The piano piece ended in a sound round of applause. The crown prince gave a start; he looked around, blinking, and belatedly joined the clapping crowd. Three further, forgettable piano performances followed.

And then Tristan strolled to the center of the room to a chorus of aaahs and ooohs.

Next to her, Hattie released a suspiciously yearning sigh.

Lucie’s head turned to her a little too sharply.

Hattie shrank away, embarrassed color flooding her cheeks. “I know, I know,” she whispered, “and I’m awfully sorry. I can’t help it. He’s so . . .”

“. . . obnoxious?” Her voice was a hiss.

“Beautiful,” Hattie said, and gave a helpless shrug. “He’s beautiful. His jawline, just look at it.”

She looked at it as he assumed his stance next to the piano and gave a bow.

“. . . Yes?”

“It has a perfect right angle. Do you know how rare that is? The whole composition of him—I must have him sit for my series of archangels.”

Lucie pursed her lips. “Can’t you just draw it on?”

Hattie looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“The jawline. Can you not just draw one with a right angle?”

Hattie was genuinely aghast. “That is not how it works, Lucie.”

“Hush,” someone said.

Faces turned toward them, none of them friendly. She could feel Lord Melvin’s probing gaze on her.

“Your Royal Highness, ladies, my noble friends,” Tristan began when silence was restored. “Allow me to take you along on the journey of . . .” He paused, and the room held its breath. “. . . the Shieldmaiden.”

The room swooned.

“This is a good one,” Hattie breathed. “So much like Tennyson.”

Lucie folded her arms over her chest, and Tristan stepped forward.

  On either side the forest lie

Cold blue lakes which hold the sky;

Where she goes to see the eagle fly;

The shield-maid of a time gone by

A princess with no people . . .

How vexing. Five lines was all it took and there was no doubt: he could write. And recite.

And she had to sit still and witness how his baritone changed effortlessly from velvet to silk, from light to dark, until the meaning of his words was of no consequence and the poem became a melody. Eyes glazed over, breaths were held; four hundred people, entranced.

Apparently, he too knew that words could be used as weapons, and he wielded them with formidable effect.

When he eventually fell silent, there was a pause before everyone stirred as if released from a spell.

The Prince of Wales came to his feet, clapping. “Bravo,” he cried. “Bravo.”

The rest of the audience scrambled to follow His Royal Highness, sending chairs scraping across the floor as they rose and rattled the chandeliers with the thunder of their applause.

Amid the commotion, Lucie slipped away.

* * *

Tristan bowed again, using the brief moment to assume a neutral expression. Very well. A standing ovation from the prince annulled a multitude of sins on the spot.

His performance must have concluded the first half of the evening program, because groups of women began encroaching upon him, enveloping him in clouds of ambergris and excited titters. Cecily hovered among them, regarding him with an ardent expression that would have struck him as rather possessive, had he not become distracted.

“Lord Ballentine.”

The prince approached, his right-hand man Lord Manchester at his heels, parting the flood of admirers like the Red Sea before him.

Tristan clicked his heels together, just sharply enough to transform a mock salute into a real one.

“At ease, Ballentine, at ease,” Bertie said jovially. “Once a lieutenant, always a lieutenant, eh? Good man. And such a way with words. Why are you not at court more often?”

Because your mama would not be amused. In fact, he was the last person Queen Victoria would want near her heir, whom she considered to be a lothario and crushing moral disappointment in his own right.

“I’m afraid I’m occupied with editing my diaries from my latest tour in Afghanistan, Your Highness,” he offered. “I hope to publish them in a few months’ time.”

“War diaries—from this man’s pen. What do you say to that, Manchester,” said the prince, prompting Manchester to declare that it was a splendid idea, that it would undoubtedly make for a splendid read.

The prince nodded, his eyes still on Tristan. “Splendid, splendid. Dedicate these diaries to me, won’t you?”

“It would be an honor, Your Highness.”

The prince’s voice had been loud enough to reach any bystanders in a ten-foot radius. By tomorrow, everyone of importance would know that the heir to the throne was the patron of his latest work, and they could triple the figure currently planned for the print edition.

His official mission of bolstering his reputation was done.

As for his unofficial mission . . .

A glass door led from the green drawing room onto the spacious terrace. Lucie had slipped away through it, largely unnoticed during the mayhem of four hundred guests coming to their feet.

He bowed to the prince.

He strode toward the door, past a narrow-eyed Lord Arthur Seymour, whom he ignored as if he didn’t exist, away from Cecily, away from the armada of longingly batting fans and lashes.

Chapter 18

After descending the terrace stairs down to the French Garden, she had, on impulse, taken a left on the gravel path. Against the weathered terrace wall, next to a granite lion, stood a granite bench.

She sank down on the hard surface and took a deep breath. She probingly rubbed her bare upper arms. The evening air was still tepid enough for her not to catch a cold; besides, three glasses of wine were warming her from the inside out.

Beyond the symmetrical rectangle of the French Garden stretching before her, hills rolled into the distance. On one such hill stood a folly, strategically placed to please the eye from the terrace, and behind the folly, the clouds were afire with the last of the sun’s rays. The wistful song of a blackbird floated from one of the neatly trimmed hedges. The simple tune gradually edged out the echo of the Shieldmaiden.

She was not left in peace for long.

Footfalls approached, of a man with a long, leisurely stride, and sure enough, a tall, familiar figure appeared on the path.

Her palms turned damp. “Stop following me, Ballentine.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I came outside for a smoke.”

He made himself comfortable next to her on the bench, sprawling uninvited, and pulled a silver cigarette case from the inside of his jacket. “Do you care for one?”

The case appeared under her nose, presenting a row of cigarettes lying neatly side by side like peas in a pod.

Trust him to offer a lady a smoke. Or to smoke in the presence of a lady. Clearly, he did not consider her a lady.

She turned away. “You were in the park. You were in the stables. I don’t believe in such coincidences—you are following me.”

He closed the cigarette case with a snap. “If you truly prefer to grapple with five men at once or to fall off a ladder the whole way down, I shall desist.”

She ground her teeth, and they sat in silence, him smoking, her struggling with why she was not taking her leave.

Because it was not simple anymore. Equal and opposing forces, or perhaps the wine, were holding her in place, right in the spot between the granite lion and him.

“What did you think?” he asked, his eyes on the horizon.

“Of the poem?”

He nodded.

That, too, was complicated.

“It was good,” she said grudgingly.

Even if her expectations had not been low, she would have been amazed. She had tried to escape these tumultuous emotions by taking some fresh air.

“You do hold poetry in an atrociously low regard,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Or is it just my poetry?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said without heat. “I do not loathe it.”

“But?”

She sighed. “I don’t appreciate the elevated station it enjoys, considering it is largely hot air.”

“Is it?” He was watching her rather intently from the corner of his eye.

“Of course. The great Romantics were dreadful husbands and lovers.”

To her surprise, he turned to her, his expression intrigued. “I am all ears,” he said.

“I’m certain you know all about it.”

“It would please me to hear it from you.”

Why, she wondered, and why should she do something to please him?

“Very well,” she said. “Take Shelley—there were rumors his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine while expecting, because he had abandoned her yet again to be with his mistress.”

He winced. “That is true.”

“As for Coleridge, he made no secret of the fact that he detested his wife, and he gave himself up to opium. Byron is the most loathsome of them all—his lover never saw her daughter again after he snatched the girl and put her into a convent.” Her hand gave a small flick of contempt. “‘She walks in beauty like the night,’ he says, but he takes her child, then abandons the girl, and the child dies soon after. His grand words do not exude much charm when one knows such things.”