Page 33 of Duke, Actually
“There is not.”
“Hmm. I always think of the royals as doing good works.”
“The royal family is actually in dire financial straits. Their family company, Morneau, makes luxury watches, and the market for those has been declining for a while.”
“Leo has told me some of this.”
“My family, on the other hand, is obscenely rich, and when I inherit the dukedom, that will be my ‘job.’” He sighed.
“You don’t sound thrilled.”
“I am not thrilled. I am, in fact, deeplyunthrilled. But the point is I don’t need to work. I just need to bide my time until my destiny comes crashing down on me.”
“There are reasons to work besides money.”
“Right,” he said decisively, as if she’d answered a test question correctly. “What are those reasons?”
“You said it yourself a minute ago. To have a purpose. For some people it might be doing something they believe does some good in the world.”
“But if I don’t want to work for Aquilla Mining, which for the record does not do any good in the world, what do I do? I don’t have any actual skills.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” She thought back to his Karina Klein story, both the real one and their silly made-up sequel. “You can tell a good story. You can talk anyone into anything.”
“That’s true. I’m not sure how to put that on a résumé.”
“Don’t you have friends who can get you some kind of rich-person job? Seats on boards?”
“Probably.”
He didn’t sound enthused. Maybe he wanted to do something under his own steam. “Well, you don’t have to figure it all out right now.” An idea popped into her head. She paused, letting it settle in her mind. Did she really want to propose this? Doing so would bind them together—if they took it seriously. It would make them into real friends, not just people who’d gone to the ballet and talked on the phone a couple of times.
It only took her a second to conclude that she liked the idea. “Let’s make a pact. By this time a year from now, we’ll be up one job and down one husband.”
He chuckled. “How are you going to do that? What about the custody standoff regarding my namesake?”
“He’s not your namesake. But I think I need a lawyer. Vince and I have been ‘amicable’ so far—can you hear the extreme scare quotes there?—meaning we’re using a mediator. Or not using her, because Vince keeps flaking on meetings. But you know what? Mediation was Vince’s idea. ‘We can act like grown-ups,’ he said. ‘We don’t need lawyers.’ I went for it because at the time, a mediator sounded great. After Vince left, I realized that he never listened to me. Which is a weird thing to realize ex post facto, but it’s true. He would listen, like, superficially, but whenever I said anything real—expressed a preference or tried to talk about a problem—it went in one ear and out the other.”
Max gave a gratifying sniff of disapproval.
“But I’ve decided that mediation is bullshit,” she went on. “One more way Vince is trying to control everything. I want to get divorced, and I don’t want to give Vince my dog, and I don’t think my waiting game is working. It’s time to lawyer up.”
“Good for you. Good for Dog Max. Aka my namesake.”
“He’s not your namesake,” she said again, but laughingly, and only because that was her line.
“We need new names.”
“I’m not giving my dog a new name because I happened to meet you!”
“Not new names, per se. More like nicknames. Name qualifiers.”
“I do sort of think of you as Human Max and Dog Max.”
“But that’s so literal. There’s so much else you can use to distinguish us.”
“Like what? Royal Max and Common Max?”
“No! I was thinking more about physical attributes.”