Chapter 1 – Gone
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She was gone. He had looked all over. But she was gone. Quite gone.
Prince Wilfred impatiently tossed aside the hamper he had hastily packed, scattering exotic fruits, various delicate pastries and succulent pies quite everywhere, and breaking several bottles of gently expensive lemonade, and threw off the footman’s tunic, grumbling to himself.
“What a silly idea that disguise was!”
Whose stupid idea was that anyway? Oh yes – his own. Not in the least bit mollified by this, he walked angrily up to a random footman, (a real footman this time), grabbing him by his tunic, and gesticulating wildly in the vague direction of the great Palace doors.
“Find her, damn you!”,
he barked at him, heedless of the man’s rank, heedless that neither this footman nor any other of the Palace-pampered set would easily be able to even find his way around the city, let alone isolate one single woman out of the thousands that had thronged there that night, much less when no-one knew which particular woman he was actually talking about.
Finally, he took a deep breath, he calmed down, he smoothed back the man’s rumpled tunic.
“I’m sorry”, he apologised to the footman.
“I’m sorry”, he smiled ruefully at the shocked silence around him.
“I’m so very sorry.” And with that, he turned on his heel and sharply exited.
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Prince Wilfred found that he could not sleep that night. Or perhaps it was more that he had not actually tried. He endlessly replayed the events of the ball to himself. Was it that she had truly been that captivating? Or was it more that she was so different to the courtiers and minor princesses of his acquaintance? It was a cliché, of course, to describe them as being vapid and shallow. Some of the Royal ladies of his acquaintance were quite, quite lovely, and sincere and kind too. So, what was it about this particular woman, a commoner, that had so enchanted him? He sighed to himself, once again, and tossed over in his bed. He realised that it was all about the context. In his somewhat bitter experience, whenever there was a “lady of the Palace”, no matter how sincerely lovely or genuine the lady herself might be, lurking somewhere not too far in the background there would be at least one power-hungry father, or mother, or brother, or uncle. More likely however, there was a whole contingent of them. And sure enough, if ever Prince Wilfred made the mistake of smiling too brightly at any one individual lady, or otherwise expressing his interest, this power-hungry group or individual would always pop up just in time to try to carve out some power for themselves in the negotiations, not caring in the slightest about using their daughter, sister, or niece as a pawn. So now Prince Wilfred spontaneously avoided any Palace ladies, as if he had developed a profound allergy to them all. He had found that it did not matter if he was dealing with foreign royalty or with local courtiers – exactly the same power play followed them all. Now the problem was that he was growing increasingly lonely, and he yearned for a beautiful companion with whom he could share his heart, as well as what he called the “madness of his world”, but he just did not know whom he could trust…
Next Chapter – Preparing for the First Ball
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