2012 thriller novelette, prequel to the series Her Royal Spyness.
"Georgie", cousin to the king but really of no importance, is coming
to the end of her Season with no offers. She doesn't particularly
fancy Prince Otto of Prussia, but going to a Halloween Ball (an
American innovation) should be harmless enough…
This was actually published between books 5 and 6 of the series,
but I think doesn't prefigure things too much: knowing one particular
name would slightly damage the mystery of book 1, but it wasn't
particularly mysterious anyway. Meanwhile there's a sense of fun even
while events in the outside world are being rather hard work (and for
that matter while there's no money to be had at home).
"Wasn't Otto the mad one?" Fig asked. "Didn't they have to lock him
away?"
"He was all right when I met him," Binky said. "We played trains
under the table and he wasn't foaming at the mouth or anything. Of
course I was only about five at the time."
Wallis Simpson turns up, at this point still married so that's all
right isn't it, and the whole business of the ball is rather more
tawdry than Georgie expected (a certain amount of sneaking off,
perhaps, but not wholesale). Most of the excitement happens out of
her sight, and I suspect this is intended more as a reward for
dedicated readers than as an introduction to the series, but it should
work reasonably well as the latter too.
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