11:56
With a mane of blonde hair, endless legs and an impeccable pedigree, Cressida Bonas would certainly appear to be – as her friends suggest – ‘posh, pretty and perfect’.
And the 23-year-old model’s charms have not been lost on Prince Harry.
The Mail can reveal that the third in line to the throne has been kissing and cuddling up to Miss Bonas, the daughter of Sixties cover girl Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon.
Cheers! Harry keeps it together as he leaves the bash, surrounded by security, while Cressida Bonas left the event at 4.15am
On Wednesday night the pair went to great lengths to convince photographers they were not together – a tactic which, when it comes to the royals, is often the biggest clue that something is going on.
As well as boasting the ideal credentials to become Harry’s new princess, Miss Bonas bears an uncanny resemblance to the 27-year-old prince’s past amours, long-term girlfriend Chelsy Davy and last year’s summer fling, Florence Brudenell-Bruce.
Debutante: Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon in 1965
Indeed, like Miss Davy, whose seven-year relationship with Harry was often tempestuous, Miss Bonas went to Stowe public school followed by Leeds University.
She is a familiar figure in London’s upper-class social scene and as a teenager was labelled by society bible Tatler as ‘really pretty, really nice and absolutely obsessed with Eva Cassidy’.
Currently a model for luxury brand Burberry and an aspiring actress, she is said to be a ‘sweet, bubbly’ character and was introduced to the prince by her close friend, Princess Eugenie.
On Wednesday she joined Harry and his cousin for a party following the London premiere of Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, at the Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden – where they were at pains to walk in and out separately.
Miss Bonas was, however, quietly but significantly chaperoned by Harry’s best friend, Tom ‘Skippy’ Inskip.
When the pair arrived – separately again – at their second venue for the evening, Salon at Embassy Mayfair, Miss Bonas made a huge show of entering the Central London brasserie and nightclub with her arms around a handsome dark-haired decoy, who in fact was Eugenie’s boyfriend, Jack Brooksbank.
Inside the club, according to onlookers, it was not long before she and Harry ‘hooked up’ and were seen kissing in a corner.
Dressed in a clinging white dress and vertiginous heels, and with a plait in her hair, Miss Bonas left at just after 4am, jumping alone into a cab. Harry departed with his bodyguards just ten minutes later.
The liaison comes after the prince complained in a US television interview earlier this year that girls were put off by his title and indicated he was keen to settle down.
Miss Bonas is the daughter of four-times married and divorced Lady Mary, who was the It girl of her day.
Lady Mary – herself the daughter of pre-Second World War racing driver Earl Howe, a godson of Edward VII – has five children with three of her husbands. Miss Bonas was the product of her third marriage, to Old Harrovian Jeffrey Bonas, which ended in divorce in 1994.
Another of her daughters, Isabella – by her second marriage, to property magnate John Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe – was once falsely romantically linked with Prince William. She is currently engaged to Sir Richard Branson’s son, Sam.
Pedigree: Miss Bonas, left, with mother, sister Isabella and Isabella's father
Lady Mary was one of the most glamorous debutantes of her era, appearing in daring Sixties coffee table book Birds of Britain posing half naked and covered in engine oil as a nod to her father’s racing past.
When asked last night about her daughter’s relationship with Harry, Lady Mary, who lives alone in a Chelsea townhouse, burst into giggles. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about it,’ she said, amid further laughter.
A spokesman for Prince Harry, who hopes to return to Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot, declined to comment.
