“It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full,” I pointed out as crumbs spattered over the seat of my compartment, “and I think you should take your meal in your space. I am going to get ready for dinner.”

I wasn’t sure whether one dressed for dinner on a train. We certainly hadn’t on trains I’d traveled on before, but then they hadn’t been this train. I was wearing a decent jersey dress, but I found my pearls and put on a little lipstick before I ventured to the dining car. In truth I felt a little shy about going alone to dinner. I know I’d been brought up to mix with the cream of society in theory, but in practice the cream of society rarely came to Castle Rannoch and I still felt schoolgirlish and awkward among the real social butterflies.

“Bon appétit, milady,” the attendant said as he held the door open for me. I passed through the connecting area and opened the door to the dining car. I looked down the rows of white-clothed tables, their silver and china gleaming in the glow of little lamps. From here I couldn’t see a table that wasn’t occupied and wondered what the protocol was about joining other diners and whether I could ever pluck up courage to do that.

Of course the first person I noticed was the handsome Frenchman, sitting alone with another bottle of champagne beside him. He looked up from his soup and caught my gaze. He didn’t smile or nod as would have been usual. Instead he frowned at me.

“You are English?” he asked in French.

I replied that I was.

“Curious,” he replied. He was about to say something else when a voice from farther down the car called to me, “I say. Aren’t you Georgiana Rannoch?”

It was a smartly dressed English lady, probably in her late forties. She was sitting with an exquisite and obviously French woman, dressed in what looked like a man’s black suit topped with a stunning necklace. I agreed that I was.

“Would you like to join us?” the first woman said. “It’s rather full at the moment but we have room, don’t we, Coco?”

The Frenchwoman nodded and smiled. “Bien sûr,” she said, waving a cigarette holder in my direction.

The Englishwoman stuck out a hand. “You look the spitting image of your father. I used to know him well. I’m known as Vera, by the way. Vera Bate Lombardi, and I believe we’re related, at least through marriage.”

I sat down on the chair she had pulled out for me. She waved imperiously and a waiter appeared. “My lady will be joining us, so set another place and you’d better bring us another bottle of Veuve Clicquot.”