Most painful of all, to May, had been Maudie’s heartbroken despair. In Marlborough House’s secluded summerhouse she had said, between hiccupping sobs, ‘I thought Frank loved me, May. And he didn’t. Knowing that he didn’t – that he never had – was far worse than knowing he had been unfaithful to me.’ Tears had streamed down her face and dripped onto her dress. ‘I could have forgiven all that – did forgive all that – but I couldn’t accept a proposal he was only making under duress. I couldn’t marry him, knowing how unhappy I would make him. I couldn’t bear the thought of making Frank unhappy. I love him far too much to do that to him.’ And she had leaned her head on May’s shoulder and, with May’s arm sympathetically around her, had cried and cried until she was too exhausted to cry any more.

At the end of June the Queen made Eddy a duke, which puzzled May. ‘I don’t understand,’ she had said as she accompanied her mother to yet another Needlework Guild event. ‘Duke of what? And why? I’ve never heard of a prince being demoted to a duke before. Surely the only possible change of title is when the Prince becomes King?’

Princess Mary Adelaide fussed with the arrangement of her gossamer-light shawl. ‘It’s all to do with politics. The Prime Minister has made it quite clear to the Queen that if Eddy is to take a seat in the House of Lords – something he is, apparently, very keen to do – then it is necessary for him to be a peer of the realm. And a prince is not a peer. Only a duke – and of course earls, marquesses, viscounts and barons – are peers. I expect,’ she added, ‘that within the family we will still always refer to dear Eddy as “Prince Eddy”, and not as the “Duke of Clarence and Avondale”, which is the title the Queen has decided upon.’

Later, when she was on her own, May tried saying the title aloud. It seemed very cumbersome, and her private opinion was that either ‘Duke of Clarence’ or ‘Duke of Avondale’ would have been better than a double title, especially when the only historical Duke of Clarence she could remember was the duke who had so ignominiously drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine.

In July there came a bright spot: an invitation to cousin Marie-Louise’s eighteenth birthday party, which was to be held in the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace.