The Ice Princess

Three and a half stars. The final novella in the Princes trilogy focuses on Coral Smythe, the beautiful courtesan from the previous books who became the madam of Aphrodite's Grotto, known as Aphrodite to the men who frequent the brothel. There is one man who comes to the brothel that she can't work out, Captain Isaac Wargate, a naval captain who disdains both Coral and her women, coming in only to verbally spar with Coral and collect his errant men. Until one day the new majority owner of the brothel auctions a week with Aphrodite as the prize in a game of loo. Isaac Wargate is strangely drawn to the elusive Aphrodite and wants to get to know her better, despite her profession but he can see she is skittish and so he plays a long seduction game trying to reach the woman behind the (literal) mask. I enjoyed this, I thought it could have been called the Captain and the Courtesan and frankly I got tired of the fairy stories which unfold at the start of each chapter after the first novel, but overall this was a compact tale which drew me in and finished off the series nicely.