As I had predicted, Fig was frightfully put out when she saw Queenie struggling with the footman to carry my trunk up the stairs, especially as she was dressed in her ancient and moth-eaten fur coat and red felt hat that made her look like an oversized hedgehog with a flowerpot on its head.

“Don’t tell me you still have that awful creature as your maid, Georgiana,” Fig exclaimed in ringing tones, loudly enough for Queenie to hear. “Surely you could have found someone more suitable by now.”

“I can’t afford anyone more suitable, Fig,” I said as the trunk disappeared onto the first-floor landing. “I am as completely penniless as you claim to be.”

“If only you would do the right thing and marry well, Georgiana.” She turned away from the stairs and headed for the drawing room. “Heaven knows the queen has tried to put suitable young men into your path, but you have seen fit to turn them down for some reason.”

“If you’re talking about Prince Siegfried . . .” I began.

She spun back to me. “I can’t believe you turned down Prince Siegfried. He’s an oldest son, Georgiana. He’ll be a king someday.”

“If the family isn’t assassinated first,” I said with a grin.

“It is hardly a laughing matter.” Fig sank onto a sofa by the window, picking up a copy of Horse and Hound as if she already found me too boring to bother with. “You could have been a queen—far above the expectations of your lowly rank in royal circles.”

“Siegfried was awful, Fig.”

“I agree he was a little supercilious and arrogant,” she said. “Not the sort of person one warms to instantly. But don’t forget he has been raised and educated to rule. One expects that kind of behavior from European royals. After all, they still have peasants to rule over, don’t they?”

“He prefers other men, Fig,” I said.

“Lots of men prefer male company. They find women’s conversation to be tedious.”

“I’m not talking about conversation. I’m talking about the bedroom.”

She looked up, frowning. “I beg your pardon?”

“He’s a fairy. A pansy boy.”

Her eyes shot open at this. “Good heavens. Are you sure? I mean, one hears about such things, I suppose, but one never thinks . . .”

“He told me that if I married him and produced an heir, he’d never bother me again. He’d turn a blind eye to my lovers and I’d turn a blind eye to his. A charming future, don’t you think?”

Fig blinked rapidly. “Well, really. You were quite right to reject him in such circumstances. One does not expect that kind of deviant behavior in royal persons.”