Dinner With Prince Turns From Dream to Nightmare

Today’s travel tip: Next time you’re in a beach bungalow in Hawaii enjoying a quiet dinner with a handsome English prince, draw the blinds. Melissa M. Lincoln may well wish she had.

The Newport Beach socialite, 40, on Tuesday sued her estranged husband for allegedly invading her privacy and making her the subject of British scandal sheets, who are calling her the “hottest woman in England,” according to a Daily Mirror editor.

She contends in the suit that husband J.D. Lincoln, 63, had her videotaped with Prince Andrew, whom she met on an airplane. She was “charmed,” her lawyer says, and had him over for dinner at a bungalow in Hawaii in June. A few weeks later, the suit contends, she found herself pursued by relentless British tabloids and discovered that her husband had hired a private investigator to spy on her, because he thought she might have an affair with Kevin Costner.

Lincoln’s husband had told the newspapers about the rendezvous, she says, sullying her name by giving them details about their sex life, nude photos of her, and insinuating she had had sex with the prince--a claim she flatly denies.

“This was a very, very big story in England,” said Victoria Newton, the correspondent for the British tabloid the Sun who wrote the original story. “From a distance, she is quite elegant. . . . And of course Prince Andrew is single now. I don’t know what happened in that room that night, all you could see in the video was that they greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek. . . . Everybody is interested.”

Although Lincoln is not filing for divorce, the lawsuit said her husband “acted with a wanton and reckless disregard of her rights and feelings.” The suit also alleges that her husband physically and emotionally abused her during the course of their marriage since 1992. She is seeking unspecified damages.

Lincoln’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said that the mini-scandal is “objectionable and hurtful,” and that British reporters would not leave Lincoln alone. “They were at her [son’s] preschool, waiting for her. We did not want this story to come over here.”

According to the suit, Prince Andrew had telephoned Lincoln five times during her June trip to Hawaii. They arranged dinner in her bungalow on the beach. The prince arrived with five bodyguards. They ate. Later, the two went for a walk.

During the evening, according to those who wrote about the story, bodyguards caught a private investigator outside in the bushes who was videotaping the evening for J.D. Lincoln. The private eye apparently was there because J.D. Lincoln feared his wife would have a tryst with Kevin Costner, the tabloids reported.

“She had talked of her love for Kevin Costner,” J.D. Lincoln explained to one British tabloid. “They had met at a party and she was infatuated. She promised me she wouldn’t sleep with him . . . but I didn’t believe her.”

Allred would not comment as to whether her client had ever met Costner.