"William and Kate are house-hunting. I know everyone expects that William will eventually go and live in the five million pound house being built on the Duchy of Cornwall's Harewood Park Estate but that's not necessarily a given.

"Kate has it in mind that she wants to be in another county. There are only a few she considers pukka, so at the moment she and William are looking in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire.

"They aren't looking for anything big by royal standards, but they'd like a lot of land and don't want to be too isolated because they like the idea of village life," the Daily Mail quoted a friend of the Prince as saying.

Middleton, who will be 26 on Wednesday, recent told one of her school friends that her dream "is to get married, have a nice house, a couple of dogs and go skiing every year" with Prince William.

The run-up to her 25th birthday was marked by a frenzy of speculation -- fuelled by Middleton who had confided to her work colleagues that they could expect "an announcement in February" -- that a royal engagement was imminent.

Then came the fall -- the announcement that followed wasn't quite what Middleton had predicted. Instead of going down on one knee, the second in line to the throne gave his girlfriend her marching orders.