“Believe what you like,” Darcy said. He looked up at me. “So I bid you good night, Georgie,” he said and blew me a kiss up the stairs. “See you soon. Take care and don’t let her boss you around. Remember you have royal blood. She doesn’t.”

He gave me a wink, patted Binky on the shoulder and let himself out.

“Well, really,” Fig said, breaking a long silence.

“It’s bally cold in here,” Binky said. “I don’t suppose there’s a fire ready for us in our bedroom, is there?”

“No, there isn’t.” I had rallied enough from my drunken stupor to be coherent, and more than a little angry. “You said you were planning to come in the next week or so, not the next day or so. And why is it that you are traveling without servants?”

“We’re just on a flying visit this time, because Binky has secured an appointment with a Harley Street specialist for his ankle,” Fig said, “and I also wish to consult with a London doctor, so we thought we could save the expense of bringing servants, since Binky told me what a whiz you had turned out to be around the house. Obviously he was exaggerating as usual.”

I stood up, still a little uncertainly. My bare feet were freezing on the stairs. “I don’t think that my father would expect me to act as a chambermaid in the family home,” I said. “I’m going back to bed.”

With that I turned and made my way back up the stairs. It would have been a grand exit had I not tripped over my dressing gown cord and gone sprawling across the first landing, revealing, I rather suspect, a hint of bare bottom to the world.

“Whoops,” I said. I righted myself and hauled myself up the second flight. Then I climbed into bed and curled into a tight little ball. I had no hot water bottles to place around me but I wasn’t going downstairs again for anything. And it did give me a certain sense of satisfaction knowing that Fig was about to climb into an equally icy bed.

I opened my eyes to cold gray light, then promptly closed them again. Darcy was right. I did have a hangover. My head was throbbing like billy-o. I wondered what time it was. Half past ten, according to the little alarm clock on my chest of drawers. Then the full details of the previous night came back to me. Oh, Lord, that meant that Binky and Fig were in the house and by now they would have discovered that I had nothing to eat in the kitchen. I scrambled into a jumper and skirt and made my way downstairs, almost as shakily as the night before.