“Your Highness,” said this person, in the sort of crisp, irreproachable accent reserved for Mary Poppins, if she was an attorney general. “You can’t keep running off like that. No one knew where you were, and our team is now on high alert.”

“I was rehearsing,” said Prince Edgar. “Carter, this is James Claverack, my chief of staff, factotum and devoted manservant.”

I had the feeling that at least two of these titles were a private punch line, because James, whose facial expression didn’t change in the slightest, turned to Edgar and said, “For the last time: you are not Batman.”

“And James, this is Carter Ogden, who’s responsible for this event and making everything look so glorious.”

“So good to meet you, but we’re about to begin,” said James, ignoring me entirely as he forcefully led Prince Edgar into a waiting area in the wings.

Diplomats, members of the press and staff for the prince’s initiative were now filling the room and taking their seats as guards elbowed me off the stage. As I was being hustled down the center aisle, I craned my neck and caught a last glimpse of Edgar, who’d turned his head to find me. As James pulled him away, Edgar gestured helplessly, and then he was gone and I was shoved out into the hallway, where I asked myself, why was I starting to think of him as “Edgar”? And also: does he have a last name?

CHAPTER 5

So you actually met him and you touched each other’s hair and you both smiled and you almost kissed and now you’re both hopelessly in love forever,” decided Adam at our apartment that night.

“It’s so beyond repulsive,” said Louise. “Royalty are an offensive anachronism. They have no power but they’re still not allowed to, like, criticize the status quo. They only exist to promote English tourism and sell those big shiny European magazines that ooze all over them. They’re human jewelry.”

In college, where we’d met, Louise had studied economic theory and class dynamics, and I trusted her observations. She charts how the world functions, and how ugly some people’s motivations can be, but—Edgar had smelled so great. Which was not a defense I could make to Louise.

“You’re thinking about him, right now, aren’t you?” she deduced. “Because you’re drooling.”

“I am not! I just . . . maybe I’m having a ministroke.”

“But isn’t that what love is?” Adam swooned. “If you get married, what title would you get? Would you be his Mister Prince or his Co-King or His Royal Sex Toy?”

“You are asking for so much trouble,” Louise insisted. “Never get involved with somebody that uselessly rich.”

“What about Arielle?” I asked, name-checking one of Louise’s exes, a wafty French girl who wore sheer blouses and long velvet skirts and turned out to be an ambassador’s daughter.