Portrait of a Lady

Lady Helen Taylor (née Windsor), 25th in line to the throne, is standing in the corner of the hotel room fiddling with her shirt. She is tall and slim and blonde and very striking. She has a classic, regal look, a bit Princess Grace. She smiles nicely at everybody; the assistant for Armani, the fashion house Taylor represents in the UK, the hair and make-up girl, the photographer, the lady from Bulgari, the jeweller that employs Lady Helen to show off its high-class, expensive baubles, the maid who is tidying the bedroom.

She has a rather secretive smile, it's a bit of a I-know-I'm-Royal-but-that-doesn't-mean-to-say-I'm not-normal smile. She looks terribly stylish, like her mother, the Duchess of Kent, in her Armani jeans and ruffled shirt.

'My mother has an elegant, individual style,' she tells me, while looking out of the window towards Kensington Palace where her parents live. 'And my father is a very well-dressed man. People think of my mother as having that effortless sophisticated look. She certainly takes great care with her clothes and she is very careful with accessories. I learned all about neatness and tidiness from my mother. She taught me how to fold jumpers. But my father has that wonderful English style. No one really notices it. But I do. He is impeccably dressed.'

Fortunately for the Duke and Duchess, so is their daughter. She is 38. She always seemed to look eternally young but now she has finally aged a little. That's probably because she is a full-time mother to her two sons - Columbus, eight, and Cassius, five - and just over three months pregnant. 'I haven't really told anyone,' she says, patting the flattest stomach I've ever seen on a pregnant woman. 'I am utterly delighted but I'm worried with this one. I'm much more nervous than I was with my previous pregnancies because I am that much older.'

Lady Helen Taylor knows all about discretion. As a member of the extended Royal Family, one who has been brought up by two people who seem to be the epitome of of old-fashioned royalty, she has never really had the chance to rebel. She has certainly got this far without terribly embarrassing her parents or relations. She may have had a little wobble in her late teens and early twenties. She did once steal her cousin, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones's (now Lady Sarah Chatto) boyfriend, impressionist artdealer Gerard Faggionato - 'Oh, all forgotten now,' she says - and date what seemed to be a string of men. 'Well,' she says, 'I'd been at boarding school. I was at St Mary's, Wantage, a girls' school, for ages. It was a trifle stifling and there were no boys. Every time a brother came to the school to pick his sister up, we'd be hanging out of the window screaming, "A boy! A boy!î'

Then she went to Gordonstoun, the dour Scottish school attributed with making Prince Charles miserable and insecure. 'Oh, but I loved it,' says Lady Helen. 'I mean, it was co-ed. It was amazing. I had loads of boyfriends.' But when she left and came to London she went a 'touch crazy'. It was endless parties and dates. The press called her Melons, particularly when she sunbathed topless. 'Oh I hate that,' she says. 'It was the only thing that irritated me. I do remember photographs being published with me holding a drink and smoking and I thought, "Ooh, I'd better stop that.î' Did she? 'In public,' she giggles. 'I don't smoke, but I am very partial to my wine.'

Well, she's leant a lot of lessons. It is probably impossible to have been around the Royal Family for all those years and not to have picked up the importance of decorum.

'It wasn't drummed into me,' she says, 'but I very much respect the Royal Family as an institution. As a child I wasn't so aware of it. I had a normal childhood, no different from other people's, but as I grew up I realised that I had to be careful. I respect what the Royal Family does and has done. My mother sat on 370 committees. She and my father spent a lot of their time doing charitable work. They have travelled worldwide doing this and they have always seen it as part of their job to do that. Things have changed now. The younger Royals, and I include myself, are far more on the periphery. But we still have responsibilities.'

Tradition, honour, duty, responsibility, these are things she takes terribly seriously. She can be perfectly coltish when being photographed. She seems to enjoy it and feel absolutely carefree in front of the camera, but she is very careful with her words. It's almost as if a shutter comes down. Even her voice changes. She goes from doing perfectly daffy impressions of her younger child, five-year-old Cassius, to serious dowager aunt in the space of a minute. She has been terribly well-versed in the regal art of interested-but-distant style of conversation. Her parents have taught her well. 'I am a mixture of the two of them,' she says. 'I have a sensible head. I hope I have a sense of fun.'

But discretion is never enough these days. Even her mother, who she is so reminiscent of, has inspired a fair amount of press interest. There were stories, years ago, of the Duchess's depression over losing two babies - post older brother George, Helen and younger brother Nicholas - one by miscarriage, one stillborn. Since then the Duchess of Kent has become renowned for converting to Catholicism, for suffering from a similar virus to ME, for having a more separate life from her more conservative husband and, just the other day, for setting up in one-bedroom flat in Kensington as a music teacher called Kate.

'The press has changed,' says Taylor somewhat defensively. 'I don't think they were as intrusive before. Now everyone's fair game. My mother has worked tirelessly. I mean, 370 charities! It's so much. And things have changed within the family. I would hate to embarrass anyone. I mean if I even implied...' She sighs. 'But I'm older now. I think I can say what I like really. It's a modern world.'

It may be a modern world but, unlike many glamorous women of her generation, she is, she says, a wife and mother above all else. After she left school and came to London she ended up working for Karsten Schubert, the art dealer, in his gallery (which has since closed). She started out behind the front desk looking pretty and bringing a touch of glamour to the whole proceedings by being royal but ended up seemingly having an eye for young contemporary British artists. She was credited with spotting Rachel Whiteread and Gary Hume. She has paintings by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego on the walls of her Belgravia home. 'I did study art at school,' she says 'and I think I was quite good at it.' She would have liked to have studied art history at university but she says she was desperate to come to London and earn money. 'And I wasn't that brainy,' she says.

When she was 19 she met Tim Taylor, a young aspiring art dealer who circulated in the same world she did. Nothing happened between them for a few years but then they got together and married ten years ago. 'I gave up my job
immediately to concentrate on being a wife. I see it as being a job,' she says, very seriously.

'How many women concentrate on being a wife? We are all so busy. We all expect so much but someone has to keep the family strong and connected. When I married Tim, I felt my job was to be there for him. I was and am his support. When we had the children, my role extended to being a wife and a mother and everything that that entails. It is a full-time job. The two boys go to a private London day school, the youngest is good at art and music. Columbus is still finding what he is best at. He is so good at everything but he's not the best and boys of his age want to be the best. He'll come home and say, "I'm not great at footballî, and then Tim will come home from work and Columbus will want him to play football to help him improve, but Tim's tired and... it's the same in every household. My job is to help this family survive.'

It's quite a remarkable attitude for someone who is considered such a glamourpuss. She and her husband are always being photographed at endless bashes. I always thought she was the epitome of the modern woman - gym, job, yoga, kids, fashion. 'Do I seem modern?' she says, rather surprised. 'Maybe it's the clothes. They look very professional, don't they? I go to the gym, but that's about it.' Part of her time is taken up fundraising for the Sargent Cancer Care for Children charity and, she points out, she still works. She helps organise her husband's modern-art gallery, the Timothy Taylor Gallery in Mayfair. 'I entertain clients for him. I take them to Le Caprice or The Ivy.' The gallery is about to move to a bigger space and she is very excited. 'It's taken a long time,' she says. 'We're really delighted.' It nearly didn't happen.

Four years ago, her husband contracted Hodgkin's disease, cancer of the lymph nodes. 'Well,' she says 'it's a good one to get, if you're going to get anything because there is a good chance of survival, much higher than others.' Her husband found a lump on his neck. It was quickly diagnosed and he had treatment which meant he had to cut back on work. He had a course of chemotherapy which they thought had worked but hadn't. Then they dosed him up with a stunning cocktail of drugs and it looks as if Tim Taylor has been cured. 'Columbus vaguely remembers it,' says Lady Helen, recalling what a difficult time it was for the family. 'He remembers Tim having no hair. Cassius was only a baby. I never thought Tim would die. Doctors can never tell you that. I say that to my friends: "Everyone is different. You are not a statisticî. The doctor cannot promise you anything, you see but I never, ever thought Tim would die.'

The fallout for her, after staunchly doing everything to support her family and children, came a couple of years down the line. 'I'd really held it all together,' she says. 'Tim was so brilliant about it. I mean, men will really complain when they have something minor like a cold. But because this was seriously major, Tim was very cool and calm about his treatment. It wasn't a burden in that sense but emotionally, it was exhausting. Two years later I felt shattered, just absolutely shattered and exhausted and that's when I cried. I couldn't cry before. I was stoic. I didn't want people to feel sympathetic towards me. Some friends disappeared from our life because they didn't know what to say. I forgive them because I understand them. We turned to our families. My mother listened and supported. She is good with people who are needy.' Taylor is relieved it was her husband and not herself who was ill. 'I think it is hard for men to cope without their wives. I have seen it myself. The pressure it puts on the man is unbelievable. They are like fish out of water. It's not that they can't do it. It's that a woman is a rock to a man. When that woman crumbles through illness - mental or physical - you see them left stranded, desperate and hopeless. Emotionally it leaves them bereft...' It is impossible, at this point, not to think of her father coping with her mother's depression - something which, surely, must have affected her. 'I was away at school,' is her reply.

There are two good things that have come out of her husband's illness. First, he survived and they have both learned 'what it means to be alive'. Second, Lady Helen discovered a latent interest in nutrition. 'It's a huge subject' she says. 'I found out that many cancers, and other problems, can be controlled and helped by your diet.' Because of this she has now cut out meat, dairy and wheat - 'well, not now,' she says, looking at her tiny belly. 'I feel a lot better, but of course, my interest started because of Tim's illness, and now I follow this strict healthy dietary regime and he does nothing of the sort!'

She has also been won over by various complementary therapies, homeopathy and acupuncture. 'I am seriously interested in all this,' she says. 'It's taking over my life. I'm going to do a home-studies course in it.'

After a bit she says, 'I'd like to be anonymous, really. In America no one cares a hoot who I am. I find that refreshing. I find New York and the art scene vibrant. Sometimes I think I could be an entirely different person. Maybe I'll leave it at that,' she says, with one of her secretive little smiles.