She made it up the steps unaided.

“I’m sure you’d like to go to your room to freshen up before you join our other guests for tea,” Lady Hawse-Gorzley said.

“Freshen up? Is that some horrible transatlantic slang? If you mean for a rest, a wash, a change of clothes, then please say so. People always said what they meant in my day. There was no ‘freshening up’ and ‘needing to relax’ when I was a girl.” She glanced up the long sweep of stairs. “Given the condition of my right knee, I think I will forgo the ‘freshening up,’ if you would please show my companion where we are to sleep and have someone escort me to a salon or wherever one sits in the afternoon.”

“There’s a lovely big fire in the drawing room,” Lady Hawse-Gorzley said. “Maybe Lady Georgiana will find you a comfortable chair.”

The lorgnette was turned onto me. “Georgiana? Not Bertie Rannoch’s daughter! Yes, I see the family likeness.” She put a hand on my arm for me to lead her. “I knew your grandmother and of course your terrifying great-grandmama, Queen Victoria. I nearly toppled over when I was presented to her, I was so nervous. Your grandmother was a shy woman, I remember—well, she would be, wouldn’t she, not daring to say a word in her mother’s presence. But we became quite close after she married Rannoch and I married Albury. I remember your father as a boy. Sweet-natured child. Always loved company and was always so lonely. It was a shame they couldn’t provide him with brothers and sisters. He would have thrived in a big household.”

“Like me,” I said. “My brother was so much older than me that it was like being an only child.”

“At least your grandmother produced a son and heir before she died,” the countess said. “I wasn’t able to do that, I’m ashamed to say. In consequence the estate has gone to a no-good nephew and I was unceremoniously expelled.” She paused, staring out at the snowy scene through the window. “Well, I was offered the gatehouse, but his lower-class wife made it quite clear that she wanted nothing to do with me. So I’m living in a small place in Kensington these days. Most of my friends either share my reduced circumstances or are dead. And I had a hankering for the old days—the grand old Christmases of my youth.”

I gave her an encouraging smile. “I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.”

She leaned closer. “What about the other guests? Anyone I’d know?”

“I don’t think so,” I said tactfully. “But I think you’ll find them pleasant enough.”

“That’s the problem,” she said. “There aren’t many people I know left alive. Outstayed my welcome on this earth, I fear.”

“You are very welcome here anyway,” I said.

She patted my hand. “A kind girl, I can see. Your father was kind, wasn’t he?”

“I hardly knew him,” I said. “He spent most of his time on the Continent.”