Sophie was one of Kindred Spirit Willy’s sisters, and four years ago she had married Constantine, the heir to the Greek throne.

‘They were all in the best of health. I like Tino, he’s a solid, steady sort of chap, and Sophie is so easy to get on with. Not a bit like Willy.’

May was well aware that, apart from Alicky, she was the only person in the entire family who found it easy to get on with Willy, but she didn’t say so. There had never been an awkward silence between her and Georgie when they had been at Sandringham, but there was now, and just as it began lengthening into one of acute embarrassment, Looloo came to their rescue by hurrying up to them and suggesting that they sat down to afternoon tea in the drawing room.

Aware of the reason for Georgie being there, Looloo and Fife were almost as tense as their guests and the conversation was painfully stilted.

At last Looloo said, with something like desperation, ‘Georgie, don’t you think you ought to take May into the garden to look at the frogs in the pond?’

Scarlet in the face, Georgie rose to his feet and May had no option but to rise to hers.

This, she knew, was it. Once in the privacy of the garden, Georgie would propose to her and she would have to have her answer ready, and she knew what her answer was going to be. It was that she loved him as a cousin, but she didn’t want their relationship to change into anything more.

There was a wrought-iron garden seat by the pond and, as they sat down, he took hold of her hand. Words had never come easily to Georgie, and they didn’t come readily now.

‘I would like . . .’ he said, his face beetroot-red. ‘I would be very honoured if . . .’ He couldn’t get any further. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow with it, then said in a headlong rush, ‘Dash it all, May. Will you marry me?’

For May, time stood still and halted.

She had had her answer all ready to give him, but now the words stuck in her throat. He looked so desperately in need of someone in his life who would be, to Georgie, what she would have been to Eddy that her heart went out to him. She had always been susceptible to male beauty. Irish good looks, as well as his talent, were what had attracted her so strongly to Thaddeus. It had been Eddy’s good looks – which were not dissimilar to Thaddeus’s – that had so attracted her when she was a young girl, and which had attracted her ever since.