The two great-aunts exchanged a look. “Oh yes, extremely haunted.” Louise gave me a mischievous grin. “You’ll bump into ghosts everywhere you go. Most of them royal, of course. Our ancestors, keeping an eye on us. I don’t think any of them is malicious, so nothing to worry about.”

“I saw a woman this afternoon,” I said. “She wore a long white dress and her hair was piled on her head in pretty little curls.”

“Ah, that would be Princess Sophia,” Princess Louise said, glancing across at her sister for confirmation. “We’ve both seen her, haven’t we, Bea? George the Third’s daughter. Never allowed to marry, poor girl. Kept secluded here all her life. They say she had an incestuous affair with her brother the Duke of Cumberland, and also had an affair with her father’s equerry. Either way, she produced an illegitimate child. The baby was whisked away and the whole thing was kept hushed up, but I think she walks the halls looking for that child, or maybe for the man who fathered it.”

I thought of poor Princess Sophia, spending her life in this seclusion, and then having her child taken from her. No wonder she wandered the halls.

“Most of the other ghosts prefer the royal state rooms,” Princess Beatrice said. “So we don’t encounter them often. But the clock tower is supposed to be haunted.”

“The clock tower?” I asked.

She nodded. “At the entrance to the courtyard behind us. Several times I’ve seen a strange light glowing there. But I’ve lived here long enough that ghosts no longer bother me. They do result in a large turnover in servants throughout the palace, I’m afraid. The lower classes are not used to meeting our ancestors on staircases.” She chuckled again. She really was delightful.

We had a good dinner of mulligatawny soup, roast pheasant and apple dumplings, a pleasant evening, and as I said good-bye I wondered why I had never thought of visiting the aunts before. I supposed because I had spent my formative years far away in a Scottish castle and we’d never been introduced. And it’s not quite as easy to drop in on a royal person as it would be if my aunts had been ordinary.

“Do you find it lonely or restricting living here on your own?” I asked.

“Oh no, dear,” Princess Louise said. “Beatrice and I have each other and the nieces close by and if I want to get out, I just walk through the park to Harrods or a concert at the Albert Hall. And if I want to go farther afield I jump on a number nine bus. Nobody knows who I am. It’s quite refreshing.”

I thought that people might just notice an old woman in Victorian garb, but I nodded and smiled. A maid was sent to find my things.