Free A Prince Among Men by Kate Moore

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    After a little lapse, Hetty spoke again. "In some ways Mrs. Hart disturbs me, but she is exciting. There was definitely more energy in the room for her being there."
    "I'd like to meet her." Ophelia sipped her coffee. It was an escape she'd yet to work out. To get away in the evening when the social whirl of London was at its peak, was more difficult than in the morning, when only servants and vendors were stirring.
    Hetty said, "You must come some evening soon, no matter what tricks it takes to escape. It would be so much easier to make up my mind about Mrs. Hart if we could compare observations. But tell me about your week."
    "Danced with Dent everywhere. Offended mother's demon hound. Hems will be deeper this spring. Princess Charlotte's wedding dress will be silver and has metal thread enough to circle the globe. My mother, by the way, has triumphed over her fellow hostesses. She's to give a ball for Charlotte and her prince, at which she hopes I'll announce my betrothal. Dent or Wyatt will do."
    "Not Wyatt!" Hetty looked sympathetic. "He hasn't bothered you this season, has he?"
    "No." Ophelia had seen him dancing attendance on a new girl, giving her that flattering sensation of being important to someone's happiness. She had no way of knowing whether the new girl was destined to be disillusioned, as Ophelia had been. Her pride wanted to believe it, but she didn't wish that suffering on anyone.
    It had been mortifying to discover her vanity and frailty, flaws that were not even original, just the faults laid at every woman's door since Eve. She saw herself as she'd been last season, weak and trusting, allowing intimacies and touches, thinking that because Wyatt let her talk, he was actually interested in what she said.
    He had been the crudest mirror into which she'd ever looked. On a bench in Vauxhall Gardens, her breasts spilling out of her stays, her skirts hiked up about her thighs, showing the tops of her stockings, Wyatt's hand on her knee, she learned Wyatt's true estimation of her. You're one of the hot ones, Ophelia. To think of it again sent an immediate wave of shame through her, hot and then cold.
    Hetty's expression was quite sober. "Should you expose him?"
    "How can I?" She couldn't, of course.
    "Poor Ophelia."
    Ophelia drew a breath and straightened. "I mean to ignore Wyatt, make him feel he has no power over me. But it's difficult. My new groom has more wit than my dance partners."
    "Do you talk to him? I mean, have conversations with him?"
    "Only minor philosophical discourses on the nature of man and beast."
    Hetty laughed. "Be serious, Ophelia. You move in the best circles. There must be a man, men, of your acquaintance who are clever, amiable, and principled."
    "All married, I'm sure." She picked up the little volume of Celia in Search of a Husband. "I suppose this heroine has her pick of eligible gentlemen, but will meet the man of her dreams only when she has been reduced by every vicissitude of fortune to living in a hovel with her dying grandfather in some foreign land."
    Hetty laughed. "After their canoe goes over a steep waterfall and capsizes, flinging them ashore on the edge of the darkest, most extensive forest in America."
    "You see, it's easy for Celia. Now, if she were a duke's daughter, trapped in London society, there would onl y be a score of men to consider. "
    "And your parents have fixed on Dent and Wyatt?"
    "The right lineage, suf ficient income, connections." O phelia split another biscuit and regarded its sweet, warm center.
    "There must be others."
    "Last night I told Ayres that I made it a rule to sleep in a hair shirt. Do you know what he said?"
    "Ophelia, you didn't."
    "It was a test. I wanted to see whether he was listening."
    "What did he say?"
    " 'Interesting!' Handsome men are the worst. A man who catches his own eye in a glass and smiles approvingly! Spare me."
    "Is there no one you might love?" Hetty asked, suddenly quite serious.
    "Love," Ophelia spread