Sneak Preview of Heirs and Graces.

Heirs and Graces, The Seventh Royal Spyness mystery.
Sneak preview one.

            “Good afternoon, my lady,” the welcoming footman said, bowing. “Her Majesty is expecting you in the Chinese Chippendale room. Allow me to escort you there.”

            Oh crickey. The Chinese Chippendale room. Why couldn’t she have chosen somewhere else? Any other room in the palace would have done. But the Chinese Chippendale room was her favorite, small, intimate and decorated with far too many Chinese vases, priceless porcelain statues and her jade collection. There’s probably something you should know about me: in moments of stress I tend to get a little clumsy. I remember tripping over the footman’s outstretched foot when he bowed to usher me inside once, thus propelling me rather rapidly into the room and nearly butting HM in the stomach. I would be all too capable of turning around and knocking a priceless Ming vase flying.

            Still I put on a brave face as I was escorted up the grand staircase to the piano nobile, where the royal family actually lived and entertained. Along those never-ending richly-carpeted hallways with marble statues frowning down at me from their niches. Then a light tap on a door, the footman stepping inside and saying, “Lady Georgiana, Your Majesty.”

            I stepped past him, carefully avoiding his foot, pushing the door into an unseen table or tripping over a rug.  I stopped in surprise and thought I was seeing double. Two middle aged ladies with identical waved gray hair, upright carriage and lilac tea dresses were sitting on the brocade sofa beside the fireplace. My first thought was that I should have worn a tea dress and the cashmere cardigan was inappropriate, but then one of the ladies held out her hand to me.

            “Georgiana, my dear. How lovely to see you. Come and meet my dear friend.”

Guess where I went yesterday?
No, not the Olympics but to Buckingham Palace. I'm afraid I wasn't invited to tea with the queen (although I did really have tea with her when I was young). The queen wasn't even in residence and I went as an ordinary tourist. But I'd never been round all the state rooms before and since my heroine Lady Georgie is always popping in to the palace to see her relatives I wanted to soak up as much atmosphere as possible.

And the interesting this was this overwhelming sense of deja vue. We entered through the Ambassador's Entrance and my first thought was oh yes, I remember Georgie came in this way once. We stood looking onto the huge central quadrangle and I found myself looking up at the rooms to my left--the private apartments of the royal family. Ah yes--Georgie was up there once and nearly knocked over the queen when she tripped over a footman's foot. (Now I know why they are called footmen!)

As we progressed through the rooms I kept seeing large and valuable objects that might be knocked over by someone rather clumsy like Georgie (or me?) And I was astounded that we were walking on lovely, lovely carpets throughout the palace. No strip down for us peasants. I asked one of the young girl wardens how often the carpets need to be cleaned. "Well they are good quality carpets, you know," she said.

At the end of the tour we find ourselves at the palace cafe and the palace shop. The shop is full of lovely things at a very lovely price. I'm sure it costs a lot to keep a house with 247 bedrooms going, so I bite the bullet and buy a little gold crown to go around my neck (for when I do talks and signings of course). And a complete guide to the palace to remind me.

But I draw the line at towels with Buckingham Palace on them--I would be rather pretentious to dry one's back on the queen's monogram, don't you think?

We exit through the gardens, around a pretty lake and through quite dense shrubbery (a potential place for evil deeds in a future book??)

All in all very useful (and reaffirming that I really did get it right in all the books) and at least now I'll know where I'm going when I arrive to be made a dame!  (My husband commented that I'll come from a-broad to become a dame)

Downton Here I come!

I'm rushing around in crazy mode this week because next week we're off to England. Our primary purpose is to go to the Olympics. A friend in London has a house within walking distance of the stadium so it was too good to miss. The slight glitch was that we couldn't get any tickets to any event in the stadium. We put in for 5 days of track, 5 days of swimming and got ZILCH.

It's all done on a lottery system and tickets are..well, rather expensive. We decided the maximum we wanted to spend per event and decided we really couldn't bring ourselves to spend $500 to watch Michael Phelps swim up and down a couple of times. So we've ended up with a strange mixture of events--the only one at the Olympic venue is women's water polo (and of course we have a strong tie to that sport as our daughter Jane is an All American who used to play on the US team)

Then we have women's soccer semi final (should be good), a day of badminton (not my idea--John's. Could be boring) And two days of tennis. At Wimbledon. Yeah! Go Andy Murray. Maybe he'll redeem himself and beat Federer for the gold?

And when I'm not Olympic watching I've got some other fun things lined up: a tour of Buckingham Palace. I've been to the Queen's Gallery before but never through the actual state rooms.(although I did have tea with the queen, it wasn't at the palace).
Then a tour of the Harry Potter experience at Warner Brothers studios. The actual sets and costumes etc. Big Harry fan.
And last,but not least... a tour of the real Downton Abbey.

Is this going to be fun or what? And to crown it all, we're coming home on the Queen Mary 2. This in anticipation of sending my heroine Lady Georgie across the Atlantic in next year's book!

I am so glad I worked hard at my physical therapy so that I can walk well again, otherwise a lot of this would have been impossible. So expect reports from me during the coming weeks. I'll be Our Gal in London to give you the latest scoop!