She had also discovered that Eddy had been just as much of a gambler as Frank. Due to the misery that Frank’s gambling had caused – and was still causing – it was a vice she had no sympathy for.

Eddy’s ability to be faithless and to lose heavily at the races, and to keep dubious company when playing baccarat for high stakes, were not aspects of his character that she would have been able to live with easily. In comparison, her disappointment that George was incapable of expressing his feelings for her verbally was one that she should have long ago come to terms with, especially as, in letters, he did assure her that he loved her.

In a letter he had sent to her some months after their honeymoon, he had written that although he hadn’t been in love with her when they married, he had come to love her, and he had ended the letter by writing, ‘And I am now utterly devoted to you, Sweet May.’

In a letter he had sent her from St Petersburg when he had attended Tsar Uncle Sasha’s funeral and then the wedding of Nicky and Alicky, he had written, ‘I really believe I will become ill if I have to be away from you for much longer. Goodnight, Sweet May. God Bless.’

Unlike Eddy, George would not have been writing letters to another woman at the same time he had been writing his letters to her.

George wasn’t romantic, but he was very, very dependable and 100 per cent honourable. When he had written that he had come to love her, and was utterly devoted to her – and although he couldn’t bring himself to tell her so – then she could rest assured it was the truth. Unlike so many other women in Granny Queen’s vast family, she was married to a man who would never dream of being unfaithful to her; a man who, although he had a blunt manner and a peppery temper, would never treat her in the cruel way that Aribert of Anhalt treated Marie-Louise.