Page 8 of Duke, Actually

“Fascinating,” James said, and he actually seemed to mean it. “What university are you at?”

“Oh, I’m purely an amateur,” Max said with a dismissive wave and a self-deprecating shake of his head. Dani was pretty sure, given the way his head stayed turned a beat too long, that the gesture was designed to let him survey the room. “Too busy with matters of state and diplomacy these days to muck about in academia,” he added.

Dani had to bite back a smile. That might be true if the “diplomacy” he was talking about was happening between the sheets. She had read one tabloid account of him “romancing” the US ambassador to the Vatican, who, while single, was supposed to be a devout Catholic.

“Your Professor Martinez has been advising me,” Max went on. “She’s been a tremendous help, not just as a local contact, but intellectually.” Max returned his hand to her back and beamed down at her. All she could do was goggle at him. “Shall we find somewhere to sit?” he inquired mildly.

“Sure.”

That had the effect of dismissing James, who moved on to chat with someone else, pulling Sinéad along with him. Alone again, Max said to Dani, “May I buy you another drink before we sit? Perhaps something stronger?”

“Stronger is forafterthe party,” she said quietly. She rarely drank at these things, wanting to keep her wits about her. “Stronger is for after I get tenure.”

She let him lead her to an unoccupied sofa, feeling the attention of everyone in the room. He whispered in her ear as they went, “Vince and—sorry, what was her name? Sacramento?—looked like they were on their way over to the bar, so that was a little extraction. Let’s let them wonder a little longer who your devastatingly handsome companion is.”

Dani rolled her eyes as Max sat too close to her—he smelled like peppery pine—but she was smiling over the Sacramento joke, which was uncharitable. “Was that alltrue? I thought your degree was fake—a means of postponing your engagement to Marie.”

“The degree was real. The length of time it took to complete was, perhaps, exaggerated.” He took a sip of wine, unperturbed by her questioning or by the palpable sensation of everyone watching them. “And there really is an Eldovian folk heroine who spent time in Cambridge.”

“What was her name?” She was suspicious, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Karina Klein,” he said without hesitation.

“Never heard of her.”

“I don’t think anyone has outside of Eldovia.”

“Tell me more.”

He did. For the next ten minutes, she forgot she was at a faculty party as Max launched into a tale of heroism and sacrifice. “When I was still at Cambridge ‘finishing my thesis,’ I found an issue of the student newspaper from Karina’s college from before the end of the Michaelmas term in 1943. It was a roundup of sorts of where everyone was spending the holidays, and Karina mentioned a trip to New York. I wondered then, and I still do, why in 1943, a young, single woman—a student—would flit off to New York for her Christmas holidays.”

“So you are truly here to investigate!”

“God, no. I’m here for a huge party and to avoid my family.”

That was both unsurprising and oddly disappointing. “What are you—”

“Hello, Dani.”

Oh, shit. She’d forgotten about Vince.

She’d forgotten about Vince.Sending a message to Vince was half the point of being here tonight. She’d been planning to pretend that she no longer gave him any real estate in her brain. But thanks to Max and his storytelling abilities, it had actually been true for a while. How remarkable.

Vince was wearing his own khaki pants and button-down, though he had a sports coat over his—he’d always been better dressed than everyone else. Berkeley, clinging to his arm, looked stunning in a white jumpsuit with a plunging neckline.

“Vince, Berkeley, meet my friend Max.”

“The duke, right?” Berkeley said, eyes wide as Max stood to greet them.

“Alas, a mere baron,” Max corrected. Wow, the Depraved Duke nickname must have everyone thinking Max was actually a duke.

“What brings you to New York?” Vince asked.

“Just visiting,” Max said smoothly, sitting back down and sliding his arm around Dani’s shoulder in such a way that implied it washerhe was visiting. “New York at Christmastime has so much to recommend it.”

Dani had the sudden notion that Max’s answer to the “What brings you to New York?” question was changing based on whatever answer would paint her in the most flattering light. With herdepartmental chair, it had been an intellectual mystery Dani was helping him solve. With her shitty ex, it washer.

He was turning up his accent, too, in a way that seemed to accentuate his fanciness. Dani had had a crash course in all things Eldovian when Leo had been swept off his feet by Princess Marie and had learned that both German and French were official languages. If pressed, Dani would have said Max tended toward French over German, with perhaps a bit of British thrown in, perhaps owing to his years at Cambridge. But really, his accent sounded vaguely European-posh, like Madonna in her “putting on airs” phase.