The last question she posed herself, as the train steamed further and further north, was whether she would accept Max’s proposal if Dolly’s reading of the situation was correct? Her head told her that out of respect for her parents’ happiness, she should accept, but her heart didn’t sing at the thought and when she finally fell into a troubled sleep, her dreams were not of Max of Baden, but of Eddy: heartbroken over Hélène, and miles away across the Irish Sea, drilling his soldiers on a Dublin parade ground.

The next morning they were met at Ballater station by a kilt-clad Henry of Battenberg and his equerry. ‘So very good to see the two of you again,’ Henry said with friendly cheerfulness as he escorted them out of the station to where carriages were waiting. ‘Shame about the weather. There’s a sniff in the air that indicates snow could be coming. We’ve never been snowed in yet at Balmoral. We’re usually well tucked up at Windsor before the first mid-November blizzards. However, there’s always a first time for everything and, if there is, views of the castle and the countryside around it will be satisfyingly pretty.’

It was too late in the year for wild flowers to be seen, but the rolling hills covered in a haze of heather and thick copses of fir and pine, and mountains in the not-too-far distance, gave a wild, romantic feel to the landscape and May could well understand the Queen’s great love for her Highland home.

‘Are there any other guests at the castle this week, Henry?’ Dolly asked, not wasting any time in resolving the question uppermost in both his mind and May’s.

‘No, and within a day or two of you and May returning home, the Royal Household will also be leaving. Balmoral is a feast for the eyes in September and October, when all the mauve Michaelmas daises in the castle gardens are out, but when October comes to an end it begins losing its charm. Any minute now you’ll catch a glimpse of the castle’s turrets. We’re nearly there.’

May’s appreciation of beauty was deeply satisfied as, not long afterwards, their carriage rounded a bend in the track and, beyond the glittering gleam of the River Dee, the castle lay in front of them, its white stone glistening in the pale November sunshine, its fairy-tale turrets, towers and battlements rising against a background of steep pine-covered hills, a mountain peak soaring wild and romantic in the near distance.

‘It’s spectacular,’ she said to Henry. ‘And much bigger than I’d expected. ‘I’d imagined it as being smaller; almost on the scale of White Lodge.’