“I think I can manage a loaf or two.”

The waiter led them to a table by the window, through which they could catch a glimpse of the River Thames. He pulled out a chair for Dottie, who seemed disconcerted.

“I can't sit down,” she protested to Randolph. “He's holding it too far away.”

“Just sit,” he advised. “Trust him, he'll move it into place as your legs bend.”

She tried, and seemed relieved when she landed safely.

“Obviously you don't know the story of the Empress Eugenie,” Randolph said, amused.

“Who was she?”

“She lived in the middle of the nineteenth century, and married the French emperor Napoleon III. But she was a parvenu.”

“A what?”

“An upstart. She wasn't born royal. She had to learn. In her memoirs she told how she and her husband once shared a box at the opera with Queen Victoria, and when they sat down she looked behind her to see the chair. But Victoria didn't look back. She knew the chair would be in place, because for her it always had been. Eugenie said that was when she understood the difference between a true royal like Victoria, and a parvenu like herself.”

“I know how she feels,” Dottie said. “Life's always waiting to kick the chair away. Now me, I'd just fall straight on my ass.”

Randolph winced.

“You sound like Brenda,” Dottie continued. “She's got a thing about royalty. Just now she keeps on talking about Elluria and how they've lost their king 'cos he's illegitimate, or some such thing.”

“How did she know that?” Randolph asked quickly.

“This magazine she reads, Royal Secrets. All the dirt.”

And the magazine would certainly have contained a picture of himself, he realized. He could only be grateful for the plastic palm in the café that had prevented Brenda from seeing him well enough to blow his cover.

“Do you also read Royal Secrets?” he asked apprehensively.