“It has crossed my mind, but I don’t think I’d like to be a Frau. I know he’s nobility and a von and all that, but I’d still be Frau Von Strohheim and it simply isn’t moi. Besides, I believe I’m still officially married to that frightfully boring Texan chappy, Homer Clegg. He doesn’t believe in divorce. If I really felt strongly I could go to Reno or wherever it is that people go and pay for a quickie divorce there, but I simply can’t be bothered. No, my advice to you, my darling, is that you marry well and keep someone like Mr. O’Mara on the side. Choose someone with dark hair and then the baby will match whoever the father is.”

“Mummy, you say the most outlandish things. I can’t believe how I came to be your daughter.”

She stroked my cheek. “I abandoned you too young, I realize now. But I couldn’t take another minute of that dreary castle. I never realized your father would want to spend half the year there and go tramping about the heather in a kilt. Simply not me, my sweet, although I have to confess that I enjoyed being a duchess. One got such good service at Harrods.”

As she twittered on I sat there uneasily, aware of all the things I should be doing. My gaze drifted from the cracking fire to the portrait above the mantelpiece. Then I blinked and gave it another look. The man in the picture looked like Count Dragomir.

I got up and stood in front of the fire, staring up at it. The man in the portrait was younger than Dragomir but he had the same haughty face, the same high cheekbones and strangely cat-like eyes. But one hardly puts a portrait of a castle servant on the wall. Then I looked at the writing at the bottom. The painter had signed his picture and it looked as if the date was 1789.

“What are you looking at, darling?” my mother asked.

“This portrait on the wall. Doesn’t it remind you of Count Dragomir?”

“They all look similar in this part of the world, don’t they?” Mummy said in a bored voice. “It was those Huns. They were so good at raping and pillaging that everyone now looks like them.”

I was still staring at the portrait. It reminded me of someone else I knew, but I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Something about the eyes . . .

“Darling, as I told you at dinner the other night, your hair is a disaster,” Mummy said. “Who is your hairdresser in London these days? You should get a Marcel wave. Come up to my room and I’ll have Adele do it for you. She is a whiz with problem hair.”

“Later, Mummy,” I said. “I really have things I should be doing now.”