She had loved Prince Albert to distraction and when he died had mourned him so excessively that she had virtually retired from public life to live alone at Windsor Castle.
Personally Lady Lydford had thought it the most ridiculous thing she could imagine any woman doing.
But she was well aware that the Queen had evoked when she was a young girl the protective instinct in everybody who served her, starting with the handsome and attractive Lord Melbourne, who almost worshipped her.
Then in her widowhood she had made all her Courtiers and Statesmen think that no man could be paid a greater compliment than that his wife should miss him so desperately that no worldly interests could replace him in her life.
‘What the Marquis wants,’ Lady Lydford told herself, ‘is a young Queen Victoria, bab
