Power was everything, Leo knew, and connections were the lifeblood of power.

Lady Debridge retreated straightaway with Lady Hogarth and Caroline. Leo looked around for a friendly face but found none. Even Robert Ladley, whom he’d known for quite a few years now, seemed annoyed by his presence. When Leo attempted to speak to him, Ladley smiled thinly and excused himself.

So in a strange twist of fate, Leo found himself standing apart from everyone else, nursing a glass of port. He pondered how odd it was that his life had taken this turn. Up until the last few weeks, he’d been the one to avoid the attentions of others. Men wanted to befriend him, ladies wanted to sleep with him, others just wanted him to acknowledge them. When he was a child, he could recall standing on the balcony at Constantine Palace, frightened of the massive crowds below. His father would put a hand on his back and push him forward. “Give them what they want,” he would say. Leo had been giving them what they wanted all his life and hiding in the bottom of a bottle to find a quiet place only he could enter.

Vir ingenuus juniperum cadit. The gentleman falls.

He sipped the port and tried not to wrinkle his nose. Port didn’t taste as good as it once had. It no longer held any promise of dulling the tedium and emptiness he often felt. He pretended to sip it and surreptitiously watched Caroline move around the room, entertaining whomever she spoke to.

He could be such an idiot. How could he not have thought her charming from the beginning? How could he not recognize at once how unique she was?

Well, well, Prince Leopold. How remarkable that a few words and a few kisses can alter your judgment so.

He noticed that Caroline made a point to speak to each suitor—or at least those he assumed were her suitors. The viscount was in the company of another attractive young woman, but nevertheless, Caroline spoke to him at length. With so much feminine attention, the viscount, predictably, couldn’t seem to keep the smile from his face.

Caroline conversed with Ladley, too, whose eyes followed her every move like a puppy. And another gentleman, who laughed too loud and too long when she spoke to him.

But eventually, having made the circuit of the room, Caroline ventured back to him, her smile blazingly brilliant. She looked him up and down, then glanced back at the others. “Why do you stand in the corner all alone, Your Highness?”

“I feel a bit out of place. Or rather, I feel this is my place.” He sipped the port. “Dare I ask if you’ve settled on the lucky gentleman you will allow to offer for your hand?”

She turned around and stood beside him and surveyed the room. “No. I think not.”

“No? From my vantage point they seem like good men. And they seem terribly admiring of you.”

“Please,” she drawled with a roll of her eyes. “Do you really believe so? Lord Ladley has known me for ages and never expressed the least bit of interest until recently.”

“Perhaps that’s because he’s come to see you as a grown woman and not Beck’s younger sister,” Leo suggested. He could imagine that every man in attendance tonight would see the woman.

Caroline laughed. “Perhaps.” She turned her glittering gaze to him. “But might it also be that his father has amassed a large debt the family cannot pay, and he would benefit from a large dowry?”

Leo lifted his glass in a mock toast. “Entirely plausible, madam. What of the viscount? Your uncle seems to think his having been to America recommends him well enough.”

She giggled. “Uncle Hogarth is obsessed with all things American. He was there as a boy and hasn’t forgotten a moment of it.” She gazed off in the direction of the viscount. “Ainsley is rather charming.”

“Charming, is he?”

“And handsome, too, wouldn’t you agree?”

He didn’t want to agree, but even he could see the man’s appeal. “Perhaps,” he said grudgingly.

She smiled pertly, then bumped her shoulder into his, like they were old chums. “He put all his money into tobacco,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

She nodded, her curls bouncing gaily around her face. “Hollis told me all about him. He went to America to make his fortune, taking all the money from his estate that wasn’t otherwise entailed. All of it. Can you imagine? Apparently, he meant to make a fortune in trading tobacco. But his first ship ran aground. The crew was rescued, but the ship was scuttled and the cargo lost. All that investment sitting at the bottom of the ocean.” She shook her head.

“That’s unfortunate,” Leo said sincerely.

“A terrible tragedy that my dowry could possibly repair. Unfortunately for him, as he’s just come back from America, Lady Katherine Maugham, otherwise known as the Peacock—”

“Pardon?” Leo asked, smiling.

“The Peacock. Do try to keep pace, Leopold. Hollis and Eliza and I gave Lady Katherine that name because she is a peacock, always showing her feathers.”

He choked on a laugh. “Isn’t that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?”

“Well, yes, but I’m genial about it,” she said, her eyes dancing with merriment. “She’s just there, with my aunt, do you see?” she said, nodding to a point across the room.

An attractive woman a head shorter than Caroline was in conversation with her aunt.

“Katherine has set her sights on the viscount, and she will not lose him to me.”

“Is she in a position to decide?”

“You may trust me it would be war if he were to seriously pursue me. Oh! There’s another potential suitor,” she said, leaning slightly forward to look to Leo’s right. “Mr. Bishop. Don’t look.”

Leo turned to look.

“Don’t look!” Caroline said, giggling.

“How am I to know who we are speaking about if I don’t look?”

Caroline stole another look. “All right. But do it quickly. He’s tall and thin with fine blond hair that is thinning on the crown.”

“That describes half the men in London.”

“But only three of the gentlemen here tonight. Now.”

Leo looked. He spotted the man in question and turned back to Caroline. “I’ve spotted him, I’ve seen his thinning hair and his height. What does Mr. Bishop lack as a suitor?”

“Oh, nothing. He’s very kind and has no debts to speak of. Unfortunately, he aspires to the clergy.”

“Oh dear,” Leo said with a smile.

“Exactly,” she whispered. “I can think of no one less suited to being the wife of a vicar than me. Can you?”

“Not a single name comes to mind,” he agreed.

Caroline laughed. “Prince Leopold, I think you know me better than I allow. Look, here comes Lady Debridge. Supper will be served soon. She will have sat you as far from her as possible and say only a lowly footman may serve you.” She winked. “Enjoy your supper, Your Highness,” she chirped, and walked away, pausing to speak to a couple who were bent over an open book.

A moment later, Sir Walter announced supper was served.

Caroline was right—Leo found himself seated at the very end of the table next to Sir Walter and across from Mr. Franzen, a German banker. On Leo’s right was an elderly woman whose name he never could quite decipher. She curled over her food like a question mark.

Caroline was in the middle of the table, surrounded by all the youth and beauty in the room. Or at least it seemed that way from where Leo was sitting. Ladley was on her right, his attention to her every need. On her left, another gentleman Leo had not met but who also seemed captivated by Caroline.

Or maybe it just seemed that way to him because he was captivated by her, too. Perhaps more than all these gentlemen combined. Too captivated. His enchantment had all the signs of potentially getting in the way of his goals and his duties.

He would have been content to sit quietly and contemplate these thoughts, but Sir Walter was very keen to delineate for Leo all the things he’d done in his life, and desiring, apparently, to compare them to experiences Leo might have had. Sir Walter had excelled at archery. Had Leo?

“Ah...well, I was certainly taught the art, but I must admit my brother was better.”

“And riding, sir? I’m sure you are an expert rider. I suspect princes are trained from an early age to ride.”

“I am a passable rider.”

“What of your military service? I myself spent four years in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Best four years of my life.”

“Yes,” Leo said. He was bored with this game. “I was four years in the navy.”

“Four years! Admirable, Your Highness,” he said, as if congratulating a boy on the cricket field. “And you’ve been in England now for...how long, is it?”

Leo sipped his wine. “A very long time, as it happens. So long, in fact, that the time has come for me to return to Alucia.”

Mr. Franzen chuckled. “The time does come to put away childish things, does it not?”

Leo didn’t know if this was a comment on the life he’d led in England, or merely an observation, but he could feel the heat rising beneath his collar nonetheless. He used to laugh about his dissolute life, but now it seemed sad to him to be a man of nine and twenty years and have nothing to show for it. He thought about the Weslorian women and what they’d had to endure while he’d lived so carelessly.

“But isn’t it everyone’s duty to marry?” The question, posed by the woman Caroline had dubbed the Peacock, rose above the other conversations, and, curious, Leo looked down the table.

“Why are you asking her?” Lady Debridge asked. “Lady Caroline believes that a lady need not set her sights on marriage until she feels completely at ease with it.” She gave a good roll of her eyes to indicate her apparent opinion of that.

“Lady Debridge,” Sir Walter said. “If that is Lady Caroline’s opinion, she is welcome to it.”