of Eynsford. He said that he knew a young man working on a sheep station who bore an uncanny resemblance to my late husband. He was reputed to be a relation of nobility and his name was also Altringham—Jack Altringham, to be precise.”