A Lord and Lace (Regency au! Prince Arthur x oc)

A lord and Lace

AN:
Please note that the following fic is most likely not period accurate. I have done some research, but it has mostly consisted of skim reading regency blogs, Wikipedia articles, articles about fountain history and articles about fountains written in the late regency period ("The Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics", 1809-1828, on archive./org). At it's core, this fic is mostly based on a few contemporary historical romances I've read, and is not intended to be a 100% period accurate piece of fiction, set your expectations accordingly.

Also, this one-shot doesn't have any sketches to go along with it, at least not so far.
~~~

Arthur felt like piss.

It had only been two weeks since his fiancé, or well, ex-fiancé had left to elope with someone else, in France, and he still could hear her last words ringing in his head.

"It just was too much Arthur."

He remember wanting to shout, yell. What! What had been too much!? Was it his love? But how could love be too much? He didn't know it could be that. At least he didn't until she was already gone and he'd as a result spent two nights and days moping around the house. He would have probably stayed there wallowing in his self-pity had it not been for his friends arriving at the urgency of his parents to shake some sense into him again. Which was honestly impressive considering how spread apart they all were.

"What sort of friends would we be if we didn't help out a friend in need just because of a few miles of traveling?" Hans had said to him as he patted his back, poured him some fresh water, and handed him a freshly baked pastry.

Arthur appreciated that, he appreciated his friends trying to help him get back up from the ground, but he still found himself questioning some of their plans on how to do that. Like he was doing as he stood staring over the large ballroom as people started pouring in.

It had been Jacks plan on getting him out to proper society again, making him co-host a party, even though he still wasn't in any particular mood to do that. Still, he supposed it was better then doing nothing, and while he knew he'd already made a fool of himself with the whole situation with his ex-fiancé, he also knew he'd feel like the bigger fool the longer he shut himself away from society. Sure, he knew the situation had reached the papers, but he wasn't ruined, he still had looks and a decent fortune, so there would probably be some beautiful and handsome people in the crowd would happily socialise with him.

Hell, maybe he'd meet the actual love of his life out there! A feeling of hope that he thought he'd lost started sparkling in his chest, and maybe, Jack had been right.

Still, he let himself take one final deep breath, reached into his vest to touch the old handkerchief from his mom for good luck, before walking into the crowd, and making a beeline to the first pretty face he spotted, eager to start making his introductions.

It didn't take too long for him to realise that she was not what he was looking for, but he let the conversation die naturally before expertly lending her over to someone else, and moving on. The next one wasn't it either, nor the next one, though Arthur soon found himself not really caring, so long the conversations were interesting enough, and so long they seemed enamoured enough. He felt a little bad leaving them afterwards, but it wasn't like he'd made any serious signs of wishing to court any of them. It was just talk, and he considered himself to be more of a man of action when it came to courting anyways. Something the ton had been very aware of since the moment he'd entered high society.

It was around the time when the sun begun slowly creeping toward the horizon and was talking to another gentleman, as he spotted her.

While everyone in the party was happy and cheery, her look seemed to be one of gloom, her body stiff and her eyebrows tightly pushed together. She was a plump thing, yet slightly on the taller side, and holding a lacy fan up as if she was trying to hide her face from someone to the side of her. Her dress was an eye catching, frilly and lacy light blue thing with white satin gloves to match. Her dark brown hair was done up in a fancy and tight up-do, with even more lace adorning the hairpiece holding it up, her pale pink face was lightly dashed with a sweet rosy blush and her dark grey eyes looked sunken and haunted, yet also unspeakably piercing. And they were looking right at him.