In spite of a head that felt as if it were splitting down the middle and eyes that didn’t want to focus, I managed to bathe and make myself look respectable in fifteen minutes flat. Then I was sitting in the backseat of the royal Daimler being whisked toward the palace. It wasn’t really a great distance from Belgrave Square down Constitution Hill and I had walked it on previous occasions. However, today I was most grateful for the car because the fog had turned again to a nasty November rain. One does not meet the queen looking like a drowned rat.

As I looked out through rain-streaked windows at the bleak world beyond I had time to wonder about the implications of this summons and I began to worry. The queen of England was a busy woman. She was always out opening hospitals, touring schools and entertaining visiting ambassadors. So if she made time to bring a young cousin to lunch, it had to be something important.

I don’t know why I always expect a visit to Buckingham Palace to signal doom. Because it so often did, I suppose. I remembered the visiting princess foisted on me by my royal kin. I remembered the instruction to spy on the Prince of Wales’s unsuitable woman, Mrs. Simpson. My heart was beating rather fast by the time the car drove between the wrought-iron gates of the palace, received a salute from the guards on duty and crossed the parade ground, under the arch to the inner courtyard.

A footman leaped out to open the car door for me.

“Good morning, my lady. This way, please,” he said and led the way up the steps at a good pace. I followed, being extra careful as my legs have been known to disobey me in moments of extreme stress.

You’d have thought that someone who was second cousin to King George V would find a visit to Buckingham Palace to be old hat, but I have to admit that I was always overawed as I walked up those grand staircases and along the hallways lined with statues and mirrors. In truth I felt like a child who has stumbled into a fairy tale by mistake. I had been brought up in a castle myself, but Castle Rannoch could not have been more different. It was dour stone, spare and cold, its walls hung with shields and banners from past battles. This was royalty at its grandest, designed to impress foreigners and those of lesser rank.