Turning away from the Dee, they start to climb, pushing through coarse bracken until they emerge onto a hillside scattered with great granite boulders, as if tossed there by some petulant giant. A loch lies half hidden in the curve of a hill. The brilliant light turns its still surface into an enchanted mirror, reflecting back the rugged golden sweep of the hills. A cluster of birch trees fringes the far shore, their leaves a silvery trembling in the slight breeze.
Philip stops as they round the shoulder of the hill. He is silent for a moment, looking at the view. ‘Nice,’ is all he says, but Elizabeth is satisfied that the loch has had the right effect on him.
‘This is my favourite place,’ she says as she leads the way over to where a flattish boulder lies abandoned close to the shore of the loch. Hoisting herself up, she leans back on her hands. The rock is smooth and so warm beneath her palms that it feels like a living thing. ‘I like to come here on my own, if I can. It’s one of the few places where I’m not a princess. I’m just me.’
Philip levers himself up beside her. ‘It must be lonely. There can’t be many people who can think of you as anything other than a princess and a future queen.’
‘There’s no one,’ she says, matter-of-factly. She doesn’t want him to feel sorry for her. It’s just the way it is.
‘What about your family?’
‘Margaret, perhaps,’ she allows. ‘But even then, everything in her life is defined by the fact that I was born first. I’m the one who will be queen, not her, and that’s always there between us. It’s hard for her.’
‘Harder for you,’ Philip comments. ‘The rest of us can mess up but you don’t have that luxury. Aren’t you ever tempted to behave badly, just once?’
She thinks about that. ‘No, but then, I’m not a natural rebel, so perhaps it’s just as well I’m the one who will have to behave.’
He stretches out on the rock beside her and turns to lie on his side, propped up on one elbow so he can look at her face. ‘You don’t ever resent having a life of behaving well mapped out for you?’
Elizabeth doesn’t look at him. She looks at the shining surface of the loch, feels the breeze caress her cheek and lift her hair. ‘Sometimes I think what life would have been like if Uncle David hadn’t abdicated,’ she admits at last. ‘But there’s not much point in wishing that things were different. I don’t want to waste my life feeling resentful. I can’t change things and … and it seems cowardly to want to avoid responsibility and duty,’ she goes on, struggling to put her thoughts into words. ‘I think of it as God’s will. It’s my destiny to be Queen one day and I will always, always have to do the right thing because that is what I am now and I can’t change it. It just is.’
‘I understand that,’ Philip says. ‘We have to accept the way things are. That’s what I felt when my family broke up and I was sent to school. I could have wept and wailed but it was clear to me even at nine that nothing I did was going to change the situation, so I just had to accept it.’
She turns to look at him then. He does understand. ‘I wasn’t right about what I said earlier.’
‘What was that?’
‘About no one seeing me for myself. There is someone,’ she says. ‘There’s you.’
There’s you. Her words seem to echo in the quiet air: you … you … you.
Elizabeth’s gaze is tangled up in Philip’s blue eyes and she can’t seem to look away. His body is long and astonishingly solid beside her. Close enough to touch if she chooses to. If she dares. But she can’t move. She is held in place as surely as if the boulder has slid invisible bonds around her wrists and ankles. All she can do is breathe while the silence stretches until the sound of Susan lapping noisily at the edge of the loch breaks the tension at last and they both laugh.
‘That’s why I wanted you to come here,’ she says easily enough after all.
Strange how sharp and clear everything suddenly seems, Elizabeth thinks as she lies right back and looks up at the sky. The intense blue is broken by the occasional puff of cloud drifting on the breeze that carries with it the smell of heather and peat and bracken. Somewhere a curlew is calling. The space and the stillness of the mountains seem to pulse, as if the earth’s heart is beating and as she stares into the blue she can almost swear she can feel the world turning. Instinctively, she spreads her hands out on the rock beside her to anchor herself.
Now is the time to say it. Will you marry me? It will sound too bald just on its own, Elizabeth realises. She should lead up to it but the carefully prepared speech that she rehearsed to herself over and over again has gone out of her head.
Perhaps she doesn’t need a lead up? It’s not as if her proposal will come out of the blue. Surely, if Philip has spoken to her father about it, he must want to marry her? She should just come out and say it.
But when she opens her mouth, the words crumble on her tongue. It’s not fair that she is the only woman in the world who has to propose marriage, Elizabeth thinks in an uncharacteristic flash of resentment. Is this what it is like for poor Papa whenever he has to speak publicly? Feeling the words strangle in your throat? It is awful.
Well, hasn’t she just been telling Philip that she accepts her role? Get on with, she tells herself.
‘Philip,’ she blurts out, before she can change her mind. If she can just start, maybe the words will come.
But he is speaking at the same time. ‘Elizabeth—’
They both stop awkwardly.
‘You first,’ Philip says.
Elizabeth sits up, biting her lip. But she has to do this now. ‘All right.’ She takes a breath. ‘I’ve been thinking about marriage,’ she says, agonisingly aware that her voice sounds thin and high. ‘I know we’ve skirted around the idea a couple of times and talked in generalities about what it might be like.’
This isn’t anything like the persuasive speech she prepared! Swallowing, she clears her throat and ploughs on because if she stops she will never finish. ‘There wasn’t any rush before, and there isn’t any now. It’s just … just … well, I’ve been feeling that I’m ready to move into the next stage of life and I … I’d like someone to share that life with me. Someone who understands what it means to be royal.’
‘Someone like me?’ Philip asks. His voice is grave but his eyes are smiling.
‘Yes.’ Elizabeth rushes on before he misunderstands. ‘I’m not asking you for anything you can’t give, Philip. I don’t have any expectations that … well, it wouldn’t be a marriage like others can have. Obviously.’
She sighs, tries again. ‘There’s no need for you to pretend to have feelings for me, or vice versa. We both understand what’s involved in a royal marriage and that’s not what it would be about. Neither of us is silly or sentimental. But I … I think we’d make a good team, so I was wondering if you’d mind … if I could ask you what you thought …’
‘About marriage?’ he finishes for her as she flounders to a halt.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you proposing to me, Elizabeth?’