Palacio Real de Madrid
Castile

30th August

Querida Lulu,

I don't know whether you are still at Castle Avalon or not, so I am sending this letter to Everwick, and it will await you there. Am I not most astute to have thought so far ahead?

I wasn't a bit cross with you. If I sounded cross in my last letter, it was because Monsieur Dupont gave me dreary holiday tasks to complete, and I was up to my eyes in French Composition. To say nothing of Algebra and Geography. It was awful being stuck indoors with my nose firmly to the grindstone on a blazing hot day, and then reading about you skidding about on a lovely cool lake and dunking yourself in it like a seal.

Anyone would get cross in such circumstances! If doing holiday tasks is your idea of being "busy and active", then you have a lot to learn. Being almost eight months your senior, I know the carefree life you have been leading so far, with only a mild-mannered governess to teach you. But just you wait until you turn fourteen. They will be getting you a tutor in the new year, and next summer it will be you doing ghastly holiday tasks. And then you will know why I seemed cross.

I can't tell from your letter if Eden is pretty or if you are fond of her, except that you tell me that she looks like a tree and tastes like olives. Which is perfectly absurd of you, Lulu. I suppose next you will tell everyone about your niece Lottie, who bears a certain resemblance to the sea on a stormy day and has the exact flavour of fried anchovies. However, as a sign of my magnanimous nature, I will indeed put a jar of olives in the post for you. Two jars, in fact.

(It is only my tease, darling Lulu. I know you are cursed with an imagination, and that makes you see everything all slantwise, in peculiar shades of colour that nobody else can perceive).

I can't see how the Lucinda chapters are feeble – I read all of them with great enjoyment, and was utterly thrilled with her adventures. You are far too severe on yourself. I did think I could detect just the tiniest touch of something akin to romance in a couple of the chapters, but I will say no more, for fear of accusations that I am being too imaginative myself. 

I will be very sad if you don't write any more of your Lucinda book, but perhaps you will finish it one day when you are old and grey. I'm sure I will love the next book, and am already quite interested in Lily/Luke.

Now, some bad news, and it might be your turn to feel cross with me. We shan't be coming to Lindensea for Yuletide this year, because we are in the midst of wedding plans for Sophia. Plans! You may call them plots, or schemes, or intrigues, because you could hardly give credence to all the trouble we have been put to.

Prince Ludwig's family wished for them to be married in Bavaria, and there was a great deal of unpleasantness all round for Mama and Papa, and tears from poor Sophie. Imagine a wedding in the grip of a Bavarian winter! We should all have been dressed head to toe in fur, and looked like bears.

However, all is decided now, and it is fixed that the happy couple shall be married here in January, on Sophie's eighteenth birthday. Invitations are to be sent out on Friday, and we will see each other at the wedding, so there's a mercy. You will meet Prince Eric there, and you have my permission to tell me what I should think of him, for I hardly know myself. Except that he is certainly not disagreeable.

Prince Eric is already twenty and a cavalry officer at university in Grakula, and I still struggle with French Composition. I must take exception to your notion that people who love dogs are always of good character, for Papa once had a clerk in his counting house who adored dogs quite passionately, and he absconded with a good deal of Papa's money, and I fear the rogue got away completely by leaving the country. But there, it's not very likely that Prince Eric will do the same thing.

I do not really fancy the idea of getting married in winter, I would prefer a spring wedding in the palace gardens with oceans of flowers everywhere and the bridesmaids in cherry blossom pink. Not that I am thinking of such things as yet. 

I cannot think of anything else to write, except that Peter loved his birthday present, and he promises very hard he will write to you himself!

Mama, Papa, and everyone here send you their greatest love. Not Prince Eric of course, and yes, it is very impertinent of you to send love in that casual manner to someone you have not been introduced to. This breach of etiquette shall be justly punished by me not mentioning one more thing about him. So there, Miss Lulu!

Tons and tons and lashings of love from me, your dearest Lottie, with all the hugs and kisses you desire and more than you deserve.

PS Of course I am only teasing. I will tell you at least one more thing about Prince Eric within a twelvemonth or so. I expect.

PPS I am teasing again. I can't wait to see you at Sophie's wedding, and we will natter for hours of every subject under the sun and many under the moon and a few under the stars. xxxxxxxxx

Notes

I used as a model for the correspondence between Lucy and Charlotte a collection of letters between an upper-class teenaged girl and her cousin/friend at the turn of the 20th century. I have tried to keep the vocabulary and tone in line with how teenage girls actually wrote to each other - with all the caution of those who know their letters may easily be read by parents and guardians.