Rosie had adored her mistress, Lady Veronica Baldwin, who was kind, patient and thoughtful with her staff; they in return worshipped the ground she walked on. A gentle smile lit up Rosie’s face as she recalled her mistress’s beautiful thick golden-blonde hair, which Rosie had brushed a hundred times every night before her ladyship settled into bed and Rosie switched off the gilded bedside lamps.

Rosie had loved preparing her ladyship for those special grand occasions – society balls, opening nights at the theatre or a splendid dinner in Dowry House. Rosie closed her eyes as she recalled Lady Veronica’s fabulous wardrobe: dozens of ballgowns, cocktail and little silk tea dresses, stylish tweed suits, and breathtaking tiaras that were kept locked in a safe in his lordship’s private study.

‘Be a sweetie, Rose,’ her ladyship would call out as she bathed in her private bathroom. ‘Fetch the pink taffeta and the white mink’ or ‘Bring the black sequin with the Dowry tiara.’

Excited, Rosie would scurry into the wardrobe, where she would run her small hands over the different luxurious fabrics, all the time inhaling the perfume of Dior or Givenchy that lingered in the air like a fading dream. Even the invitations her ladyship received, arranged on the white marble mantlepiece in her en suite bedroom facing the park, fascinated Rose, as she was called in those glamorous days. Though a poor reader, she managed to make out the wording on the thick white embossed paper.

‘An Invitation to the Palace …’

‘Drinks at the Savoy …’

‘A day out at the races …’

‘Lunch in the Lords …’

Oh, what a world of luxury, beauty, opulence and extravagance – and how she had loved every minute of it. Rosie never minded if she had to stay over for the night, even though it meant sleeping in a chair in the hallway waiting for her ladyship to return in the small hours around dawn. Those were the very best and the most personal moments, when Rosie would help to disrobe her slender mistress. Freeing her of her lacy undergarments and fine stockings, she would slip her mistress’s manicured feet into soft slippers, before easing a long silk nightgown over her head; then, after seating Lady Veronica in front of her wide antique walnut dressing table with bevelled mirrors, she would brush her hair and remove her make-up before settling her between silk sheets. As she closed the windows on her mistress, Rosie always felt she was locking up a rare treasure for the night.

‘Goodnight, ma’am,’ she would whisper softly.

‘Goodnight, Rose,’ a gentle voice would whisper back.

Below stairs, the staff often gossiped as to why their gracious, charming mistress had married an oaf like the Brigadier.

‘When she’s got the pick of London, why him?’

‘She could have anybody – the handsomest, richest and most brilliant men – why settle for dreadful, lecherous Monty Baldwin.’