“No, the duke. He spends the first three and a half decades of his life being told he is like a god on earth. And he believes it! And now it’s a very different story. An attractive woman walks into his office and pays him the great compliment of begging for a boon, so he grants it—like a king, like an emperor—never imagining he cannot do this thing she asks. But what’s this? His subject won’t obey him. His subject crosses his thick colonial boots and tells the little emperor he’s nothing more than the governor of a pimple on the arse of the British Empire.”

“You said that?”

“Something like that, anyway.” He ground out his own cigarette. “Listen to me. When I was living in London, before the war, I met him twice. Once at Ascot. The second time at a hunting party in Scotland. He arrives in his own airplane, you see, flies in late to join us on his own bloody airplane, the Gypsy Moth—what an ass—and proceeds to tell us over dinner what a fine chap this Hitler fellow is, has all the right ideas, Germany and England should be the best of friends, stand firm together against international Jewry—pah. Half of us were disgusted. The other half could not applaud him enough.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Yes, interesting. That is what you wanted, after all, Mrs. Randolph. Anyway, you see what I mean. If you wish to become intimate friends with the royal couple, to learn all their secrets so you may write about them in your magazine, you had better not mention my name.”

“Understood.”

He looked at his wristwatch. “Forgive me. I have a dinner engagement. I am already late.”

“We can’t have that.” I held out my hand. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Instead of grasping my palm, de Marigny pressed the fingers briefly to his lips. As he released me, he raised his eyebrows. “But perhaps you can join us? We are just a few dull sailors from the yacht club.”

“I wouldn’t dream of intruding.”

He smiled. “Yes, you would.”

“Maybe I would. But not this time. You’ve given me a little too much food for thought already.”

De Marigny reached into his pocket to retrieve a fold of bills. He plucked at them almost without looking and laid a five-pound note on the counter, next to his empty whiskey glass, which amounted—if I knew my shillings—to a four hundred percent tip for Jack.

“Of course, you can do with this information what you wish,” de Marigny said, rising from his stool, “but if I were you, I would not print these things I have told you, not yet, or you will never write another word in Nassau.”

“Then what would you recommend?”