We did. Lovely food, a good band, a man who held me as if I was made of porcelain when we danced and kept calling me “Your Highness.” I wasn’t in bed until two. So I was a little bleary-eyed when Queenie woke me the next morning saying, “I’ve managed to stuff your dress and shoes in that big trunk but the old bat won’t give me a hand with it down the stairs.”

I leaped up, washed, dressed in my traveling tweeds and helped Queenie bring down the trunk. I could hardly let her bump it all the way down by herself. If Mrs. Tombs thought she was getting a tip, she could think again. I saw Queenie off in her taxicab literally one minute before the duchess arrived. I heaved a sigh of relief that they hadn’t crossed paths. Somehow I didn’t think the duchess would approve of Queenie.

“You’re off then, are you?” Mrs. Tombs asked as she appeared from the kitchen. “Righty-o. I suppose I’ve got to give your room a good clean now.”

Then she caught sight of the Bentley with the chauffeur in dark-green uniform standing at the front door. “Blimey,” she said.

“Here we are,” Her Grace called, waving cheerfully from the backseat. “Wilkins will load in your things. Hop on in.”

Wilkins was as elderly as the Bentley and looked frail enough for the wind to blow him away. I felt horribly guilty as I watched him stagger toward the boot, carrying my typewriter.

“What on earth is that monstrosity?” Her Grace asked.

“My typewriter. I’m learning how to type.”

“Gracious. What on earth for? It’s not as if a girl of your standing will ever need to find a job.” She patted my knee. “Take my advice and leave the typing to the lower classes, my dear.”

I thought she was going to forbid me to take the machine but Wilkins had already installed it, and even she wasn’t cruel enough to ask him to remove it again.

The drive down to Kent was part delight and part terror. I don’t think Wilkins’s vision was that good and he received constant instructions from the dowager duchess, which made the drive even more precarious.

“I know that silly policeman is holding up his hand to stop traffic,” she boomed into her speaking tube from the backseat, “but that can’t possibly apply to us. He must see that we’re the kind of people who should not be kept waiting. Drive straight past, Wilkins.”

And I closed my eyes as we headed at full speed into the path of a lorry, which swerved to avoid us at the last second while we sailed on, the duchess apparently oblivious to the chaos behind her. I believe the policeman blew his whistle, but we were long gone. When we came to a railway level crossing at which the gates were being closed, I was relieved that Wilkins wisely refused to make the gatekeeper open them again as the express from Dover came thundering through a few seconds later. In fact, I began to wish that I had taken the train with Queenie and the luggage.