Page 36 of Duke, Actually

“You, my friend”—he said it back because it was such a satisfying word—“Are anything but common. You are also about to hear a story nobody else knows.”

“Ooh. Hit me.”

“The so-called Depraved Duke incident was not what everyone thinks. It started when I met a woman at the Cannes Film Festival. She invited me to her yacht, and I accepted readily. Who doesn’t want to spend a day on a yacht in the French Mediterranean with a lovely, creative woman? She was a playwright.”

“You have a thing for artists.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The painter in the other room?”

“Ah.” He considered her theory. “It’s more that I find people who make things interesting, especially things that make other people think, like plays or art or books.”

“But most people who make things like that are poor. I’m surprised a playwright can afford a yacht.”

“Ah, see. That is why you are going to do well when you decide to pull the trigger on your sex app. You’re smarter than I am. It turned out the playwright could not afford a yacht. Her hedge-fund-manager husband, who fancied himself a film producer,could.”

“Ah. You didn’t know she was married.”

“I did not. I assumed. Which I no longer do.”

“So, what? You make them sign an affidavit?”

“No. I merely ascertain their status and communicate that I am only interested in a singular encounter—that’s the next rule. I want to make sure they know what they’re getting.”

“They’re getting it once?”

“Well, perhaps not strictly once. I am very good at it, remember.” She snorted, and he laughed. “My point is more that I don’t want anyone thinking they can catch the baron. I don’t want to encourage husband-hunting fantasies.”

“Which is ironic because you are a baron in need of a wife.”

“Do you want to hear this story or not?”

“I do. I definitely do.”

“All right. We’re on the boat. I assume we are alone. Because it’s a boat. At sea. Suddenly, though, we hear the sound of a motor, and it’s growing louder. The playwright begins to panic. It’s her husband, she says, approaching on a speedboat. No sooner has she said this than we can hear him boarding. Unfortunately for me, we are poolside, we are naked, and our clothing is below deck. There is, however, a discarded article of clothing near the pool that I only later learned was called a ‘onesie.’ The playwright, it turns out, has a teenage son who is accomplished at video games and plays them on some kind of online gaming platform while people spectate. He does so wearing these ‘onesies.’ So what do I do?”

“You put on the onesie. Oh my god.”

“Indeed. And it gets worse. The playwright stops the frenzied panicking she’s been doing and starts chanting, ‘He’s going to kill me,’ over and over, such that I start to worry that perhaps she’s being literal. So I jump overboard.”

“No!”

“Yes! I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death.” He’d been trying to make his tale entertaining, but he sobered, remembering his panic when he started to fear that the husband was going to become violent. “We weren’t that far from the shore, soit wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds. So, to return to the narrative, over the edge I go. I swim to the shore, and I walk to my hotel.”

“In a onesie,” she said through laughter.

“Just so.”

“I wonder why there aren’t more pictures.”

“That is entirely thanks to Mr. Benz, the king’s equerry. Did you meet him last summer?”

“I did. He seems very... thorough.”

“Yes, he’s ex-military. I called Marie after I made it back to the hotel, and she put him on the case. He has mob boss–style abilities to make problems go away. Thereshouldhave been more photos. There should have been close-ups showing that the onesie was, in fact, printed with tiny unicorns.”

She burst out laughing, and he was genuinely glad his pathetic story was making her laugh. It almost made it worth it.