It was obvious that the Prince brought all his sufferings, whatever they might be, to Maria. Every day he came to the house at times that were arranged when Maria would be expecting him. Every night they dined together.

Gretna learnt that the Prince would accept no invitations to a private house unless Maria was also invited. Some of the great London hostesses were annoyed by this, but they could not afford to offend the Prince and so invitations for Maria flooded into the house in St. James’s Square.

Gretna wondered if sometimes these big formal parties were not more of a pain than a pleasure to Maria.

‘I would want to be alone with the man I love,’ she told herself, ‘instead of having to watch him surrounded by fawning Courtiers and beautiful women who flatter him and try their best to entice away his affection.’

But there were other occasions when the Prince would arrive unheralded and unexpected in St. James’s Square. He would burst into the room where Maria and Gretna were seated together.

“What do you think he has done now, Maria?” he would ask and there was no doubt at all of who he was speaking about.

And Gretna, after curtseying deeply, would withdraw, leaving them together and knowing that by the time the Prince had been with Maria for half an hour or so the anger would have gone from his blue eyes and his irresistible smile would be curving his lips again.

She always seemed to have the power to soothe him, to erase his anger and to make him realise that things were not as black as they seemed.

When the Prince dined with them alone, Gretna would retire as soon as dinner was over to give them a chance to talk together intimately. She was always careful that she did not intrude in any way on what was their so obvious happiness at being alone together.

Sometimes Maria would come up to her room to say ‘goodnight’ to her after the Prince had left. But more often than not they would not meet again until the following morning.

It was one thing to chatter without formality with the Prince in Maria’s house, but quite another to go to Carlton House Terrace and meet the Prince of Wales, Heir to the Throne of Great Britain, the most envied and admired young man in the whole of Europe.

Gretna was longing to see Carlton House, but she had already learnt that the Prince’s debts made it difficult for him to live there in the state he desired.

In fact, she thought, lack of money was one of the topics of conversation that seemed always to crop up when the Prince was present and she wondered how Maria could afford all the expenses of this large house, which she had rented from Lord Uxbridge.