“When she flits through London sometimes,” I said.

“And who is her latest beau, may one ask?” She nodded to the maid who was offering slices of lemon for the china tea.

“A German industrialist, the last time I heard,” I said, “but that was a couple of months ago.”

I caught the briefest of twinkles in the royal eye. My austere relative might look starchy and forbidding, but deep down she did have a sense of humor.

“I shall take the matter in hand myself, Georgiana,” Her Majesty said. “It’s not good for young girls to be idle and unchaperoned. Too many temptations in the big city. I’d take you on as one of my own ladies-in-waiting, but I already have a full complement at the moment. Let me think. It’s possible that Princess Beatrice could use another lady-in-waiting, although she doesn’t go out as much as she used to. Yes, that might do splendidly. I shall speak to her about it.”

“Princess Beatrice, ma’am?” My voice quivered a little.

“You must have met her. The old queen’s only surviving daughter. The king’s aunt. Your great-aunt, Georgiana. She has a charming house in the country, and a place in London too, I believe, although she rarely comes to town anymore.”

Tea came to an end. I was dismissed. And doomed. If I couldn’t come up with some brilliant form of employment in the near future, I was about to be lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria’s only surviving daughter, who didn’t get out and about much anymore.

Chapter 4

Rannoch House
Friday, April 22, 1932

I came out of Buckingham Palace in deep gloom. Actually the gloom had been deepening ever since my season ended and I realized that I was facing life ahead with no funds and no prospects. Now it seemed that I was to be locked in the country estate of an elderly princess while my royal kin found a suitable husband for me. The only spark of excitement in my dreary future would be the challenge to spy on my cousin David and his latest “woman.”

I was in distinct need of cheering up, so I boarded the district line train to visit my favorite person. Gradually city sprawl gave way to Essex countryside. I disembarked at Upminster Bridge and soon I was walking along a row of modest semidetached homes on Glanville Drive, their pocket handkerchief-sized gardens decorated liberally with gnomes and birdbaths. I knocked at the door of Number 22, heard a muffled grunt, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” and then a Cockney face peered around the half-open door. The face was perky, beaky, and wrinkled like an old prune. It took a second to register who I was and then lit up in a huge grin.

“Well, blow me down with a feather,” he said, flinging the door wide open. “This is a turnup for the books. I didn’t expect to see you in a month of Sundays. How are you, my love? Come and give your old granddad a kiss.”