Society was very cruel to women who let on that they were smarter than men.
After her third Season ended with no prospects, May’s parents had quietly given up on the foreign princes and started searching closer to home. As a Serene Highness, May couldn’t marry just any aristocrat, but what about someone high-ranking enough for her—a widowed duke, or Lord Euston?
May hadn’t told her parents about her secret plans for John Hope; they would have dismissed him as “not good enough.” He was only an earl, and a Scottish one at that. But what other choice did she have?
She walked slowly around the reception hall, trying to gather her thoughts. The setting sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, making the air inside feel stuffy. Before the fireplace stood the wedding cake: a multitiered confection over seven feet high, topped by a Greek temple done entirely of sugar, columns and all.
“May!”
At the sound of that voice, May sank into her deepest, most reverential curtsy. “Your Royal Highness.”
She looked up and met the blue eyes of Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, or as everyone called him, Prince Eddy. The heir to the British throne.
Standing there in his military uniform, medallions gleaming on his chest, Eddy looked like a prince from a child’s storybook. His features were so fine and delicately carved that he would almost be pretty, if he didn’t radiate such intense masculinity.
Eddy frowned, noticing the tears that still clung to May’s lashes. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes. Just overwhelmed with joy for Louise,” she demurred.
Eddy nodded, accepting this. He wasn’t the most perceptive, but only because his blithe, carefree energy was always skipping along from one thing to the next.
A bold warmth was curling in May’s chest, like when she snuck sips of her mother’s sherry. Her eyes darted toward the couples in the center of the ballroom, and she decided to risk it.
“Have you danced much this evening?”
“Oh, of course!” Eddy grinned at her sheepishly. “I should have asked. May, would you like to dance?”
Dancing with Eddy would be like stepping into the glare of a spotlight, which was precisely what May needed right now. She had lost John, but there were other eligible men here, men who might take notice once they saw her with the prince.
Eddy’s hand fell to her waist as they started forward. Other couples moved in a slow orbit around them, the wooden floor hidden beneath swishing skirts and shining dark shoes. Standing with Eddy, May felt that she reflected back some ofhis royal aura—that she looked brighter and prettier simply by beingnearhim.
She tipped her head toward the groom. “Tell me more about Lord Fife. I’d never met him before today.”
“Oh, you’d like Alexander,” Eddy exclaimed, with a surprising amount of confidence given that he had no idea what sort of person May liked or disliked. “Louise really loves him, you know.”
“That’s wonderful,” May murmured, though the match was actually preposterous. Alexander Fife was a nobody, a low-ranking nobleman whom Eddy’s sister had decided she adored, and because she was a spoiled princess she had gotten permission to actually go through with it.
A princess, marrying forlove? Only servants did that, or Americans.
May was far too much of a realist to believe in something like love. It was a plot device invented by novelists, as fantastic and nonsensical as pixie dust. Just look at what had happened to her mother. Mary Adelaide had married for love, or at least for lust, and once that lust had cooled, all she had was a husband who burned through her fortune and treated her with cool indifference. On a good day.
“And he’s great company on the hunt,” Eddy added, launching into some story about riding with Lord Fife at Balmoral.
When he’d finished, May smiled. “Are you headed to Balmoral soon?”
“Yes, though I have to come back to London in a month. The Shah of Persia will be visiting, and Sally says I have to entertain him.”
“Sally?” she repeated, puzzled.
“Lord Salisbury. George and I call him Sally behind his back,” Eddy said breezily.
It was shockingly impertinent to refer to the prime minister that way, even if you were a future king. May doubted that George, Eddy’s younger brother, had had anything to do with the nickname.
“How fascinating that you’ll get to meet the shah,” she ventured. “He’ll want to discuss the situation in the Black Sea, I imagine?”
Her words seemed to glance off Eddy. “I was thinking of taking him to Romano’s. Surely he doesn’t have any good whiskey in…” He trailed off with a disinterested shrug. May bit her tongue to keep from finishing his sentence.In Tehran.Didn’t Eddy realize that Persia was of crucial importance, a key ally in Britain’s growing tensions with Russia?
May looked up at the prince, but he was glancing over her shoulder yet again. There was something deliberate in his expression, unusual for Eddy, who was so rarely serious about anything. As the steps of the dance spun her around, May did her best to follow his gaze.
