I took the hand and curtsied but didn’t attempt to kiss her cheek, as my hair and face were rather wet and there was a tea tray on a low table that I didn’t want to risk knocking over. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said and took the seat she indicated in the armchair across from her. “How good to see you looking so well.”

“I am in remarkably good health, thankfully,” she said, “unlike the poor king, whose health is not the best. He has been failing since that bout of pneumonia, Georgiana. I worry about him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

“He missed you at Balmoral this year,” she said, giving me an accusatory frown. “We all did.”

I was clearly not going to live down my absence. “I was unfortunately in America with my mother in August.”

“America. How interesting. Such a busy sort of place, I found. Everyone rushing around.”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m very glad to find you are here now. Most fortuitous, as it happens. I’ve been searching my brain for the right person and of course you’d be perfect.”

My heart beat a little faster. When the queen invited me to the palace for a chat, it wasn’t ever a purely social occasion. She had little assignments for me, never easy, some barely legal, ranging from spying on her wayward son and his American lady friend to stealing back a missing antique.

“But first let’s have some tea, shall we?” she said and poured a cup for me. I took it, noticing that it was not a grand royal tea table today, but just a simple tea with a plate of shortbread and some slices of Dundee cake similar to the one Mrs. Huggins had baked. I stifled a grin at the thought that Mrs. Huggins’s cake might be better.

I accepted a piece of shortbread when offered and took a bite, but I was so tense about what the queen might be about to say that it felt like chalk in my mouth and I couldn’t swallow it. Then luckily for me the door opened and the Prince of Wales came in.

“Ah, there you are, Mother,” he said as he breezed into the room. “How was lunch in the factory canteen? Did you have cottage pie or rissoles as I predicted?”

“It was quite a passable roast beef, although the Yorkshire pudding left something to be desired,” she said. “I’m having tea with Georgiana.”

He looked across and noticed me in the other armchair. “What-ho, Georgie. Long time since we’ve seen you.”

“Hello, sir,” I said. I should point out that protocol demanded I address him as “sir” even though he was my cousin.

“She’s been in America,” the queen said.