‘You’re seeing me now.’

‘You know what I mean. We’re never alone.’

‘I know,’ Elizabeth acknowledges. ‘I think a lot of people are going on Saturday so things should be quieter after that. Maybe we could go for a walk one day?’

‘Good.’ Philip smiles and takes her hand to pull her closer. ‘I’m in need of some reassurance,’ he tells her and she laughs softly but before he can kiss her, the door opens and to Philip’s frustration, the King’s equerry, Group Captain Townsend, puts his head in.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he says as Elizabeth quickly pulls her hands away.

‘Anyone in there?’ David Bowes-Lyon pushes past Townsend and smiles maliciously when he sees Elizabeth with pink cheeks and a scowling Philip. ‘Oh, I say, are you two lost? You don’t seem to have mastered the rules of the game, Philip, old boy.’

***

Two days later, Philip is lying in the heather beside Murdoch. They have been following a group of red deer for two hours. One animal seems to have an injured leg.

‘She’ll no last the winter,’ Murdoch says, studying the deer through his binoculars. ‘You’ll be doing her a favour.’

Wriggling back out of sight of the deer, he takes the gun, loads it, and hands it up to Philip, who lifts it to his shoulder and puts his eye to the scope. The deer springs into focus. He can see the redness of her coat, the twitching ears, the wary expression in her eyes as she stops and looks around. She is beginning to fall behind the others.

For a moment she seems to look directly at him and Philip almost hesitates, but then she turns her head and stands, almost as if she is inviting him to end it for her. Very carefully, he fixes the sights and pulls the trigger. The deer drops, the rest of the herd take off, and Philip lowers the gun with a strange sigh that is part exultation, part regret.

‘A good, clean shot, sir,’ says Murdoch approvingly. ‘Now all we have to do is carry her down to the road.’

That turns out to be the hardest part of the exercise, but Philip is triumphant when he finally gets back to Balmoral. His success is met with congratulations all round. Shooting a wild animal has, it seems, ensured his temporary acceptance. The King shakes his hand and tells him that Murdoch is impressed by how quickly Philip has taken to stalking.

Philip seizes his chance. ‘Could I have a word with you in your study, sir?’

The King looks wary but agrees to give Philip a few minutes after dinner. Philip has prepared what he will say: he talks eloquently about his regard for Elizabeth and asks permission to tell her how he feels so that if his feelings are reciprocated, which he believes they are, they could become engaged. All this round-about-the-houses is because Uncle Dickie has impressed on him that Elizabeth must do the proposing. Nothing can happen until the King agrees in any case. The Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which Uncle Dickie knows inside out, of course, requires the King’s consent for Elizabeth to be married before she is twenty-five.

But the King is not inclined to give his consent. Lilibet is only twenty, he says. She is too young to be married and there are serious matters still to straighten out on the diplomatic front.

‘My advice is to wait,’ he tells Philip.

Philip bows, because what else can he do? You don’t argue with the King. But when he leaves the King’s study, the set of his jaw is uncompromising.

Wait? To hell with that, he decides.

Chapter 27

‘Not shooting today?’ The King registers Elizabeth’s tweed skirt and pale blue blouse with concern.

‘No, I thought Philip and I might go for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ Her father looks suspicious. ‘With Philip?’

‘Yes.’

Elizabeth has heard all about Philip’s visit to her father’s study. ‘Damned impertinence,’ the King had grumbled. ‘Things are far too precarious in Greece at the moment, as Philip must very well know. Besides, I’m not ready to lose you, darling Lilibet. It’s so comfortable with just the four of us, isn’t it? I don’t want that to change. There’s plenty of time for you to think about marriage. I told Philip the time’s not right and that he should wait.’

Her father hasn’t told her to wait.

Elizabeth has been patient. She has been dutiful. She has been careful not to rock the boat. But now she is ready to act. She is ready to change her life.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ is the only explanation she offers her father.

And it is. It can be like this in Scotland. Day after dreich day of relentless rain or blustery showers until you wake up one morning without warning to find the sky a brilliant blue and the mountains serene in the crystalline air.

‘Where are we going?’ Philip asks as they set off. Elizabeth has a cardigan slung around her shoulders; he is in flannels and an open necked shirt. Susan snuffles ahead, her fat bottom waggling with pleasure. The air is fresh and well rinsed after a week of rain. The warmth of the sunshine draws out the coconutty smell of the gorse and the peaty tang of the earth while linnets twitter busily in the birches and beady-eyed blackbirds hop along the ground in search of worms.

‘There’s a small loch, more of a lochan really, up there,’ she says, pointing. ‘It’s a little way, but worth the walk, I think.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ says Philip. ‘Especially if it’s in the other direction from your father. He wasn’t in the best of moods when I left him last night.’

‘No,’ Elizabeth agrees in a dry voice.

‘Did he tell you?’

She nods. Loyalty makes her find an excuse for her father. ‘He does get very tired and irritable. There’s no let up from the red boxes, even here at Balmoral. It’s a lonely job, and it’s not one he ever wanted. It’s … hard for him.’

‘And the last thing he needs is some pushy young fellow badgering him about the daughter he doesn’t want to lose?’

She smiles faintly. ‘Something like that.’ She isn’t quite ready to talk about what her father’s objections might mean to them. ‘How’s your blister?’

‘Much better since your tip about the fleece,’ says Philip, tacitly accepting the change of subject. ‘I got my own shoes back from the cobbler, too, so I’ll go as far as you want.’ He takes a deep breath of the sweet air and looks around him. ‘All those days plodding after Murdoch through the rain,’ he remembers. ‘You wouldn’t think this was the same place at all.’

‘I don’t mind the rain,’ Elizabeth says. ‘It just means we appreciate days like this all the more when we get them.’

‘That’s true.’ He takes her hand. ‘But not as much as I appreciate being alone with you at last.’

Philip’s fingers are warm around hers, setting Elizabeth’s senses trembling with awareness. It is as if she has never seen the river before, not properly. As if she has never noticed how it tumbles a glossy brown around the boulders, how it glitters as it swirls into the patches of sunlight between the trees in a dazzling display of light and shade, bright and dark. A fish leaps, showering an arc of diamond drops in the air, while a dipper bobs up and down in search of flies and the burble and rush of the water over the stones provides a tranquil soundtrack as they walk in companionable silence.