‘I’ll be able to live in a modest way on the money Mama’s mother left me, and at least I will be living life on my own terms.’

‘With staff and a chaperone?’

‘With a small staff and a chaperone companion.’

Coming from a sister he had always regarded as being wonderfully level-headed, it was a project so pie-in-the sky as to be madness. Dolly was certain it would never come to pass, for although an elderly woman might get away with living in such a way, for a single young woman of any respectable class to do so was unheard of. And May wasn’t just any single respectable young woman. She was royalty, even if, like him, only second-class royalty.

Deciding it was best to let the matter drop, he changed the subject.

‘Ma’s secret hopes as to why your company is wanted at Balmoral might well be valid, May. Perhaps Aunt Queen is up to her matchmaking tricks again.’

‘Why would she be, when she still has granddaughters who aren’t yet matched up? Ducky is approaching marriageable age. Toria is still spectacularly single and, since Frank treated her so abominably, so is dear Maudie.’

‘Toria is still single because Aunt Alix is totally opposed to her marrying anyone. She’s chronically possessive about all her children – and that includes Eddy and Georgie. Georgie once showed me one of her letters to him, when he was serving aboard a ship in the Mediterranean, and it started off, “To my dear darling little Georgie boy.” Where Toria is concerned, Aunt Alix doesn’t want her ever to leave home. She wants her as her permanent companion, just as Aunt Queen keeps Beatrice as her permanent companion.’

‘But at least Aunt Bea is her permanent married companion.’

‘Only because Henry agreed to Aunt Queen’s demand that he and Beatrice make their married home with her. And to do that, the poor devil had to give up his career in the Prussian Hussars. Aunt Queen,’ he added darkly, ‘can be viciously selfish when she wants to be.’

Later, when they were having a meal in a private dining carriage lit by oil lamps – the Queen allowed no gas lighting in any of her carriages – and furnished with a deep-piled wine-red carpet and matching silk-covered dining chairs, Dolly said, ‘Doesn’t something strike you as odd about this invite to Balmoral?’

‘Everything about it strikes me as odd. Which aspect of oddness are you thinking of?’

‘The apparent urgency. It’s now the first week of November. The Queen’s routine is to be at Osborne from the beginning of July until the end of August, Balmoral from the beginning of September to the beginning of November, and then Windsor until well after Christmas.’

‘And?’ May was unable to see what he was getting at.