With only a few bumps and hesitations, they were soon waltzing around the floor as if they’d been dancing together for years. They were so absorbed in each other they didn’t notice Jack Sprat and Jack A. Dandy murmuring with the prince as they watched.
“So, you think it’s the real thing, then?” Sprat asked, watching them.
“As best I can determine. Never seen a woman part with diamonds unless she figured she was getting something a helluva lot more valuable in return. And you should have heard them defending each other. Look at them—” Bertie’s voice held a hint of disgust. Or perhaps envy. “Glowing like light bulbs.” Then he glanced at Dandy. “How much did she win?”
“A good thirty thousand,” the Earl of Avery said with a hint of pique. “Didn’t need much help from the dealers, either. That woman has the damnedest luck.”
“Should set them up nicely. Damn his hide, I’m going to miss that boy.” Bertie sighed and looked restlessly around the glittering crowd. A pair of huge brown eyes caught his attention, framed in a dewy face and set above a noteworthy hourglass shape. “Say, who is that prime filly with the Earl of Warwick’s party?”
“Oh, that’s Warwick’s new countess. I believe her name is Frances. Friends call her Daisy.”
“Daisy, Daisy,” the prince said under his breath as he tugged down his waistcoat and made his way toward her. “How attached are you to your ambitious husband?”
Out on the floor, several couples had finally joined Jack and Mariah as they whirled around and around. But the two of them had developed such an entrancing rhythm that they were largely unaware of their fellow dancers…or of the fact that the prince was no longer watching.
“See?” she said, adoring him. “You’re a wonderful dancer.”
“With the right partner,” he said. “I have a confession to make. I’ve just developed a new technique.”
“What is it?”
“I imagine my gorgeous wife is dancing naked in my arms.”
“How innovative of you,” she said, slowing, her eyes shining.
“I’m discovering, however, that it has a flaw,” he said, slowing, too, and pulling her closer. “Chiefly, the way it makes me want to—”
He came to a dead stop in the middle of the floor, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her with everything in him. And by the time that kiss was finished, the Iron had melted from Jack’s name forever.
Author’s Note
Rest assured that Prince Albert Edward’s documented activities support every characteristic I’ve given him in Make Me Yours. He was a troubled youth whose mother made no secret of her dislike for him. He grew up to rebel emphatically against his dolorous, straight-laced mother and the whole cult of “repression as respectability” that she spawned.
“Bertie,” as he was known, was notorious as a womanizer and did indeed possess the quirk of carrying on affairs with only married women. As portrayed in the book, the idea of gaining favor through sex was commonplace in Victorian times, a well-established route to improving a family’s status and connections. Noblemen did indeed encourage their wives to “indulge” the prince.
The “Daisy” mentioned at the end of the book was also historical: Frances Maynard Brooke, Countess of Warwick, was the inspiration for the Gay 90’s song “Daisy, Daisy” (“a bicycle built for two”). Daisy caused quite a scandal in 1891 by using her affair with Bertie as a cover for her affair with Charles Beresford, one of Bertie’s best friends! It became public and the prime minister himself had to intervene to keep the prince from being dragged into the courts. The rupture of the friendship between Bertie and his mistress-poaching friend never healed.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-3545-2
MAKE ME YOURS
Copyright © 2009 by Betina Krahn.
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