It was a step not undertaken lightly, for her white skin had always been one of her greatest assets. But while she had kept entirely aloof from the opera company, and would have been hard put to recognize a single one of its members, she had observed the excitement with which the Archduke and Monteforelli discussed the sunbathing soprano. If her eyes had not been so blue, she would have hesitated, but a bronze tan against the azure of her eyes…

So, now, Pooley was sent to find a secluded embrasure on the battlements. Mattresses were conveyed thither, an alarm clock, towels and bottles of ointment. And carefully, increasing the dosage each day, scrupulously turning herself so that nothing got overdone or underdone, Nerine gave herself to the sun.

The results, she could not help feeling, were spectacular. Wandering through the great rooms of the south facade, she saw reflected in the glass-fronted display cabinets, the suits of armour and the silver trays, a golden glowing nymph.

This happy and innocent existence was blighted in a few agonizing moments when one bright morning in early September, she opened the letter from her brother, Arthur, which was propped on her breakfast tray.

Arthur had gone home, not only to escort his relatives back to Pfaffenstein, but also to collect the documents required for Nerine’s remarriage. It was while in pursuit of these, in Whitehall, that he had met an old friend, now in the diplomatic corps, who had told him that Guy Farne had been offered a knighthood — and had turned it down! ‘Apparently he just got that Tremayne fellow to say, no thank you, by return of post! It’s hard to believe, but the chap swore it was true. Mama has taken the news hard, as you can imagine…’

Never had Nerine dressed so quickly. A scant quarter of an hour later, she entered the library. ‘Guy, I must speak to you. I have just had an extraordinary letter from Arthur. He swore that you had been offered a knighthood and had turned it down!’

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said Guy, putting down the papers he had been studying. ‘A knighthood often goes with this kind of diplomatic stuff. It’s almost routine.’

‘But… you mean, it’s really true? You could have been Sir Guy… I could have been Lady Farne — and you refused!

‘That’s right,’ said Guy cheerfully.

Fury enveloped Nerine. ‘But you had no right! You had no right to do it without consulting me. I’m going to be your wife. You’ve deprived me of status, of a decent position. Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have been influenced, in this case, by your wishes. I bought Pfaffenstein for you, I have entertained and befriended a large number of titled people to whom, candidly, I wouldn’t give the time of day, because I felt — and I do feel — that it is your right to be accepted by society. But I myself will go out of the world as I came into it. The name the Matron chose for me all those years ago is the name I will bear until I die.’

‘But why, why?’

Guy shrugged. ‘Call it pride, if you like. We foundlings are a funny lot. Yes, I suppose it’s a kind of pride. I’ve always made my own name, lived without handles. Even Martha couldn’t have made me change my mind. Not that she would have tried.’

‘Even Martha! You mean that… that washerwoman would have had more influence on you than I?’

Guy’s face had tautened, but almost at once he relaxed again and said quietly, ‘No, Nerine. Just that Martha is unsophisticated — to her these things mean a great deal. Whereas you yourself must know how little all this means in the end.’

‘Well, I don’t know. You realize I could have had Lord Frith with a title that goes back to Domesday. You might have made it up to me.’ She felt the beginning of tears and, with a great effort, suppressed them. Tears had worked well at seventeen, but of late she found that they made her blotchy. ‘I suppose you’re a republican like that ridiculous princess of yours,’ she sneered.

Guy looked at her. ‘Nerine, if you are not satisfied we can break our engagement. If you’re unhappy, you have only to say so and I will release you instantly and without reproach. But I will not accept a knighthood. Not now. Not ever. Do you still want to marry me?’

Nerine glanced down at the enormous diamond winking on her finger, then at the towers of Pfaffenstein rearing outside the window, and the undeniably attractive man now holding her gaze.

‘Of course I want to marry you, Guy,’ she said, coming to kneel beside him. ‘Of course!’

Meanwhile, in the Klostern Theatre, rehearsals for Fricassée continued to be dogged by disaster. The constructivist railway platform collapsed, precipitating five engine-greasers on to the stage below and the shock, with its memories of her own catastrophe, brought on palpitations in the Rhinemaiden, who had to be conveyed to the Rudlphino Clinic in an ambulance. The outsize Tyrolean cows turned out to have died in vain because Klasky, dissatisfied with the percussive balance, scrapped the drum and replaced it with twelve smaller ones. Herr Berger, who sang the capitalist mill-owner, developed nodules on his larynx; Frau Pollack broke a toe.

Tessa’s cheque book, under the onslaught, gave of its best. She signed a cheque for the reinforced railway platform, for the Rhinemaiden’s hospital fees, for the replacement drums. She signed a cheque for a new safety curtain (the fire people having finally caught up with Jacob), for repairs to the revolve damaged by Rayner-Meierhof’s unsentimentalized signal box, for a practical moon…

And as she crept home in the small hours to count up her mutilated cheque stubs, Tessa now faced a new hazard. For she had left her attic in the Wipplingerstrasse and waiting up for her, concerned and interested, were the aunts.

The Duchess and the Margravine had rented (from a distant and indigenous relation) a flat on the fourth floor of an apartment block overlooking the Central Cemetery. It was small, dark and inconvenient and the old ladies spent their days in an agony of homesickness for Pfaffenstein which they endeavoured to conceal, not only from Tessa, but from each other. Neither of them had ever shopped unattended, or travelled on a tram, or dealt directly with tradesmen. Now, they stood in queues at the butcher, pulled Quin-Quin in and out of the terrifying lift that led up to their floor — and economized.

The economies were ferocious and secret, for their great-niece must have no inkling of what was afoot. The aunts had been unable to prevent Tessa from putting half her money in trust for them, but they were determined that every groschen they could save should be added to the sum that would revert to her after their deaths. So while Tessa was at the theatre they ate virtually nothing, sent away the maid the hausmeisterin had found for them, and sat by the light of a single lamp. Then, when Tessa’s step was heard outside, lamps were lit, soup and topfenkuchen were fetched from the larder and Tessa learned that they had spent another most interesting and happy day.

‘And you, Putzerl? How did you get on?’

‘Oh, fine. Very well. I painted this bed shaped like a mouth…’

‘Like a mouth?’ enquired Tante Tilda.

Tessa nodded. ‘To represent decadence. It’s for the mill-owner’s apartment.’ She had picked up a letter which might well have been in Guy’s handwriting, had she known what his handwriting was like, but was actually from a choreographer who wanted her to finance his ballet. ‘Aren’t you eating anything?’ she said, looking concernedly at her aunts. ‘This soup is so good!’

‘You know we never eat at night, dear,’ said Tante Augustine repressively, and continued to ply her niece with food until Tessa went to her room — there to lie awake and reflect that Madame von Meck must have had very strong nerves or just a great many paper mills.

For it wasn’t only Fricassée, but everything, that was going wrong. Schalk, Jacob’s arch-enemy at the State Opera, cancelled a production that was doing badly and put on Bohème instead. With Jeritza singing Mimi, Raisa did not stand a chance. Jacob rushed out The Barber, but the production was old and tired and failed to draw the crowds. There were alarming rumours, too, about the lease of the theatre…

‘It’s as though there’s a jinx on us since we left Pfaff-enstein,’ said Boris.

But even he was shaken when Jacob appeared, after a matinée of Fledermaus, and asked to be fitted with a blond toupee and a moustache so as to elude the creditors who waited for him outside.

‘Very Aryan,’ he said, with satisfaction, when Boris had finished.

Then one day in the middle of September, when Tessa walked into her bank as usual for another cheque book, she was told by a respectful (not to say obsequious) young cashier that the manager would be most grateful if Her Highness could spare him a few moments.

The homily now delivered by the portly Herr Simmelmann was unctuous in tone and seemingly interminable. Her Highness’s initial deposit was now fully withdrawn and while he was aware that Her Highness still had other resources and would not, in fact, default on her commitment to the bank, he had to point out that at the present rate she would find herself in serious difficulties in a relatively short period of time. There was the further matter of Her Highness not being technically of age according to Austrian law, which meant that if it was felt that she was in unsuitable company and being victimized, her business advisors — of whom he was happy to call himself one — might feel it necessary (entirely in her own interest of course) to take certain steps…

Tessa thanked him, transferred another block of securities and said nothing to Jacob. Thus her ancestress, Hildegarde of Breganzer, who had leapt naked into the flames rather than renounce her faith. Thus Tessa now…