‘But how will you get it here?’ said Nerine. ‘You obviously won’t,’ she added firmly, ‘want to come yourself.’

David looked sharply at his employer. Surely he intended to ask the princess, and the aunts who had been so helpful, to his wedding? But Farne was silent and forbidding, in his most ‘Mr Rochester’ mood.

‘I’ll see that you get it,’ said Tessa quietly. ‘I’ll find someone to bring it to you. Someone suitable.’ She looked up suddenly, her face glowing with an idea which pleased her, and addressed Guy for the first time. ‘Your foster-mother!’ she said. ‘Martha Hodge! She’ll be coming for the wedding, won’t she? And travelling through Vienna? I’ll give it to her! She sounds exactly right as a bearer of lilies.’ She moved to the door and as David hurried to open it for her, she turned and said, ‘We are making a lovely opera for you. A truly lovely opera!’ And thanking David, was gone.

‘What is all this about an opera, dearest?’ enquired Nerine an hour later as she walked beside Guy along the path that climbed upward from the postern gate, through flower-studded meadows towards the woods. ‘What did she mean? What exactly is happening in the theatre?’ She had delayed Guy only long enough to place a navy tam o’shanter aslant on her curls and was in a most relaxed and gracious mood.

Guy turned to her eagerly, his eyes at their bluest. ‘I wanted it to be a surprise but that’s absurd, needless to say. You’ll have heard them rehearsing already. It’s The Magic Flute, of course — what else could it be?’

She waited, holding her smile as she had learned to do before the mirror. It was important to get this right.

‘I couldn’t resist hearing it once again with you. Only having you really beside me, not separated by a wretched wall.’

Of course. They had met at the opera, she had remembered that. So it must have been The Magic Flute. But the whole scene was not quite clear to her yet and since it obviously meant so much to Guy she prompted gently:

‘What was I—’

But Guy, fortunately, was already telling her. Describing his first sight of her with her dark ringlets dancing on her shoulders, the white dress with little blue flowers, the way she had smiled at him over her fan — and now she could remember it all. The box at the Imperial Opera, the French girl who had bet her that she couldn’t get the Hungarian count in the next box to come over in the interval… So she had smiled and he had come, but with Guy, and the relief of finding that Guy spoke English… And really, how well it had all worked out!

‘… and the way Selma Kurz made her voice sound so totally disembodied — I’ve never heard such unselfish singing!’

Nerine, nodding absently, was suddenly filled with excitement. She had had a most wonderful idea! This opera was obviously meant as a climax to the house party. Arthur had worked out the sums involved in hiring a whole opera company and they were quite simply staggering. So she would reward Guy by reproducing, exactly, the effect she had made on that first night! There was no problem with her hair — she could still carry off ringlets in the Greek style — and she happened to have a dress with tiny blue flowers; that kind of fashion never dated. Not forget-me-nots, it was true, but fleurs de lys — still, that would do. The gold ribbons were no problem, nor the sandals, and she could manage the tiny posy of blue and white fresh flowers she had tucked behind her ear. But the fan… was there time to send to Vienna for a white, pearl-encrusted fan? And what about jewellery? She had worn none then owing to the stuffiness of Frau von Edelnau, but would the effect be too understated without any? After all, every eye would be upon her.

But Guy had stopped talking about music and it was necessary once more to listen.

‘How much time shall you want to spend here, do you suppose?’ They had entered the forest and he was looking round critically, aware of how much essential work was concealed beneath the romantically lichen-silvered trees. ‘I’m tied to Austria for a while on this business for the League, but after that we could travel.’

‘Travel? Where?’

‘Oh, anywhere! The Amazon. The Gobi desert. Peru. The world is yours, my love.’

She laughed, aware that Guy was joking. ‘I’d like to go to Paris in the spring, of course, for the collections. And be in London for the Season. But I think we could do much of our entertaining here and of course it’s the perfect place to be married. I thought the end of October for the wedding — would that do?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘I shall write to my relations tomorrow.’ She paused. ‘What about your old nurse, Mrs Hodge? She won’t really want to travel abroad, will she?’

‘She’s not my nurse, Nerine. She’s my foster-mother, she brought me up. I shall certainly ask her to come. I think perhaps she will, even though she’s never been abroad before. She always swore she’d see me married.’

Nerine repressed a sigh. It was going to be awkward, but no doubt she would find a way round it.

They had reached a small, still pool beneath the larches and Nerine paused, now, to study her reflection in the still water. A wave of her scent, cool and fresh, a movement of her head, sent Guy back in memory to that day in the Vienna Woods and suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to kiss her. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him, only to be halted by an anguished and piteous cry.

‘Oh, no, no! Oh, Guy, look!’

He stared at her desperate face. Tears had actually sprung into those enchanting eyes, and her lips trembled.

‘What is it? For heaven’s sake, Nerine, what’s happened?’

‘There! Look! Can’t you see?’ She was staring, horrified, at something inside the lapel of her blouse.

Guy looked. Low down on Nerine’s throat, just where the swell of her breasts began, the white skin was disfigured by a pink and rapidly swelling blob.

Relief making his voice light, almost teasing, Guy said, ‘It’s only a mosquito bite, my dear, and nothing at all to worry about in this climate. In the tropics it would be different, but there’s been no malaria round here for ages.’

‘Nothing to worry about!’ Nerine was watching with utter hopelessness the mottled disfiguration still spreading in hideously irregular patches across her skin. Did no one understand the cost of beauty? The yellow satin she had planned to wear that evening was extremely décolletée. And her surprise — her lovely surprise for the opera would be completely ruined! It would be days before the bite was invisible: days and days and days… Piteously, she laid a hand on his arm and in a voice she just managed to keep from breaking, said, ‘Take me back, Guy. Just take me back.’

‘Well?’ said the Swan Princess. ‘Have you spoken? Have you settled it between you? Or do you mean to let her spend the rest of her life grubbing about backstage like a kitchenmaid?’

Maxi looked in a hurt manner at his mother. Assembled in the round room of the West Tower with the Duchess and the Margravine, an hour before dinner, she seemed to be part of a phalanx of ‘Older Womanhood’ and the kind of thing he found most difficult to bear.

‘I tried to get her to come for a walk this morning but she said she had to work,’ said Maxi, on whom the memory of this statement still had its effect. ‘And she’s been cooped up in the theatre ever since.’

He frowned and his frown was repeated on the faces of the ladies.

‘We would be so happy to feel that everything was understood between you,’ said the Duchess. ‘As you know, it was her parents’ dearest wish.’

She sighed. Herr Farne had reiterated his invitation to them to stay in the West Tower, making it clear that once the house party was over there would hardly be a shortage of space. But Mrs Hurlingham, though politeness itself, had not seconded her fiancée’s words. The eyes of the beautiful widow had been cool and appraising as they rested on Tilda and herself and it seemed likely that their days at Pfaffenstein were numbered. Somehow they would always contrive to make a home for Putzerl, but to see her married and suitably established before they died was the one desire now left to them.

‘I hope you are not going to be feeble, Maxi,’ said the Swan Princess. ‘If there is one thing a high-spirited girl cannot stand, it is feebleness.’

‘No, Mother. I mean, yes, Mother. I won’t be feeble,’ said Maxi. ‘I thought I’d ask her tonight during the firework display. Of course, I won’t have the dogs…’ He paused, pondering his strategy.

‘Ah, yes, that will be so romantic!’ said the Margravine approvingly. ‘By the lake… with the orchestra playing.’

‘You’d better see if you can get her away from the theatre now, dear,’ said the Duchess. ‘It’s time she came in and changed for dinner.’

‘And for heaven’s sake, Maxi, go and comb your hair. And your moustache. You look like a spaniel,’ said the Swan Princess.

‘Yes, Mother. I mean, no, Mother,’ said Maxi, and went.

But when he entered the theatre there was no sign of Tessa. There seemed, rather, to be pandemonium everywhere. On stage, a bald little man was rushing about shouting at people; coloured lights flashed on and off and the sound of oaths came from above.

Deeply shocked by the environment in which his beloved spent her days, the prince asked for Her Highness and was directed down some iron stairs by the laconic thumb of a carpenter. Tessa, when he ran her to ground, was in a kind of cubby-hole, kneeling with her mouth full of pins, while on a low table stood a figure in a pleated, golden dress.

Jacob had not dared to put a ballet in The Magic Flute. What was fair game for Puccini and Donizetti was out of the question for a man who ranked only a millimetre below God himself. This did not mean, however, that he had left behind the Heidis. They were to appear in beguiling animal skins as the wild beasts who cavorted to the sound of Tamino’s magic flute. But Jacob, studying the libretto, had also been reminded that the temple of the high priest, Sarastro, was dedicated to Wisdom, Industry and Art. It was therefore as statues representing these three virtues that the Heidis were to appear in Act One.