“We’ll drop you at the main house,” Max said to his brother.

“Daniela is staying with you at the cottage?” Sebastien asked, and if Dani wasn’t mistaken, he was surprised, though there hadn’t been censure in his tone.

“She is,” Max said mildly. “We’ll come up to the house and have dinner with you, though. I’ve already made arrangements with Frau Bittner.”

They said goodbye to Sebastien, and Max turned the car down a gravel-lined road that led away from the house, which was an enormous, multi-winged, imposing stone thing with red tiled roofs. “Max, does your brother think we . . .” She waved her hand back and forth between them.

“Oh, probably. I would have corrected him, but I didn’t want to give away the surprise.”

“What surprise?”

“He’ll come over later and see it and be assured that nothing is happening between us,” Max said, ignoring her question. He waggled his eyebrows. “Your fruitcake is safe under my roof.”

“Why is it my fruitcake that’s safe from you? I thought you and I were about equal-opportunity slutting around.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Touché.” He looked at her for a beat too long—she was about to tell him to keep his eyes on the road—and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

She was, too.

Max’s cottage was perfect. There was no other word for it. It was small and made of the same stone as the main house, and it was crisscrossed with vines. Max led her to a big, weathered wooden door with an oxidized knocker shaped like a lion’s head and unlocked it with a long, skinny key that looked like a prop from a haunted house more than an actual functional key.

“Here we are,” he said with obvious pleasure as he took her coat. “This was originally what I think English speakers would call a dower house, but it hasn’t been occupied by a dowager since my father’s mother died—before I was born.”

“Your grandmother the Nazi-resister!”

“Mm,” Max said in a way that struck Dani as evasive, but she didn’t have time to parse his response, because she was too busy looking at everything. She was in Max’s home! In Eldovia!

The place looked like Max—it had an air of old-money ease but not of the stuffy variety. There were Persian rugs everywhere that were probably priceless heirlooms, but they were worn and mismatched. His living room looked like the genuine version of the aesthetic that “shabby-chic” Instagrammers spent their lives chasing. He led her through a small kitchen outfitted with modern appliances but that also contained an actual fireplace with a pot hanging next to it and a deep sink with both a modern faucet and an ancient pump handle on it.