In 1926, Nell Stead and her sister boarded a ship from Melbourne to Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka). Their father organized the trip after Nell and Erin had been nursing their ill mother in the final two years of her life and felt they needed a trip. On this trip Nell had a chance encounter with a handsome young naval officer by the hotel swimming pool in Colombo and this changed everything. This mystery man was more than a naval officer – he was Alexander George Francis Drogo Montagu, known as Mandy, the eldest son of the 9th Duke of Manchester, an heir to a nearly 500 year old dynasty.