by Susan Stoker
They compliment my mask, ignoring the defiant irony of the Jester Prince. We make small talk. They want to know about Balmoral. Is the weather nice? They want to know if I will be riding in the King’s Trust Polo Match come spring. Will I also be getting a new polo pony? Their smiles are tight and polite under their half-masks. The women’s eyes glitter with the effects of champagne. The men’s eyes are sly. They’d rather ask about that woman I had over my lap, I’m sure. When someone asks me if I’m looking forward to my brother’s wedding, I find myself scanning the room for the peacock blue dress. I want to make my way over to where I see Amelia standing across the room, but the music has started, and I’m obligated to dance for the coins that will be thrown to charity.
I bow to a full-figured Lady Matilda Andwerth, who has been waiting with her mother to speak to me, and ask if she’d like to dance. Her mother all but gasps and pushes her forward. I take her hand and we move to the dance floor. She’s wearing a cream-colored dress, and an eye mask made of matching brocade lace. She stares up at me in wonder, her pretty face flushed. I engage her in polite conversation as we dance. I bow cordially as we part and kiss her hand.
The string quartet is preparing another tune. I scan the crowd again, and catch a glimpse of Amelia’s gown. I move toward her, but when another tune begins, I’m compelled to another waltz, this time with a sly and knowing socialite with no title but loads of money. Emma Lowe is no shrinking violet. She’s brash, and refreshingly needles me as we dance. She asks if I’d like to go clubbing afterward, and tells me in her husky voice that she’d think it a fine thing to be on the cover of the Clarion. I wonder why I’ve never fucked her, and then remember why. She’s a smoker, and I can’t abide the taste of a smoky mouth. Shame, too. She’s a lovely girl otherwise.
The dancing goes on for the next hour as I relate to my partners as each situation dictates. Women from the conservative monarchist families are treated to polite banter. Cheekier social outliers are the object of flirtation that leaves them as giddy as the expensive champagne. But through it all, the eyes behind my jester’s mask are forever seeking out my brother’s shy little fiancée.
I will always wonder later if I didn’t somehow know in my heart how this evening would end, as improbably as it did. Was this night not the eye of the perfect storm, after all? I could say the winds of my brother’s hatred of me buffeted us all toward what would happen, but that would just be an excuse, for it was my own passion that puffed my sails as I charted a subconscious course toward my forbidden conquest.
My brother and his fiancée are in a gaggle of admirers, chief among them the Duke and Duchess of Kent. I stroll over just in time to hear the duchess politely inquire as to how Amelia is getting on with her preparations to wed. She smiles prettily and tells her things are well, but she sometimes feels overwhelmed by the endless stream of planning and public engagements. My brother’s back is to me, but I can tell by the sudden tension in his posture that the answer displeases him. As soon as the duke and duchess walk away, Frederick grabs Lady Amelia’s arm harder than necessary. I can hear his voice, muffled a bit from under his mask. I make out the word “shameful,” and surmise that he is infuriated that she would admit to being anything less than deliriously happy with her duties. I feel my anger rise. I’m standing behind him, and can see the red flush of rage tinge his neck and ears.
“You’re hurting me.” Her tone is shocked, affronted.
Someone calls to my brother and I duck behind a pillar as he quickly releases Amelia’s arm. Several of the men are taking their leave in an anteroom and have asked Frederick to join them. Without a word to Amelia, he agrees, leaving her standing there. Compassion tells me to go to her, but instinct tells me to follow Frederick. He doesn’t notice me as I make my way into the room. The men all remove their masks. I hang back in an alcove, watching as they lay them on the table. My head is light with my sudden, rash plan, my blood fevered with it.
It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But still I pick up his mask and swap it for mine, which I deposit on a shelf behind some coats. I’m wearing the same style of tux as my brother. I’m the same height. We’re indistinguishable. I leave the room.
“Prince Frederick!” Someone calls his name and I turn and nod, but immediately walk away, my gaze intense behind the heavier mask. Where is she? There. A wisp of blue leaving through the double doors. I try not to walk too fast. The dancers are at it again. The champagne has everyone distracted and making merry. Good.
Amelia is on the terrace standing by a pillar. She has one hand on the smooth stone, the other on the back of her mask as if making to remove it.
“No.” I say the single word to get her attention and then take her arm. When she starts to protest, I squeeze it as Frederick would and she follows. I can hear her rapid, frightened breath as I guide her down through the terraced garden to the topiary maze. As a child, I remember getting lost in this at the midsummer ball. Mother had found me, and I’d clung to her as she swept me up in her arms. She’d smelled of lavender, and she’d chided Frederick for telling me only fools went into mazes without having a plan, without knowing their way out.
I’m a fool again. I’m rushing headlong into a maze. This time I have a plan. But I have no way out. I’m not thinking that far ahead. I’m only thinking of one thing. Amelia.
We’re deep in the maze when I stop by a bench.
“Frederick,” she says. There’s a tear trailing down from underneath her mask. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that my duties weren’t…”
I put a finger up to her lips to silence her. Then I turn her around, push her forward. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But I must have her. She looks back, shocked, her mouth an “o.”
“Frederick!” she says, but the name is said with a pleasant surprise. “Here? No!” She tries to stand as I hike her skirt up, but I push her forward, my hands caressing her bottom now, moving up and down her thighs. She’s wearing thigh high stockings. Her skin above them is smooth. She arches toward me. I’ve heard rumors from my valet that Frederick has cut her off. Is he mad?
I’d just wanted a feel. Just a feel. But it’s not enough. The touch of her soft thigh has me wanting more, and she doesn’t know. I move my hand between her thighs. Her panties are soaked. What a damn fool Frederick is.
I jerk her panties down roughly.
“Frederick, say something,” she says.
“Sssssh…” I reply. I can smell her sweet musk. I’m breathing heavily with my own need. My breath, trapped behind the mask, warms my face. I long to rip off the mask, to taste her pussy, to bend down and grasp her slim hips and slide my tongue into her slickness, to nip and nibble and suck until she bucks wildly against my face.
And I know this is bad, even for the Bad Prince. This is dark, even for the Black Sheep. But Amelia is perfection, and Frederick doesn’t deserve her.
I must have her. I unsheathe my cock. But no… no… not like this. I need to look into her eyes as I fuck her, even if it’s through a mask. I spin her around, hike up her dress. I turn, take a seat on the bench, and bring her down hard on my cock. She cries out in pleasure. I feel her start to come, just from this. Poor, deprived little bird. How long has she been forced to suppress her passion? How long has she been kept teetering on the cusp? She’s hot and wet and tight and her pussy clenches and quivers on my cock and I groan.
Then I hear her gasp. She’s wriggling, trying to stop the orgasm, trying to push away. But I hold her. I look into her eyes and then I see the shock. The realization. My brother and I are the same height. We are the same build. We have the same hair color. But we are different in two ways. And she is feeling one. Now she hastens to confirm the other. She reaches forward, her fumbling hands suddenly agile as she undoes my mask. She starts to cry out as it falls away and she sees the face of the man fucking her. My mouth closes over hers, absorbing a wail of protest as it becomes a moan of pleasured acquiescence. I wrap my other arm around her, unable to stop myself, eager
to prove to her that there’s something more to life than duty. I drive my hips up, drive my hard cock into her sweetness. Her wriggling only makes it hotter, and not just for me. I know when a woman is excited, and for all her early protestations, Amelia is rocketing toward her second orgasm. Her pussy is locked around my cock, the delicious tremors threatening to unman me. It takes all my willpower to hold off until her dam of passion breaks, and then I spill into her, this release the most fulfilling of my life. My mouth is locked on hers, my tongue caressing her tongue. And I realize she is clinging to me, her compliance complete as her hips rock softly against mine. I can feel her nipples through her gown, and wish I could lay her down, undress her, explore every inch of her.
But the maze. We’re in the maze.
It’s as if we both come to our senses at the same time. I help her up and she stands, dazed and teetering on her heels. There are in-ground lights by the bench, and one casts her in its glow. Her mask is tilted a bit, and the lipstick on her kiss-bruised mouth is smeared. I take my pocket handkerchief and blot around her lips, then straighten her mask as she stands staring.
If she’s wondering how I could have done this, or why, or how she could have not only let me, but reveled in it, she’s not saying. She seems shell-shocked, and for this I worry.
“We have to get you back,” I say quietly. “Are you all right?”
She looks around as if trying to place where she is. “I-I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
I don’t ask her what she means. I simply take her arm and try not to think of what may happen next. Had anyone seen us go? Will anyone inquire to my brother as to why he took his fiancée into the maze?
My sense of direction is better than it was as a child. I find my way out and stop before we exit the labyrinth.
“Amelia,” I say, and open my mouth to say more but don’t because she answers with my name. Just my name.
“Tristan,” she says, breathing the word. It’s my name exhaled, and I catch the sweet scent of her breath as she speaks. The taste of her tongue is still on mine. I want more. But she does not belong to me. I tell myself that as I put a hand to her face, smile, and exit the maze. I do not look back as I leave. I do not look back as I head in to replace the purloined mask.
All my life I’ve played the cad. I’ve left more than one woman after a merry fuck. This is the first time I’ve felt bad about it.
Chapter Four
Lady Amelia
This is all my fault. I am to blame. As I lay tucked beneath the covers, I relive every sinful moment in the maze, from the moment Prince Tristan pulled me in, to the moment his huge cock withdrew from my still-shuddering body.
In my safe version of events, when I pull off his mask and realize that it’s not my betrothed ravishing me, but his brother, I am stunned into compliance. In this version I am affronted, ravished, a victim whole and complete. In this version, I am a good and virtuous girl ill-used by a despicable rake who has shown himself to be as vile and perverse as Frederick said he was.
But there’s another version. The secret version is so different that I can only allow myself to ponder it here in the dark of my room. In this version, I know the moment he takes my hand that this is not Frederick. My Frederick would not leave the adoration of the partygoers. He’d consider it his duty to stay. My Frederick would not have taken a spontaneous trip into the maze. And my Frederick would not have touched me so boldly, and with such practiced hands. In the secret version, I wait until I am fully consumed in passion to raise the mask because I knew who was under it, because I wanted to maintain the illusion of being ravished, of being a victim of what I’d secretly wanted.
And I had wanted it. Why else would I have purchased my own personal copy of the Clarion featuring lurid details of Tristan’s sexual exploits? Why else would I have stared at the picture of the woman over his knee, wondering what it would be like to be facedown over those powerful thighs, to be so deliciously vulnerable, to submit to such tawdry attention?
I wanted him. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I wanted my husband’s brother. I wanted to fuck him.
And I realize that while I played the ravished innocent, deep down I knew better. And he knew better, too. I’d found myself grow achy and wet with need the moment I laid eyes on him at the masquerade ball. Later, I’d glanced up to see him looking in my direction, and found myself flushing with pleasure.
Had Frederick made it easier with his cruelty to me? When the Duchess of Kent had asked to my wellbeing, I’d been honest. I had told her that my role was an adaptive process, and to be sure anyone in royal circles would understand that the demands did not come easy. But that I would not perpetuate Frederick’s fantasy of a fiancée born to royal duty incensed him. He called me shameful, and the word felt like a stinger lodged in my heart.
Was my pain a justification for going into the maze with my fiancé’s brother? And does it matter now? It’s over and done, and I should really be pondering not what happened, but the miracle of our being undiscovered. I can only assume that Tristan returned the mask to wherever he’d taken it from, for later Frederick emerged wearing it. By then I’d returned from the ladies’ room, where the bidet had washed away evidence of Tristan’s presence from my sweetly sore pussy. I’d wiped down my inner thighs, too. Then I’d touched up my makeup and walked back to into the ballroom as if I’d not just done the unthinkable.
The feathered mask now hid more than my face. From behind it, I viewed the room anew, wondering what those paying so handsomely to rub shoulders with royalty would say if they knew that the soon-to-be Princess of Wales had just cheated on their future king, and with his brother no less. They smiled and nodded as I walked past, seeing the carefully crafted image they’d been sold.
My eyes had scanned the room then, half-hoping to see Tristan and then relieved when it appeared he’d ducked out. Good. That would make it easier, knowing this was a one-off. There was no love lost between him and Frederick. Fucking me was the ultimate secret revenge, perhaps for both of us.
The true guilt of what happened has just hit me in the last hour, and perhaps that’s because Frederick seemed almost remorseful on the way home. As we sat alone in the back of the chauffeured car, he apologized for abandoning me, and for speaking harshly to me.
“I just feel as though the weight of the world is on me, what with the wedding fast approaching and this business with the opinion polls, and now Tristan…”
I’d startled at that until I realized he was referring to the public scandal.
“I shall endeavor to be warmer to you once we’re married,” he said, and patted my hand as he’d pat the head of one of his hunting dogs. I looked down at his hand on mine, both our hands so light against the blue of my dress. And I realized then that he’d not told me once that whole evening that I’d looked beautiful.
I’ve cheated on him. I’ve cheated on Frederick with his brother. My mother had demanded details of the evening and now I almost laugh as I imagine how she’d have looked like if I’d said, “It was lovely, Mother. Frederick was perfectly awful, but then Tristan made it all better by fucking me in the maze. You should have seen me, Mother. You know how you’ve always said I’d be the perfect princess? Well, it turns out I’m the perfect whore!”
Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and give her the acceptable version. I’ll tell her how lovely it all was, how lovely and perfect. I’ll tell her this over a light breakfast before the palace sends a car to whisk me away for another round of lessons on how to be Frederick’s perfect wife.
But that’s hours away, and for now I enjoy my sordid solitude as I replay my sins in a loop. His hand on my arm, the gruffness of the voice that sounds so like Frederick’s save for a slight difference in the inflection, the masterful way he lifted my skirts. For a moment, I thought he’d smack my bum. I’d wanted him to. But I was not in control, and that’s what made me come so hard.
Sex with Frederick was so different. He treated me as i
f I were a porcelain doll. “Am I hurting you?” he’d ask when we fucked. I’d not say what I wanted to say, because I learned early on that Frederick did not prize my honesty, just my obedience. So I’d say, “No, darling,” when what I really wanted to say was, “Hurt me. Hurt me so I can feel it.”
I felt it with Tristan. And just the memory has my fingers straying between my legs to part the slick folds of my labia with two fingers of my left hand while my right seeks the bud of my clitoris. And I am the wanton again, giving myself now to the memory of my husband’s brother before crying myself to sleep.
Chapter Five
Prince Tristan
Riding is a great way to defuse tension. So today I’m astride Deacon, an Irish Draught with a bad attitude and a lot of speed. He’s been languishing in the stables, where he spends half his day neighing at the mares and the other half terrifying Edgar the groom.
Fun fact: Women who like to ride horses also like to ride men, and some of my best sexual trysts happened after hunts. There was a hunt this morning, and I was invited to join by the brother of Eugenia Blue, whom I suspect has motives beyond riding over fences. Eugenia is a long-legged filly of a woman, and bucks just as hard. But I declined the invitation.
In the two weeks since the masquerade ball, I’ve only been able to think of one woman, and she’s the last woman I should be thinking of.
Am I losing my touch? I steer Deacon toward a low hedge, knowing it’s folly to ride out alone like this but half hoping I’ll fall and knock some sense into my own head. I feel his body tense like a spring, but also feel the uncertainty in his posture. He wants to veer, but the hedge is too long. He wants to brake, but I won’t let him. I reach back, applying the crop with force as I dig my spurs into his sides. It’s pain for a gain. He explodes toward the obstacle, leaving the ground with strides left to spare. But he’s a beast of a horse and clears it by two meters on the other side. I yell into the wind, telling him he’s a good lad as I pat him on the neck. His ears prick forward as he relaxes back into a canter across the field. He’s discovering this is fun, and I savor the adrenaline surge of the moment.