“You are getting blasé,” Maria teased her and then, when Gretna would have protested, she said, “It is true of all of us. We can all have too much of a good thing. I enjoy the parties we go to, but oh, how I long for a quiet evening at home, a night when we could sit and talk about ourselves and perhaps listen to a little music.”

She spoke wistfully and Gretna knew that she was not thinking of an evening when they might be together, two girls chattering and laughing over their parties, but of being alone with the Prince.

“Why do you not arrange such an evening?” she asked rather daringly. “Surely His Royal Highness would sometimes like to be quiet?”

Maria shook her head so that her golden curls danced in the light of the candelabra.

“No. The Prince is young and quite insatiable where amusement is concerned. He loves every minute, not so much of the parties but of the people he meets. I think the truth is, Gretna, that he enjoys the company of cultured men and the society of beautiful women.”

Maria smiled as she spoke and Gretna was well aware of something a little wistful behind her smile.

‘It must be hard,’ she thought, ‘to love someone as deeply as Maria loves the Prince and be alone with him so little.’

Upstairs in her room she found herself thinking, as she had thought so often before, of the situation that existed between Maria and the Prince and wondering what was the truth. Although no one had ever been ill-bred enough to question Gretna on the subject, she was well aware that they longed to do so.

She could almost see the words trembling on some fashionable lady’s lips and then being bitten back and Gretna wondered if anyone did ask her what was the truth, what she would say. For she had no idea herself whether they were married or not married.

It seemed impossible that Maria Fitzherbert should allow herself to become the butt of coarse jokes, to be depicted in lampoons and to lay herself open to the insults that she invariably suffered from time to time if she was not sustained and fortified by the secret knowledge that she was really the legal wife of the man she loved.

And the Prince treated her always with a delicate deference that in itself appeared to be a recognition of her unique position. His good manners were proverbial, it was not for nothing that people spoke of him as the ‘First Gentleman in Europe’.

And he never forgot to pay her the courtesy at the end of a party by saying, “Madam, may I have the honour of seeing you home in my carriage?”