As Lady Glenconner told it to me, in the spring season of 1952, while she was a guest of Frances’s older sister Mary in the Fermoys’ Wilton Crescent house, Lady Fermoy encouraged her to invite her “young man” round for drinks. When Johnnie Spencer arrived, Ruth was all over him with her expert charm and seemed very eager to know when he would call on his fiancée again. The next time Johnnie visited Anne at Wilton Crescent that year, Lady Fermoy announced that her teenage daughter, Frances, was unexpectedly home from boarding school and would be joining them.
