“They are. She’s part of the Simpson woman’s party. She was originally called something perfectly ordinary like Webster but she did her tour of Europe and snagged herself an Austrian count. I don’t think the Simpson woman has forgiven her for one-upping her on the social scale.”

“She’s trying hard enough to remedy that now,” I muttered to Fig.

“She certainly is. The Prince of Wales has been over here to visit almost every evening. I told him I didn’t approve and he said I was a prude. When have I ever been a prude, Georgiana? I consider myself as broad-minded as anybody. After all, I did grow up on a farm.”

“Fritzi, honey, I left my wrap. Be an angel and fetch it for me or I shall freeze.” The countess turned to a large, pink young man who was trailing at the back of the party. “It’s positively frigid in here. It makes our Austrian castle feel like the Côte d’Azur.”

“Mama, you’re always forgetting things. I shall be worn to a rail if you keep me running around like this. Do you know how far it is to your room from here? And all those horrible stairs?”

I turned to Fig again.

“She’s also brought her reprobate son with her,” she muttered. “He piles his plate with all the good sandwiches at tea and he pinches the maids’ bottoms.”

“Hasn’t the keep-fit movement reached Austria yet?” one of the men in the party asked. “Babe can’t start the day without her gymnastics and dumbbells, can you, Babe, honey?”

“I sure can’t,” a petite, bony woman replied.

At that moment they emerged into the great hall and Wallis Simpson noticed me. “Why, it’s the actress’s daughter,” she said. “What a surprise. When did you get here?”

I was still feeling angry on behalf of Fig and Binky and wasn’t about to take any of her cutting remarks. “Actually it’s the duke’s daughter,” I said, “and the current duke’s sister, and the king’s cousin and great-granddaughter to Queen Victoria, and you are currently a guest in my ancestral home.”

“Ouch,” said a man who had been lingering at the back of the party. I recognized him as Mr. Simpson, the invisible and until now silent husband. “I reckon you’ve met your match there, Wallis.”

“Nonsense,” she said with a guttural chuckle. “It’s lack of sex. It makes people touchy. We should do the kind thing and get her hitched up with a gamekeeper while she’s up here. Think of Lady Chatterley.”

And they went into peals of laughter again.

“Who is Lady Chatterley?” Fig whispered to me.

“A character in a book, by D. H. Lawrence. It’s banned over here. He had it printed in Italy, and there are smuggled copies all over the place.”

“And what’s so terrible about it?”