His little speech had made her want to cry. She patted the hand that wasn’t holding the glass. He whipped his head up and looked at her, startled by the contact. “Yes,” she said vehemently, “poor Max.” She started to retract her hand—she’d only meant to deliver a quick, sympathetic touch—but he rotated his hand under hers and held on, looking at her like she was his lifeline.

Maybe she was.

She knew Marie was Max’s best friend. But if he and Marie were anything like Dani and Leo, that relationship had taken second fiddle as the lovebirds embarked on their life together.

“Can I ask you some dumb questions?” she said.

“You can ask me anything,” he said with a strange vehemence and still not letting go of her hand.

“Could you walk away from it? Abdicate? Is that what you’d call it in your case? Pull a Harry-and-Meghan, basically?”

“I could, but that would mean passing all the shit to my brother.” He paused, pressed his lips together. “That is not something I will do.” He snorted. “Well, of course when I don’t produce an heir, he and his future children will be in line to inherit. But my father will be gone at that point, so I’m quite content to dump everything on him then. I just won’t . . . let him shoulder everything now.”

Ohhh. Something shifted in her mind as she thought about a few things he’d said over the months. “That’s why you didn’t go to boarding school and he did.”

He blew out a breath like he’d been busted doing something untoward. “In theory, I could have gone once Seb left at thirteen. But it turned out I’d made too good a case in the first place for why I should break with tradition and not go.” He wrinkled his nose, as if he were remembering something unpleasant.

“Your father wouldn’t let you go when your brother did.”

“It was all right. I only had two years left, and I actually liked my tutor. Well, ‘liked’ might be overstating it. But he was exceedingly qualified, and we rubbed along together well enough. I’d had to fight my father for him in the first place. Once Father had accepted that I wasn’t going away to school, he wanted me to continue on with my boyhood teacher. It was a real battle convincing my father not to send me.”

“How did you do it?”

“I feigned interest in learning about the dukedom.” His upper lip curled. “I gave magnificent speeches about family and legacy and destiny and said I didn’t want to be away for four years when I could be learning about the role I was born to inherit.”

“And did you learn about it?”