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needs quiet and peaceful surroundings for work of that kind, so I felt sure that I was doing what you would have wished in telling Greyeyes that he must come and stay with us while he wages this strangest of all battles for Britain.’
    She spread out her hands in a little foreign gesture. ‘Of course you were right. I should never have forgiven him if I’d learnt afterwards that he had gone elsewhere. I only meant that anything to do with the occult is so damnably dangerous.’
    â€˜After the way you stuck it with your mobile canteen in Coventry all through the night that the Nazis turned the place into a living Hell, I’d come to the conclusion that you’d ceased to fear anything,’ Richard said seriously.
    She squeezed his hand. ‘That was different, darling. What could any of us do but carry on? And at least we
knew
the worst that could happen—whereas on the other side there are some horrors that one can’t even visualise. I’m frightened for you and Rex and Simon more than for myself, because out of my body I’m much stronger than most men.’
    De Richleau took her free hand and kissed it. ‘I knew I could count on you, Princess, and, if need be, now we’re together we’ll be able to form a cohort of five warriors of the Light.’
    Rex had picked up the cocktail-shaker and was smelling its contents. ‘What a lousy break!’ he murmured. ‘Pineapple-juice and Bacardi rum, my favourite cocktail, yet I mustn’t drink any.’ He glanced at Marie Lou. ‘I’ll bet fifty bucks, too, that Greyeyes means to crack down hard on anything good you may have thought up for our dinner.’
    â€˜Oh dear!’ she exclaimed ruefully. ‘If I’d had the least warning of this I should have known that he’d want us all to become vegetarians for the time being. As it is, I’ve just been getting all sorts of lovely things out from my emergency war stores—foie gras, peaches in Benedictine, tinned cream …’
    â€˜Now, stop making my mouth water, you little hoarder!’ Rex waved her into silence with one of his huge hands.
    â€˜Hoarder—nothing!’ laughed Richard. ‘All our supplies were bought months before the war, when the seas were still open to replace them and the fact of buying extra stuff was good for trade. Why the Government didn’t run a campaign urging everybody to buy all the tinned things they could, while the going was good, I can’t imagine. Innumerable little private stocks scattered in thousands of homes all over the country would have proved an absolute blessing now that the nation’s on short rations.’
    â€˜One man I know did, in the spring of 1939,’ said the Duke. ‘He was at that time writing for the
Sunday Graphic
and his theory was that everybody who could possibly afford to lay in stocks, however small, should do so; because then, if we had to go to war and a time of shortage came, richer people would be partially provided for and that would leave much more in the shops for the poorer people. But the only encouragement he got from the Ministry of Home Security was a semi-official announcement that there was no
harm
in people laying in emergency stores. But I don’t doubt that the people who took his tip are grateful to him this winter.’
    â€˜Well, we just mustn’t think about all those nice things we were going to have for dinner,’ said the practical Marie Lou. ‘Instead, you’d better tell me what you’d like.’
    â€˜No meat, or soup with meat-juice in it,’ said the Duke; ‘a little fish, if you have it, and vegetables with fruit or nuts afterwards.’
    Rex groaned, but Simon said jerkily with a grin at Marie Lou: ‘Left a parcel with Malin—five Dover soles—knew what we were in for, so thought they might come in useful.’
    â€˜Simon, darling, you always were the most thoughtful