By the King's Design by Christine Trent Page B

prince?
    And for that matter, how was a curtsy to a prince actually executed?
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    Lady Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford, glowed with pleasure over the note she’d just received. Breaking open the prince’s personal seal, she scanned his scrawled handwriting, which promised that a very special, no, an exquisite, gift would be arriving at Manchester House before his own appearance later that evening. Could she ensure Lord Hertford was otherwise engaged?
    Her husband, Francis, would certainly oblige the prince. Her relationship with George Hanover was in its fifth year, and her husband had been very obliging for four of those years, ever since the prince’s private secretary had revealed the affair to Francis and Isabella had to explain the great benefit her special closeness to the prince would mean to the family name.
    Francis had been much more understanding after that.
    Isabella put the note down to finish her toilette. Waving her maid away from the dressing table, Isabella pulled her ring box toward her.
    Now what kind of bauble might the prince be sending over? She’d recently hinted that the sapphire necklace she’d seen in Rundell and Bridge’s window would set off her coloring well. If he was obliging her in that, then she must be ready with a bare neck and perfectly bejeweled wrists and fingers.
    Isabella pulled out a ring containing a plump pearl surrounded by diamonds and placed it on her right forefinger. Except that it wouldn’t slide on. Must be the heat swelling her fingers. She pulled out a different ring, this one a large square of jade flanked by a single round diamond. It, too, refused to be worn.
    Had she really gained so much weight lately? She put a hand to her cheek. Certainly it was fleshier than it had been ten years ago, but wasn’t the prince just as rotund? After all, she might be nearing fifty-three, but he was just five years her junior and required many more stays and ties than she did.
    And he seemed to enjoy her stoutness. She smiled in satisfaction as she closed the ring box. She’d leave her wrists and fingers bare, the better to display her new necklace, with its fine loops and swirls of tiny, glittering diamonds punctuated by large oval sapphires across her ample bosom.
    No sizing required.
    When two of George’s liveried servants arrived an hour later, she stood serenely by the window in her bedchamber, a practiced air of nonchalance about her.
    This air was swept away when the men entered, not with a small casket to hold her anticipated jeweled delight, but struggling with an immense, cloth-wrapped monstrosity. They propped it against the fireplace mantel.
    â€œWhat is this?” she demanded. “Surely this is a mistake.”
    â€œNo, madam,” said the shorter of the two men. “His Highness said specifically to be sure we brought this today.” The two men bowed their way out of the room.
    Servant humility was always a good assurance of her continued favor with the prince.
    She examined the package. Obviously a painting. And life-sized, too. She and Lord Hertford were great art collectors, but had enough fortune to buy whatever pleased them. Didn’t the prince know by now that jewels and titles established a mistress’s special position with her royal lover, not some dust-collecting, fifteenth-century painting of the Madonna?
    Yet ... what if this was not the Blessed Virgin? What if it was the prince himself? Perhaps he’d personally done a sitting just for her. Ah, now that would be of particular value. A painting to hang at one end of their dining room so that all of their guests could feast on it.
    She removed a pair of snips from her dressing table and carefully clipped away the ties holding the cotton wrapped around the painting. She took several steps back to admire the portrait of the prince.
    Except it wasn’t the prince.
    No, not at all. In fact, who in Hades was this?
    For it was a full-length