PS: If you have any news of Frank, will you please write me with it? I haven’t seen him in ages and he doesn’t write. At least, not to me.

PPS: Rumour is that my Aunt Beatrice wants to marry Henry of Battenberg and that Granny Queen is not as happy as might have been expected. Mama says this is because Aunt Bea is Granny Queen’s last unmarried daughter and she relies on her for companionship and doesn’t want to lose her. I feel sorry for Aunt Bea. To have been a spinster for so long and then to have one of the to-die-for-handsome Battenberg brothers asking for her hand in marriage – and for Granny Queen to object – must be very hard. Love again, Maudie x

May put the letter down on her lap. Was Maudie right in thinking that, with Ella married to Sergei, Irène might now be next in line as a future prospective bride for Eddy? The Queen had always taken a particular interest in all four of her motherless Hesse-Darmstadt grandchildren, and the best future possible for Irène would be as Eddy’s bride – or would be, unless Irène made a surprising, unexpected marriage elsewhere first.

She looked into the distance where the Arno, flanked by wide green meadows, shimmered in the sun. Would Irène ever come to understand Eddy as she did? Would she come to realize that the only reason he appeared indifferent to everything was because he was never given the opportunity to do anything that interested him? Certainly his years as a naval cadet had held no interest for him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful it must have been, enduring three years at sea when he had no love of it and when, unlike Georgie, who was to follow the traditional path of a royal second brother by becoming a naval officer, for Eddy it had all been for no good purpose.

She knew, without being told, that no one had ever asked Eddy if he wanted to study at Cambridge; that no one had ever asked either him or Georgie what it was they wanted to do – what it was they liked doing best. Because Georgie had a natural aptitude for seamanship, the years at sea would have been no particular hardship for him, and he would probably be enjoying his officer training at Greenwich. But what about Eddy? Was Maudie right in thinking that he wasn’t enjoying Cambridge? May had no way of knowing. Although her mother received the occasional letter from Aunt Queen, and the even more occasional letter from Aunt Alix, no one – apart from Maudie and, of course, Alicky – ever troubled to write to her, and news of Eddy in the letters her mother received was not the kind of personal news she craved.