Page 24 of Duke, Actually

He speared her with a look she could not decode and didn’t speak for an uncomfortably long time. When he did, he had lost his teasing tone. “My parents want me to marry Lavinia. I have no intention of doing so, but making the trip will placate them for a while.”

She was embarrassed that he’d felt the need to justify himself. Time to change the subject. “Tell me the Karina Klein story again.”

“Why, so you can tell me I’m wasting my life?”

“No.” She thought about saying something flippant, to get them back to their usual bantering mode, but there had been an edge in his question, so she went with the truth instead. “I just like that story, and we have a long ride.” She closed her eyes. She was tired, still, from her hangover, and jumping around in the snow had only made her more so. “Tell it to me like a bedtime story.” When he didn’t speak for a few beats, she opened her eyes. “Or not.”

“No, no, close your eyes again. I’m merely getting my bearings. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone a bedtime story.”

“None of your conquests ever asked for a bedtime story?”

“Not a one.” He futzed with her blanket like he was tucking her in, and after a few more seconds of silence, he started, except this time he started with Karina’s early life.

“By all accounts, Karina was a genius. She was a musical prodigy. That’s what she was doing at Cambridge—violin. She was the only child of wealthy parents.”

“She’d have to be, wouldn’t she, to be allowed to attend university—abroad at that—in the 1940s?”

“Indeed. And to hear it told, her father was a bit eccentric. He was an inventor. He came up with an improved variation on the most common spring used in mechanically powered watches. That’s where they made their money.”

“Mmm.” Luxury watches, she had come to learn, were a mainstay of the Eldovian economy. She was keeping her eyes closed as he talked. She hoped he wasn’t offended, but she was enjoying the cocoon effect of the darkness and the warmth—she was finally defrosting.

He kept going, spinning his tale of the violin-playing girl who went on to house child refugees in her student rooms at Cambridge. “The English government wouldn’t use state money to support the children of the Kindertransport—they all had to have local guarantors.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s well-documented, as is Karina’s participation.”

He kept going, his low voice wrapping itself around her and warming her as much as the blanket was.

“After the war, Karina came back to Eldovia,” he said, “and started a music school. She died in the 1980s.”

“She never married or had children?”

“No. She said her pupils and the children she sheltered in Cambridge were her family, and she kept in touch with many of the latter group. There are troves of letters, in archives in Cambridge and in Continental Europe.”

“So the hole in the story is the trip to New York,” Dani said sleepily, her eyes still closed.

“Yes, if it actually happened. I’m not sure an idle aside to the university newspaper is the most trustworthy of sources. There have been books written about her, and it’s never been mentioned.”

“Maybe she was a spy,” Dani said. “Maybe she was working for MI6.”

“Yes!” Max sounded delighted with this notion, and when she opened her eyes, he was smiling. “Perhaps she came to New York to murder a Nazi.”

“Would there have been Nazis in New York—high-profile ones who would be assassination targets—in 1943?”

“I don’t know. I suppose not.”

Dani smiled. “Who cares? It’s a good story. Karina Klein comes to New York to murder a Nazi. Tell that version.”

He did, effortlessly weaving a story about Karina tracking down a German spy whose mission was to assassinate FDR. It was a great story, equal parts exciting thriller and delightfully absurd soap opera.

When Dani felt the car come to a stop, she opened her eyes, intending to thank Max for an extraordinary night, but he’d already hopped out and was opening her door. She hoped he didn’t think he was going to come inside.

“Thank you for taking me toThe Nutcracker,” she said as they approached the front door.

“Thank you for teaching me how to make snow angels.”

She stepped onto the stoop and turned to him. “Oh, you knew how to make snow angels.”

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