“There was a cessation of hostilities in 1898,” Max went on. “After that, the animosity was limited to fighting each other in Parliament and snubbing each other at parties. But then Marie’s father and mine ended up at the same French boarding school and struck up a clandestine friendship. Our family supplies some of the trace minerals used in the watches the royal family’s company makes.”

“So aren’t the houses ‘united’ at that point? Why insist on marrying off their children?”

“I’m not defending it by any means, but I think they liked the idea of grandchildren in common. There’s nothing to seal a newfound truce like a baby. Anyway, you’re post-love, aren’t you?”

Post-men was what Dani had been saying, but she supposed it amounted to the same thing.

“And you’re a scholar of the nineteenth century,” Max went on. “You of all people should understand that the idea of marrying for love—and the idea of romantic love itself—is a modern construct. In many ways, the aristocracy hasn’t modernized. Political marriages are still common in our circles.”

“But Marie bucked the trend.”

“She did indeed.” He looked so wistful all of a sudden that Dani half wondered if the Depraved Duke was carrying a torch for Marie. His insistence that he was happy for her and that theirs had never been a love match had seemed genuine, but she was also getting the sense that something deeper was going on with him.

But she didn’t know how to ask that. “So you grew up in a castle in this place called Riems.” She started to make a mental note to google it but checked herself. She had already googled Max. She wasn’t going to google his castle, too. A person had to have standards.

“No, no. It is rather a large old house, though.”

“You still live there?” As much as she loved her parents, she had no desire to live with them. But she supposed the size of the “rather large old house” might be a mitigating factor.

“I live alone in a cottage on the grounds. It used to be occupied by my grandmother, but it had been sitting empty since she died, so I moved in when I returned from university.”

“How many bedrooms does this cottage have?”

“I’ll have you know that it has only one. Though I suppose there is also the library. But it’s small. It is rather a privileged life, though, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

She could picture him in a cottage. As worldly as Max was, with his designer suits and his razor-sharp wit, she could also see him pottering around a library, drinking tea. “But what do you do all day?”

“As little as possible.”