Her princess at midnight, p.1
Her Princess at Midnight, page 1
HER PRINCESS AT MIDNIGHT
REGENCY FAIRY TALES
ERICA RIDLEY
CONTENTS
Also by Erica Ridley
Her Princess at Midnight
Back Cover Description
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Thank You
Free Books for you
The Perks of Loving a Wallflower
Sneak Peek
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
Copyright © 2023 Erica Ridley
Original anthology: Pride Not Prejudice
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design © Dar Albert
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
ALSO BY ERICA RIDLEY
The 12 Dukes of Christmas:
Once Upon a Duke
Kiss of a Duke
Wish Upon a Duke
Never Say Duke
Dukes, Actually
The Duke’s Bride
The Duke’s Embrace
The Duke’s Desire
Dawn With a Duke
One Night With a Duke
Ten Days With a Duke
Forever Your Duke
Making Merry
The Wild Wynchesters:
The Governess Gambit (FREE!)
The Duke Heist
The Perks of Loving a Wallflower
Nobody’s Princess
My Rogue to Ruin
The Heist Club series:
The Rake Mistake
The Modiste Mishap
Rogues to Riches:
Lord of Chance
Lord of Pleasure
Lord of Night
Lord of Temptation
Lord of Secrets
Lord of Vice
Lord of the Masquerade
The Dukes of War:
The Viscount’s Tempting Minx
The Earl’s Defiant Wallflower
The Captain’s Bluestocking Mistress
The Major’s Faux Fiancée
The Brigadier’s Runaway Bride
The Pirate's Tempting Stowaway
The Duke's Accidental Wife
A Match, Unmasked
All I Want
Gothic Love Stories:
Too Wicked to Kiss
Too Sinful to Deny
Too Tempting to Resist
Too Wanton to Wed
Too Brazen to Bite
Regency Fairy Tales:
Bianca & the Huntsman
Her Princess at Midnight
Magic & Mayhem:
Kissed by Magic
Must Love Magic
Smitten by Magic
The Siren’s Retreat Quartet
A Tryst by the Sea by Grace Burrowes
An Affair by the Sea by Erica Ridley
A Spinster by the Sea by Grace Burrowes
Love Letters by the Sea by Erica Ridley
The Wicked Dukes Club:
One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley
One Night of Surrender by Darcy Burke
One Night of Passion by Erica Ridley
One Night of Scandal by Darcy Burke
One Night to Remember by Erica Ridley
One Night of Temptation by Darcy Burke
Lords in Love
Beguiling the Duke by Darcy Burke
Taming the Rake by Erica Ridley
Romancing the Heiress by Darcy Burke
Defying the Earl by Erica Ridley
Matching the Marquess by Darcy Burke
Chasing the Bride by Erica Ridley
Undressing the Duke by Erica Ridley
Missing an Erica Ridley book?
Grab the latest edition of the free, downloadable and printable complete book list by series here:
https://ridley.vip/booklist
HER PRINCESS AT MIDNIGHT
What if Cinderella fell for the handsome prince’s… sister?
Cynthia lives a life of drudgery, toiling for her stepmother and stepsisters without receiving gratitude or pay. Every day is the same… until a royal retinue sweeps into town, inviting every unwed maiden to vie for the hand of the visiting prince. The moment she lays eyes on the prince’s beautiful sister, Cynthia is smitten. She’s never been to a ball, and she’s determined not to miss this one. But when her family refuses to allow her to attend—not that Cynthia even has a gown to wear—it will take a miracle to escape the attic and catch the eye of the princess who holds the key to her heart!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I could not have written this book without the invaluable support of many others. Huge thanks go out to Elyssa Patrick and Erica Monroe. You are the best!
I also want to thank my wonderful VIP readers, our Historical Romance Book Club on Facebook, and my fabulous early reader team. Your enthusiasm makes the romance happen.
Thank you so much!
CHAPTER 1
Miss Cynthia Talbott’s muscles ached from spending the hours since dawn down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor spotless whilst her stepmother and stepsisters lay abed.
Task complete—for now—Cynthia hurried to the scullery to begin the preparations for their breakfast. The sun was rising high, and the sleeping ladies usually awoke by noon. No two of them ever wanted the same dish, causing even more work in the kitchen to keep them from berating her or flinging the unwanted delicacies to the floor. Again.
Cynthia had never dreamt she should one day be an exhausted, bedraggled maid-of-all-work in her childhood home. As a young girl, she had never even wondered how their French chef created his masterful sauces and marvelous pâte à choux. She certainly hadn’t imagined that after the death of her beloved, humble-born mother five years prior, Father would remarry a widowed lady with expensive tastes and two daughters of her own… Or that the following year, after Father’s subsequent death, the three women would spend every penny of his life savings with breathtaking speed, until every servant had gone elsewhere and Cynthia was forced to become a scullion in her own home.
She would have left without hesitation if she had any money to her name—and if she could bear to abandon her parents’ home and the remaining memory-imbued furnishings and keepsakes to the careless hands of her stepmother and stepsisters.
“Cynthia, you snail!” screamed a voice from the dining room. “Where are my eggs?”
That was Dorothea, the elder of Cynthia’s two stepsisters and impossible to please—making her the darling of her mother. The screaming was often more to appease Lady Tremaine than to torture Cynthia, although it generated the same result. Had the eggs and kippers been ready five minutes earlier, Dorothea would have pronounced them “old” and “too cold” and sent Cynthia to begin all over again.
“Coming!” she called out as she hurried the heavy tray into the dining room.
Stasia was seated at the table as well, her pale face propped up by both hands, and her red curls awry. The sisters had spent the past night at a ball, and Stasia appeared the worse for wear. Perhaps the provided supper had not agreed with her. Their mother, Lady Tremaine, appeared to still be abed.
A small blessing. As was the trio’s absence from home the evening before. As much as Cynthia dreamed of attending a fancy ball one day, dressed like a princess, a few stolen hours of peace and quiet in which to catch up on her work and take a much-needed nap felt like a gift from the heavens.
She served generous portions onto the sisters’ pre-warmed plates. “Here everything is, hot and fresh, as you like it.”
Dorothea poked at her eggs with her fork, testing their consistency for some failing to report back to her mother—who always asked for the latest ways Cynthia had failed to live up to expectations.
Stasia simply groaned and dropped her face lower into her hands, ignoring the repast altogether.
Cynthia’s stomach growled as she set the remaining dishes on the sideboard, though she knew better than to take a seat at the table.
Dorothea’s black cat, Morningstar, darted out from beneath the sideboard.
“Rowr!” he screeched, clawing at Cynthia’s slipper as he passed.
“Leave Morningstar alone!” Dorothea scolded Cynthia, despite her not having stepped anywhere near his paws or tail, scooping the demon feline onto her lap in order to feed him bits of her kippers.
“Please scream at her quietly,” Stasia mumbled into her palms.
The sound of trumpets blaring at a distance startled Cynthia from arranging the dishes. “What was that?”
Dorothea rolled her eyes. “The royal parade.”
“How dare they,” Stasia moaned. “It’s barely past noon.”
“How dare who?” Cynthia asked, befuddled. “The Prince Regent?”
“Not Prinn
Cynthia was no featherwit. She had once boasted the finest tutors in London. It was not her fault that once the staff had been dismissed, there was no one left for Cynthia to chat with. Her only interaction with the outside world came from reading scraps of discarded newspapers and overhearing snippets of gossip between her stepmother and stepsisters.
“Come on, Stasia.” Dorothea threw a bun at her sister. “We cannot miss him!”
“Cynthia didn’t brush my hair,” Stasia protested, lifting her face from her hands.
“Put on a bonnet,” Dorothea snapped. “Or stay here with her, whilst the prince falls in love with me.”
“Is he meant to select his bride this afternoon?” Cynthia asked.
“At tonight’s grand ball, unless he falls in love beforehand.” Dorothea dragged her sister out through the front door to the street, where a crowd was already forming.
Cynthia followed, careful to stay a few feet behind, lest the duo notice her presence and send her back into the kitchens.
Luckily, Dorothea and Stasia—like the rest of the gathering crowd—were too busy jostling each other and raising up on tiptoes to notice a scullery maid in a patched and tattered blue-and-brown dress lagging shyly behind.
Soldiers and musicians marched by first, followed by eight white stallions pulling an enormous, gilded open carriage. The crowd roared its approval at their first glimpse of the royal passengers. Several women shrieked in excitement. A few young ladies swooned at the sight of the Italian prince.
Even Cynthia’s mouth fell open in awe.
“Who is that?” she blurted, slack-jawed and blushing.
“Prince Azzurro,” a young woman to her right breathed dreamily. “He’s come to select a bride from the best England has to offer. I hope he chooses me. Have you ever seen eyes so blue, hair so black, and shoulders so wide?”
“Not him.” Cynthia pointed as surreptitiously as she could. “There, seated next to him.”
“That’s his spinster sister, Princess Ammalia. She’s here to help him find his match.”
Dorothea spun about and caught Cynthia staring. “Don’t think for a second that his royal highness will spare a glance for the likes of you. At that ball, either Stasia or I will win the hand of the prince. You won’t even leave the scullery.”
Cynthia couldn’t care less about the prince. Her eyes dazzled and her stomach filled with butterflies at the sight of the resplendent Princess Ammalia…
Whose black-lashed, bright blue gaze had just locked with Cynthia’s.
CHAPTER 2
The horses, like Princess Ammalia’s heart, came to a sudden stop.
She did not know what had impeded the progress of the royal stallions this time, but she did know exactly what had caused her own heart to fail, then to burst back into motion, beating twice as swiftly as before. She gazed out of the carriage in wonder.
Thousands of onlookers flooded the streets in the hopes of glimpsing visiting royalty. The teeming masses were what had clogged the escape path—er, parade route—the horses had been following. But it wasn’t fear of a surging crowd that set Ammalia’s blood pumping faster.
It was a woman.
She was toward the back of the throng, half-hidden from view. It didn’t matter. She had the sort of ethereal beauty that could be felt from yards away and in the pitch black of night, if necessary.
It wasn’t the golden blond hair or the plump rose-petal pink lips that had caught Ammalia’s eye. It wasn’t even the high cheekbones or the becoming flush of color rising up her peaches-and-cream skin.
It was the wide blue eyes that had latched onto Ammalia’s own, as if this woman, too, had felt the connection between them as strong as a thick metal chain capable of hauling a ship back to shore.
Anchored in place by eyes like those, Ammalia couldn’t dream of going anywhere else. If the mass of jostling onlookers parted enough to let the horses trot anew, Ammalia would throw herself down from this carriage and elbow her way through the crowd until she reached—
“What are you looking at?” her brother Zurri asked with interest.
“Nothing,” Ammalia said quickly.
But she could no more tear her enthralled eyes from this captivating woman than she could rip her pounding heart free from her chest.
Zurri followed the direction of his sister’s gaze. “Who? Where?”
She didn’t answer.
Their father, the king, was in the carriage behind theirs, no doubt watching his children closely. Not because he feared scandal—this entire spectacle was because the king loved to be the center of attention, at any cost. The bigger the drama, the better.
Nor did his majesty worry about the future of his only daughter, whom he’d given up caring about at the disappointing moment of her birth. Neither Ammalia nor her theoretical children were of import. It was the male line that counted. Her brother was the future king. Rather than arrange a political alliance, Father was even allowing Zurri to select the most beautiful bride in all of England and align the two nations that way.
Ammalia, as the elder sibling and worthless female, was supposed to be finding this enviable match for her brother.
Zurri was, as always, the center of attention—just as he liked it. He needn’t even be charming. Being a prince was more than enough for women everywhere to fall in love on sight.
“I don’t care to know who’s caught your eye,” Zurri said petulantly, as though he were a child of six years, rather than a man of six-and-twenty. “I don’t want anything or anyone that pleases you. You have terrible taste.”
That was the rumor, anyway. Ammalia wouldn’t have had to be the twenty-seven-year-old spinster sister, if she’d bothered to accept any of the many offers for her hand that cropped up repeatedly over the years, often from highly sought-after gentlemen.
Duke of this, Lord of that, His Royal Highness such-and-such. Ammalia was bored by them all, no matter how handsome and wealthy and well-connected they were. She didn’t like men, and never had. Fortunately, as a royal princess, the one concession afforded her by her father was that she needn’t marry any man against her will.
Of course, what Ammalia willed was to marry the woman of her dreams. This scenario was not a thing that existed—a publicly condoned Sapphic royal match wasn’t even the stuff of fairy tales—but that hadn’t stopped her from wanting it viscerally. She longed for love. To find a happy-ever-after with a woman who made her feel not unlike the one whose celestial gaze was still locked on Ammalia’s.
Outside of her family, however, no one knew about her preferences. Although a princess could get away with almost anything, Father had warned her not to embroil the family in gossip or to draw attention away from her brother until after Zurri was safely wed, and the alliance with England secure.
Until then, Ammalia’s wishes didn’t come second—they didn’t matter at all.
“All right, I give up,” Zurri groused. “Please tell me who it is you cannot look away from.”
Because her brother had said please, Ammalia gestured in the general direction of her mystery woman. Not too precisely, of course. With luck, one of the other screaming young ladies flanking her should catch Zurri’s eye.
Unfortunately, Ammalia was not in luck.
“The one with the handkerchief tied to her head and the smudge of dirt on her face?” he asked in disbelief. “I suppose she’d be halfway passable, if she weren’t dressed in rags.”
