“My smile?” I said, trying to remember everything I’d eaten since the last time I’d brushed my teeth and whether my two teenage years of braces had been at all effective or if there was time for me to race out and have the invisible adult kind installed. Did I have a decent smile? Had Callum or anyone else ever complimented my smile? Was that left incisor still a tiny bit crooked? Should I purse my lips tightly and shake my head vigorously, no, uh-uh, sorry, I have a note from my orthodontist and I’m not smiling today?

“Do it,” said Edgar, with what felt like sexual urgency.

I looked at him and couldn’t help myself. I smiled, reluctantly at first and then unable to suppress a grin. It wasn’t my fault or my choice: Prince Edgar of England had commanded me to smile, it was a royal decree and he was smiling right back. We were like two happy toy soldiers, having come to life and marched off the shelf at midnight, about to salute each other and then tear off our uniforms and do so much more, which was an image I definitely needed to suppress, because it was insane and pornographic and not in my job description.

“You have a perfectly admirable smile,” Edgar decided. “An excellent smile.”

“Should I stop now?” I asked. “I’m starting to feel like a jack o’ lantern, or a frozen smiley face.”

“Just one second more,” said Edgar. “So I can study your smile and duplicate it.”

Without thinking, we moved toward each other, and then we both stopped smiling. Something more serious was going on, and we were breathing together. Now we were close enough that I could tell how great he smelled, with a hint of what was probably some heritage custom-blended fragrance, or maybe a clean-smelling soap hand-milled by a shop that had been supplying the royal family for centuries.

“You smell marvelous,” Edgar murmured, but there wasn’t enough time for me to list my entire product regimen.

Our lips were inches apart and Edgar’s hand was on my forearm and I was leaning toward him and just as we were about to kiss and cause the building to collapse, or at least set off every smoke detector in Midtown, the three sets of doors to the amphitheater burst open and a small army of security personnel, English and American, all of them speaking into earpieces, moved toward the stage, led by a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman in a dark suit with a subtly striped vest and a perfectly knotted necktie. His silver hair was not merely brushed but lacquered, or maybe threatened into place. He had the most rigid posture and immaculately polished shoes I’d ever seen. He looked like God’s butler.