Page 74 of Duke, Actually

“Miss Martinez,” the duke said, drawing everyone’s attention but then making them wait while he took a slow sip of his wine, the ruby liquid made sparkling by the enormous chandelier overhead glinting off the crystal goblet. “Where are you from in New York?”

“It’sDr.Martinez,” Max interjected from across the table where he was seated next to Lavinia.

Bless Max and his relentless championing of her, but now was not the time. She appreciated the intervention in theory, but this was only going to fan the flames of his father’s... what? He wasn’t angry, at least not outwardly. But there was something going on, and it wasn’t good.

“Oh, it is, is it?” the duke said in a way that suggested he was humoring someone—either Max or Dani herself, she wasn’t sure which.

“I grew up in Queens, but I live in the Bronx now,” Dani said, returning to the duke’s initial question.

“Mmmmm.” He drew out the single syllable, almost as if he didn’t believe her, which was maddening, and Max’s mother and Mrs. von Bachenheim said something to each other in murmured German.

“What kind of medicine do you practice?” the duke asked after another drawn-out sip of wine.

“Dr. Martinez is a professor of literature,” Max said before Dani could answer.

“Ahhhh,” said the duke. It was hard to put her finger on it, because nothing about the words he was saying were inappropriate or rude, but the way he delivered them, in a smug tone and punctuated with long, drawn-out syllables, made it seem as if some private conclusion he’d previously had about her had been ratified.

“She’s a scholar of nineteenth-century American literature,” Max went on, and oh god, he needed to stop. Max, Mr. Emotional Intelligence, the guy who handled her fraught work parties like he had a degree in psychology and cheerfully called her out on her Tindering bullshit, apparently had no sense of how to handle his father. It was almost like he was baiting him.

Oh. That was exactly what he was doing. He’d told her he used to do this, to draw the fire from his brother. And now he was doing it for her.

“How exciting,” said Lavinia of all people, and she genuinely sounded interested. “Do you have any particular specialty?”

“Well,” Dani said carefully, “mostly nineteenth-century literature by women.”

“Oh!” Lavinia exclaimed, with such force that the whispers between the mothers stopped. “Have you read any Edith Wharton?”

“I have.”

“Oh!” Lavinia said again, and in another circumstance, Dani would have laughed at her wide-eyed enthusiasm, which was both delightful and out of sync with the context. “I am studying in the United States at the moment, and last summer I decided to read some American literature. When one is educated in Europe, one’s exposure to American writers tends to be limited to Twain and Hemingway and Hawthorne. Men, all.”

“That can happen,” Dani said sympathetically, not wanting to get into a big conversation while everyone else spectated.

“Well, I readThe Age of Innocence, and, oh!” She looked around. “Has anyone else read it?” The assembled aristocrats looked at her blankly. Taking that for a no, she turned back to Dani. “I was devastated. And yet I could not seem to stop, and in short order made my way through the rest of Wharton’s oeuvre.”

Dani smiled. “Wharton will do that to you.”

“Dr. Martinez’s PhD dissertation was on Wharton,” Max said. Dani hadn’t realized he knew that.

Lavinia excitedly transferred her attention to Seb, who was seated next to Dani. “Sebastien, will you trade places with me so I may converse some more with Dr. Martinez when the next course comes?” She turned to Max next to her. “You won’t mind, will you, Max?”

“Not at all,” said Max, though Dani could tell he was as befuddled by Lavinia’s outburst as she was.

Over chicken schnitzel, Lavinia proved charming. Astonishingly, she seemed genuinely interested in talking about Edith Wharton. In a different setting, Dani would have enjoyed chatting with her, but she could tell that even though the others were, superficially, involved in their own conversations, they were simultaneously eavesdropping. Dani felt like a specimen under a microscope. Still, she managed to make it through to the end of the meal, thanks in large part to Lavinia’s kindness.

Until over coffee—or, in the case of the duke, kirsch—the duchess suddenly said, “I’ve had Frau Bittner make up a room for you, Daniela. She can show you to it whenever you’re ready.”

“Daniela is staying with me at the cottage,” Max said quickly, saving Dani from having to answer.

“Nonsense,” Max’s mother said. “She’s a guest at the estate. She’ll stay in a proper guest room, not in the drafty old dower house. And I’ve asked Frau Bittner to arrange a tour for her tomorrow since you’ll be busy with our other guests.”

“I’ve made the cottage attic into a bedroom,” Max said to his mother, before turning to the von Bachenheims. “And I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I’m otherwise engaged tomorrow.”

“You’re housing your guest in anattic,” the duchess said sharply. Interesting how they could be rude to Dani, but when it was convenient they were suddenly worried about etiquette.

“I am, and I assure you it’s been quite overhauled. She’s writing a book, and she needs solitude and quiet. And I’m swamped with my own work and have a meeting I can’t reschedule.”

The duchess pursed her lips, and the duke outright laughed. What an absolute bastard. “Are you now? What kind of ‘work’ might that be?” The duke caught Mr. von Bachenheim’s eye and smiled as if the two old men were in cahoots.

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