He meant he could always dismiss her, she thought, her laughter fading. If it was a choice of Penny-Rose or the team, it had to be the team.

Maybe she had been too cheeky. Was the aristocracy so sensitive? Heavens, why didn’t she learn to keep her mouth shut? Still, if damage had been done, it was she who’d have to undo it.

‘If I’m not back in a week, demand entry to the dungeons,’ she said, more lightly than she felt. She looked down at her grimy self and thought of what she was facing. ‘You really mean go right now?’

‘I mean go right now,’ Bert said heavily. ‘That’s what the aristocracy wants, so that’s what the aristocracy gets.’

They were waiting.

Penny-Rose walked up through the terraced gardens toward the main castle entrance and found the head gardener waiting. They walked into the courtyard where a butler was waiting in turn. He gave her a wintry smile, turned and led her into the house.

And what a house!

The castle had been built in the twelfth century and maintained by fastidious owners ever since. Castaliae was one of the few countries in the world where the royal family had never deviated from direct succession. It had led to a certain simplicity-the family were the de Castaliaes, the estate was Castaliae and so was the country.

It was confusing maybe, but it certainly must make ordering letterheads easier, Penny-Rose had decided when she’d first learned about the place. And now, looking around the ancestral home of the country’s rulers, she saw other advantages of continuous succession. The halls were filled with exquisite furniture, gathered over a thousand years, the walls were hung with fabulous tapestries and the whole place was filled with light and colour from a building designed far in advance of its time.