Secret reunions with Andrew, a mystery friend paying her £10,000-per-month rent and rumours she is yet to meet her youngest grandchild: Inside Fergie’s return… as sources say she may have been emboldened by Meghan and Harry’s move back home

Never one to do anything by halves, Sarah Ferguson’s shock reappearance in the UK last week was a typically brazen affair.

In what was her first public outing in Britain for more than a year, the woman still referred to in royal circles as ‘the Red Setter’ galumphed back into the spotlight at a memorial service for one of her wealthy former lovers, flashing her legs along with a bracelet embellished with the names of her daughters.

The flame-haired 67-year-old may no longer be the Duchess of York but let no one forget that she is still the mother of princesses.

And her plans for the future, as the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal, appear to be no less regal than they were before she was stripped of her title just over a year ago. Back living high on the hog in Surrey, Fergie, sources tell me, has installed herself in a gated development just across the county border from Sunninghill in Berkshire where she lived in the early years of her marriage to Prince Andrew, the erstwhile Duke of York.

Her eye-watering £10,000-a-month rent, it is understood, is being paid for by a wealthy Middle Eastern benefactor who is also footing the bill for a small coterie of staff to tend to her needs.

Despite this extraordinary generosity, she is said to be already on the lookout for a larger and more permanent home, quite possibly in one of the Gulf states where she and her ex-husband continue to have strong business links and a string of die-hard supporters, particularly among the royal families and their entourages who still fawn over the pair.

Perhaps most jaw-dropping of all, as the Daily Mail discovered this week, is that Fergie’s future plans appear to be very much wrapped up with those of her debased former spouse.

The pair, who were unceremoniously turfed out of Royal Lodge in Windsor in February, appeared to have gone their separate ways with Andrew being carted off to Norfolk, first to Wood Farm and then to Marsh Farm Cottage on the King’s private Sandringham Estate, while homeless Fergie flitted between Switzerland, Austria and the south of France, throwing herself on the mercy of wealthy friends.

Until she re-emerged in public last week she had been living on and off at Les Gais Lutins, a luxurious £15million eight-bedroom chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier owned by the late millionaire Formula One businessman Paddy McNally, at whose memorial service in Knightsbridge last week the ex-royal chose to make her comeback.

Fergie dated McNally for three years before marrying Prince Andrew in 1986 and the pair remained lifelong friends until his death aged 88 in July.

But behind the scenes Andrew and Sarah have remained in close contact, bound together eternally by mutual misfortune and misdemeanours, not to mention their closely entwined and ever-mysterious finances.

Their ongoing relationship – said to be one of co-dependency rather than anything even vaguely romantic – has remained a well-kept secret but the Daily Mail’s sources say they have been seen together in Norfolk at the home of at least one of their so-called ‘Turnip Toff’ pals.

A royal source, speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail this week, explained: ‘They have survived as a couple, with the occasional hiatus, for 40 years because they share an inordinate love of money, a misguided belief in their own abilities and an inflated sense of entitlement. Andrew has never been besotted with her, although as friends, confidants and keepers of each other’s secrets they have forged an unbreakable, occasionally grim, bond.’

With relations with their daughters coming under strain as a result of the recent scandals, they have had good reason to stick together. Above all, as we shall see, the couple have remained financially ensconced in each other’s lives.

And while Andrew remains under the shadow of a police investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office, the source adds: ‘It is rumoured that if he is cleared they could both head off to the Middle East, separately or together.

‘Beatrice and Eugenie are regular visitors to the region and a reconciliation with the daughters might be more possible out there away from the media glare. It would certainly suit the Palace for Andrew and Sarah to be far away.’

The timing of Fergie’s dramatic comeback is yet another potential sign that pressure on the ex-Yorks is easing and that attitudes towards the couple may even be softening. Fergie, says the royal source, ‘has been angling for a public return to these shores for a while’ but was notably absent from McNally’s funeral in August. Her elder daughter, Princess Beatrice, attended the private service in her mother’s place.

She is said to have taken the decision to attend ‘father figure’ McNally’s memorial at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge on October 29 – almost a year to the day that she was reduced to the rank of commoner – after being encouraged by the apparent ease with which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex returned to the UK after years of conflict with the Royal Family.

‘It was Harry and Meghan’s seeming “reconciliation” with the family in the summer which, while not as warm and fuzzy as might be perceived, finally persuaded Sarah to return,’ says the royal source who spoke to us this week.

Flanked by both Beatrice and Eugenie and their husbands, as well as Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips, who knew McNally via his own Formula One connections, it was the first time Fergie had shown her face in public in the UK since her ill-fated appearance with the then Prince Andrew at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral in September 2025.

The couple were said to have treated the event as a ‘jolly family outing’, laughing as they exited Westminster Cathedral and joining the Royal Family on the steps.

It is also the first time she has been photographed at an event alongside her long-suffering daughters since the House of York came tumbling down.

Dressed in a navy blue knee-length dress with a matching lace jacket and navy heels, she sported a defiant smile.

Indeed last week’s appearance was a far cry from her behaviour at the christening of Beatrice’s daughter Athena last December when she – and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – quietly slipped into the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, ducked down in separate cars and skipped the celebration afterwards at a pub in Marylebone to avoid causing embarrassment.

Even so, the royal source told the Daily Mail this week, any suggestion that she and Andrew have repaired relations with their grown-up offspring, in the wake of their dealings with the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, would be premature.

It is thought Sarah has yet to meet up with her grandchildren and may not even have met Eugenie’s youngest child, Adelaide, who was born in August. ‘Both princesses are concerned about potential further hits to their reputations,’ said the royal source.

‘Beatrice and Eugenie aren’t yet fully reconciled with their mother – and definitely not with their father. Beatrice is more open to reconciliation. Eugenie less so.’ Royal biographer Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, agrees that relations are still fragile as the girls try to balance their loyalties to the Crown with their filial duties.

‘I think Eugenie is conflicted,’ he says. ‘Beatrice is so in the thrall of her mother that it’s harder for her. Neither of their husbands’ families are very keen on Sarah and Andrew because of the risk of reputational damage.

‘But throughout their lives the girls have been aware of the scandals and known that this is the sort of world their parents move in and the kind of people they associated with.

‘They’ve also benefited themselves from their parents’ business contacts, particularly in the Middle East.’

Since early childhood both princesses were engaging with their parents’ network of wealthy friends across the globe, accompanying their father on jaunts to the Gulf States and their mother on trips to meet ‘Uncle Jeffrey’ – as Epstein was known to them.

Their own links to the lucrative world of Formula One stretch back decades through their mother’s close friendship with McNally. The sisters, and now their husbands, have been frequent VIP guests at Grand Prix events.

There is speculation that McNally – who was 22 years older than Fergie – may have left her some of his £600million fortune. Given her legendary profligacy – she famously once spent £25,000 in a single hour at Bloomingdale’s in New York – and financial imprudence, she has been dependent on the generosity of such individuals for much of her life.

And while she has published more than 50 books, including memoirs, royal biographies and historical romances which continue to provide her with a small income, it is not nearly enough to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed.

Nor, despite tentative discussions, is she likely to write any kind of tell-all book about her catastrophic fall from grace – for fear of totally destroying her relationship with her daughters.

According to the royal source who spoke to the Daily Mail: ‘The main source of her money has been Andrew. She may have taken a scattergun approach to making money but he, or rather his trusted business contacts, were far more shrewd, leaving him quite comfortably off.

‘Sarah has been a beneficiary of Andrew’s acumen, investing herself and in joint enterprises with her husband.’

The true extent of the couple’s wealth – and that of their daughters – remains a mystery.

‘Andrew’s business dealings are mainly overseas and deliberately convoluted,’ says the source.

‘His business associates have stood by him and he has been able to pursue his ventures, albeit usually from a distance, without the demands of tiresome official duties getting in the way.’

According to Andrew Lownie: ‘They’ve still got mutual friends and contacts in the Middle East who are standing by them. They’re very well treated out there and still addressed as HRHs. Their business interests continue. Very little has changed except that now there is actually far less scrutiny of their financial affairs because they’re not representing the Royal Family, only themselves.’

There are other signs that life is looking a tad less bleak for the former duke and duchess, not least within the Royal Family.

If there is little chance of them ever being brought back into the inner circle then two of Andrew’s siblings, Princess Anne and Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, are said to have taken pity on their brother, at least.

One amusing, if unverified, story doing the rounds is that Andrew was recently smuggled into Anne’s Gatcombe Park Estate in the back of a horse box.

The King is also said to have asked well-heeled friends among north Norfolk’s upper-crust set to ‘keep an eye out’ for his otherwise socially isolated younger brother.

According to Lownie: ‘High society hasn’t turned its back on them. Andrew is still welcome at shooting parties and the homes of the Turnip Toffs.

‘The word has gone out that people should be kind to him. He’s not being boycotted but it’s all going on behind closed doors.’

What the future holds for the pair will depend largely on the outcome of the ongoing misconduct in public office investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor following allegations that he passed confidential information to his late friend Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy.

He was arrested in February this year but has yet to be charged with any offence. He challenged the legality of the warrants used by Thames Valley Police to search his former home, Royal Lodge in Windsor, as well as his temporary home, Wood Farm, at Sandringham. A High Court judge upheld his complaint that warrants issued at the Old Bailey were illegal because the wrong legislation was applied to them.

They were quashed in July in a behind-closed-doors hearing which was made public last month, although the investigation continues, with police seeking permission to retain the documents and electronic devices seized. A private hearing is due in 2027. The ongoing delay, according to the royal source, is ‘hindering planning’ for the former prince.

Nor is Fergie entirely out of the woods given unresolved questions about her own business dealings. Her charity, Sarah’s Trust, closed earlier this year and there are ongoing questions about the collapse of Gate Ventures, the entertainment investment company on whose board she served.

Above all, she and Andrew have refused to come clean about their dealings with Epstein, whose spectre continues to haunt them from across the Atlantic.

This week, Police Scotland confirmed an investigation regarding activities at Balmoral Castle involving Andrew, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, including alleged trafficking of women to the royal residence, is in its early stages.

The Democrats’ recapture of the House of Representatives in this week’s US midterm elections could also bring fresh scrutiny of the Epstein files, many of which have yet to be released, and spell fresh discomfort for Andrew and Sarah given the party’s pledge to revisit the case.

A year on from their vertiginous and devastating fall from grace, is it any surprise that the former spouses, once labelled the ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ of the Royal Family, are sticking close?