‘I’m tired,’ she said quickly, ‘and I’d rather arrive early tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.’

Later that night, when Billy had gone to bed, she sat by her window, looking in the direction that led to Rome, and called herself a coward.

Whyever had she agreed to do this? Some things were best left in the past. Yet the truth was that part of her was still the eighteen-year-old Lady Joanna who’d agreed to meet Prince Gustavo as a prospective husband, but in a mood of amused indulgence because Aunt Lilian, who’d planned everything, was such a dear.

‘I’m not really interested,’ she’d told her on the night before Gustavo arrived. ‘Fancy linking us up because he needs my money and you want me to be a princess.’

Aunt Lilian had winced. ‘That’s a very vulgar way of putting it. In our world the right people must meet the right people.’

By ‘our world’ she’d meant wealth and titles. Joanna had an earl among her relatives and a huge fortune, so she was included in the charmed circle, which, even in a modern, supposedly democratic age, remained mostly closed to outsiders.

Joanna had thought all this was hilarious. How young she had been, how full of modern ideas! How sure that she knew it all! How stupidly, cruelly, fatally ignorant!

Sometimes fairy tales came true. Sometimes the sun shone, the birds sang and moon rhymed with June.

That summer had been a time of magic, when the Good Fairy had cast her spell, and everything was perfect for a brief moment.

Even twelve years later, just closing her eyes and letting her mind roam free could bring back the warmth and the sense of once-in-a-lifetime sweetness.

There had been a week-long house party, given by her second cousin, the earl, Lord Rannley, at his stately home in England, Rannley Towers.

She’d first seen Gustavo walking across the lawn towards the house. He was some way off so she had had several minutes to notice everything about him.