Shall We Dance?. Kasey Michaels

      Praise for

      KASEY MICHAELS

      “Michaels has done it again…Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”

      —Publishers Weekly, starred review on The Butler Did It

      “Using wit and romance with a master’s skill, Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

      —New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

      “If you want emotion, humor and characters you can love, you want a story by Kasey Michaels.”

      —National bestselling author Joan Hohl

      “Sparkling with Michaels’s characteristically droll repartee and lovable lead characters, this Regency-set romance enchants with its skillful treatment of a familiar formula.”

      —Publishers Weekly on Someone To Love

      “Michaels demonstrates her flair for creating likable protagonists who possess chemistry, charm and a penchant for getting into trouble. In addition, her dialogue and descriptions are full of humor.”

      —Publishers Weekly on This Must Be Love

      Kasey Michaels

      Shall We Dance?

      To Tracy Farrell,

       with many thanks.

      Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly,

       lavender’s green;

      When I am king, dilly dilly,

       you shall be queen.

      —Anonymous

      Contents

      A Brief Primer

      Choosing Up Sides

      Let The Games Begin

      Shall We Dance?

      Endings and Beginnings

      Author’s Note

      A Brief Primer

      Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,

      Kissed the girls and made them cry…

      —Anonymous

      IN 1795, OVERBURDENED with debt, not at all in good odour with his family, Parliament, the populace—or his tailor—His Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales, known also as Florizel, Prinney and “that extravagant jackanapes,” at last succumbed to pressure from all of the above and agreed to a marriage with his first cousin, Princess Caroline Amelia of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.

      That the prince had earlier entered into a morganatic marriage with Maria Fitzherbert, both a commoner and a Catholic, definitely two huge no-no’s for the prince, was deemed irrelevant.

      That the princess Caroline was, at twenty-six, already rather long in the tooth for a bride, loud, overblown, often filthy—both in her language and in her personal hygiene—was overlooked by the Parliament that would settle the prince’s debts if only he would marry the woman, settle down and for goodness sake provide an heir.

      Ah, the sacrifices one must make for one’s country. And yet, ta-ta Maria, hello princess (and at least temporary solvency). Men can be so fickle.

      On the occasion of their first meeting, and already set to marry in three days, the prince took one look at his blowsy betrothed and said to an aide, “Harris, I am not well. Pray fetch me a glass of brandy.” And then he retired from the room, leaving the princess to comment to that same aide, “I find him very stout and by no means as handsome as his portrait.” In another age Harris would have written a very profitable book about the whole thing….

      Meanwhile, back with the prince and his bride, it would be a vast overstatement to suggest that the marriage that followed proved to have been Fashioned In Heaven.

      Love match or not, the pair managed to produce an heir, Princess Charlotte, and then they toddled off in disparate directions, the prince back to his normal pursuits (back to his middle-aged Maria and to spending money), the princess all but banished from the palace and her child (to become the darling of the citizenry and to spend lots of money).

      In short, they both went about making total fools of themselves, living outrageously, spending prodigiously and openly disparaging each other in print and in deed. Since the prince had turned, politically, to the Tories, the princess, naturally, gravitated to the Whigs. Their only connection at all, their daughter, Charlotte, died in childbirth while Caroline was out of the country being as naughty as she could be, although never quite naughty enough for the prince to gain the divorce he so desperately desired.

      But in 1820, George III, long ill, died, and suddenly Florizel was the king. His first thought, after rejoicing that his allowance would be raised, had to be that, if he was now the king, then—E-gods!—the hated Caroline was now his queen consort.

      This was not to be borne!

      The first thing the prince did was to delay his formal coronation for a year, launching a kingly demand that a way be found to discredit the new queen for her personal behavior, paving the way for that longed-for divorce.

      The first thing Caroline did was to have a launch of her own—setting sail from Italy to England, to claim her rights as queen, dilly-dilly.

      History reports what happened next, but imagination conjures its own scenarios….

      Choosing Up Sides

      Birds of a feather, flock together,

      And so will pigs and swine.

      Rats and mice, will have their choice,

      And so will I have mine.

      —Anonymous

      PERRY SHEPHERD, Earl of Brentwood, was bored with being bored, which was the only way possible for him to reconcile himself to the fact that he had knocked on the door of his uncle, Sir Willard Humphrey, Minister of the Admiralty, Retired.

      The earl had been rather adroitly avoiding his uncle for quite nearly three weeks. And he would have continued to ignore the man’s pleas to meet with him if not for the fact that it was already July, the London Season was over and everyone was still very much in superficial mourning for the late king, so that Town was dreadfully dull.

      Still, if he left for the country without seeing his uncle, Perry knew the man would follow him. The only thing worse than being trapped in a room with Uncle Willie was being trapped on an estate with Uncle Willie, with no bolt-hole available.

      So here he was, in his uncle’s black-and-white tiled foyer, stripping off his gloves, handing over his cane and removing the curly brimmed beaver from his blond head, relaxing the square jaw that was the only thing (save the scar on his cheek, which was, by and large, more attractive than detracting) keeping this green-eyed, near god of a man from being too pretty.

      He adjusted his cuffs, quickly surveyed his reflection in the gold-veined mirror on the wall and knew that his new jacket suited his tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure admirably.

      Goodness, but he was a sight, not that his uncle would notice.

      “Ready, Hawkins. Shoulders back, loins girded, belly only faintly queasy. We may proceed. Take me to mine uncle.”

      “Ah, My Lord, Sir Willard will be that pleased, if I may say so, begging your indulgence at my frank speech, sir,” Hawkins, butler to the great man, probably since before The Flood, said as he ushered Perry down the long hallway that led to his employer’s private study.

      “Pining for me, is he, Hawkins? I suppose I should be flattered,”