Ducky made a rude snorting sound. ‘If all Georgie’s wishes came true, she would be. Missy just enjoys teasing him and making him think she’s smitten by him. He’s so dull –– and for the last couple of years has stayed with us on Malta so often – that Missy says it was the only way of relieving the tedium of his company. Missy,’ she added, ‘can be very naughty when she wants to be.’

May didn’t doubt it and was quite relieved to see that Vicky had now joined Missy and Louis, and that Vicky had slid a hand proprietorially through her husband’s arm.

‘Mama wants Missy to catch the eye of a good marriage prospect, now that she’s fourteen, going on fifteen,’ Ducky continued, showing no desire to walk away and startle someone else with her racy conversation, ‘and so she’s wasting her time flirting with Louis of Battenberg when he already has a wife.

‘Your mother must have been hoping she would accept a proposal from Georgie.’

‘Lord, no! Mama says it was bad enough her having married into Granny Queen’s Saxe-Coburg-Gotha clan, without Missy or me doubling up her error, although she might have made an exception where Eddy was concerned – I think Mama would quite like for Missy to be an empress one day as well as a queen. As it is, it looks as if Eddy is taken and I know that, even if he wasn’t, Missy wouldn’t fancy him in a month of Sundays. She likes men with Russian chutzpah and masculine aggressiveness. Eddy Wales is too polite to excite Missy.’

In an adjoining room, where the carpets had been rolled back, dance music was now playing.

‘Goody!’ Ducky brightened visibly. ‘Now I have to find someone I can bully into dancing with me. Have you seen Ernie Hesse anywhere? Ernie is always good fun. If Missy had any sense, she’d marry Ernie.’ And she darted off in search of him, leaving May wondering if it was their half-Russian blood that made the Edinburgh sisters so unnervingly uninhibited.

She looked across to the French windows, but the little group that had been standing there was there no longer. Maudie, too, was no longer anywhere to be seen and, remembering her party manners, May went in search of Marie-Louise.

‘Darling, darling May!’ An elated Marie-Louise almost squeezed the breath out of her. ‘Thank you so much for the little book of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I shall treasure it always. Isn’t it a shame that darling Alicky was unable to come? She’s very much her papa’s hostess, now that she’s the only daughter left at home. Dear Vicky is here, though, and so that is some compensation, but not Irène.’ She lowered her voice and said confidingly, ‘I believe Irène is expecting another happy event.’