Although, why should he have? Even though it felt like they were old friends, they’d only just gotten to know each other. And hadn’t she noticed several times how good he was at not talking about himself?

“Because it’s boring,” he said in breezy way that made her suspect he was deflecting.

“What do you mine?”

“Copper and quartz, mostly.”

“Huh.”

“The one thing about marrying Marie that I was actually looking forward to was helping her with her refugee policy agenda. We’d even talked at one point about starting a foundation.”

“Is there not one already?”

“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, deeply unthrilled. 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.”