“You won’t find no lettuce down the greengrocer’s on the corner. Only in your highfalutin sort of shops at this time of year.”

“Very well, a—” I broke off. I had foolishly been going to suggest a soufflé or even an omelet, both of which would have been beyond her.

“We’ll bring back smoked salmon. Make sure we have brown bread, thinly sliced.”

“Right you are then.” I had long ago decided that there was no point in instructing her on the correct way to address the daughter of a duke. She wouldn’t use it.

She sniffed again and shuffled off to clear the breakfast away. Really, she was a most depressing woman, but she came with the house. “How convenient,” Mummy had said. “We won’t have to hunt for servants.”

She was what was termed a cook general, although the word “cook” was debatable. Her cooking skills were nonexistent and if we’d let her have her way we’d have dined on gray, overstewed mutton and boiled-to-death cabbage. Fortunately Mummy liked to eat well, and a constant stream of deliverymen from Harrods and Fortnum’s kept us from starvation.

Mummy had already found a taxicab, one of her many miraculous talents. Cabs just appeared out of nowhere for her. I climbed in beside her.

“Mrs. Tombs wanted to know if we’d be in for lunch,” I said.

“That woman should have been drowned at birth,” Mummy said. “Isn’t it funny how people seem to have appropriate names? She has a face like a gravedigger. And I’m sure all the previous tenants died of her cooking. If I weren’t leaving, I’d write to the owner and let him know what a disaster she is. Of course, he doesn’t care. He’s in Monte Carlo.”

“She does clean quite well,” I pointed out. “It’s not her fault she can’t cook.”

“You are too nice natured, darling. You won’t get anywhere in this world being kind and generous. You must turn into a lioness like me and gobble up people who disagree with you.”

“I’m not very good at gobbling,” I said. “And I want to like people, and be liked by them.”

She sighed. “The sooner you get married and have babies to adore the better.” She paused, looking out of the window at the side wall of Harrods. “No news of the delectable Darcy then?”

“Nothing for ages.” I sighed.

“You must make him want to come rushing back to your side, my darling. You must learn how to turn into a little tigress in bed. It’s a pity I’m going or I could have given you a few pointers.”

“Mummy, we’re not married yet,” I said in a shocked voice.

She laughed merrily at this. “Darling, since when did sex and marriage have anything to do with each other. Our kind of people marry so they can legally get their hands on nice pieces of property and someone else’s title and fortune.”

I smiled out of the window but said nothing. Mummy was hardly “our kind of people,” having been born in a two-up, two-down house in the East End of London to a Cockney policeman and his wife. Fortunately, her acting skills and stunning good looks had snagged her my father—the Duke of Glengarry and Rannoch, who was Queen Victoria’s grandson and thus cousin to the king, which made her “Your Grace” for a while, until she bolted. It was the title she regretted giving up most. She still liked to play the role of “Your Grace.”