“All right,” said Edgar, sitting on the Danish linen duvet I’d purchased at cost following a showroom event, accessorized with throw pillows from Bed Bath & Beyond; as my mom always says, “It’s about taste, not money.” Edgar turned away.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked. “Would you like a snack? We can just talk if you want.”

“No, it’s just, when I look at you, you make me so happy, and I . . . I would like that to continue. But it can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because everything I’ve been accusing you of, and haranguing you about, like apprehension and shame and nervousness about your family—I’m so much worse. Which is why I’m hopeless about sex or intimacy or even the simplest pleasures.”

I sat beside him. “What are you talking about?”

“As you might imagine, being raised in the palace didn’t provide any sort of . . . romantic education, for either my brother or myself. James and my grandmother did their best, but I’ve remained inept and fearful. Which is why I’ve only enjoyed, if that’s the correct word, three relationships.”

“Edgar?”

I almost took his hand, but he wasn’t after polite comfort.

“I’m trusting you. We’ve only been together for such a brief time, but somehow—I believe that you’re an entirely decent person.”

Was I? I hoped I was.

“My first was a mad crush on a boy at school. We were wild for each other, or really wild for having sex in all sorts of unlikely places. Storage rooms. A corner of the library. We were finally apprehended in the gymnasium at midnight, and my grandmother was notified, although God bless her, all she did was tell the headmaster, ‘They’re two English schoolboys—isn’t that what they do?’”

“She said that?”

“It was one of her finer moments. But the boy and I were separated, and he transferred to a different school, and when I encountered him years later, he was married and losing his hair. My second spasm involved another soldier while I was in the military, in Afghanistan. It was all very rugged and clandestine, until Scotland Yard documented that he’d been approached by several tabloids and was in negotiation to sell his exclusive story of torrid royal lust. With photos.”

I was starting to understand that Edgar wasn’t inhibited and maybe inexperienced—he had good reasons for keeping his distance, from even the possibility of love.