There was a bookshelf next to the bed. He bent next to it and scanned the titles on the tall lower shelf. “Aha!” He produced a book of paintings by Matisse and flipped to the index. “Maybe it’s in this. What’s the name of the painting?”

“Woman with a Hat,” she said.

He squinted at the index. “Yes! Here it is.” He shuffled through the pages until he found it and turned the book toward her. “Not as good as the real thing, but better than on a screen.”

He plopped onto his bed, which was unmade but piled with the same posh-looking linens and duvets as upstairs, extended his legs, and patted the mattress next to them. She snorted—slumber party with the baron—but stretched out next to him. Max Minimus jumped on the bed, too, and Max shifted to accommodate him as if this was a thing the two Maxes did.

Wait. Had Max been patting the bed to signal her or her dog?

Well, whatever. She wasn’t letting her dog get ahead of her in the pecking order.

They looked at the painting together and talked a bit more about the book. Then, as promised, he translated his grandmother’s letters for her, and they talked some more about what their discovery meant—for the mine project but also for the historical record. Eventually, she started getting sleepy. Ugh. She had to heave herself out of bed and up the stairs to the attic. “I should go.” She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go anywhere—upstairs or to the wedding or back to New York and the job she was lucky to have. But life wasn’t a fairy tale. “Come on, Max.”

Max Minimus lifted his head, looked at her, and tunneled back into Max Maximus’s armpit. Max Maximus smirked.

“Max. Come. Time for bed.”

She spoke sharply enough that he did, but she could tell he wasn’t happy about it.

She wasn’t, either.

Chapter Fourteen

Max was aware that when he looked back on Dani’s visit to Riems, he was going to think of it like a movie montage. She usually got up early and worked on her book. When he and Max Minimus got up an hour or so later—yes, Max Minimus continued to appear in Max’s bed in the middle of the night—they took coffee and breakfast up to her. Then they’d spend the morning working.

After lunch, they’d hike or visit Riems. After dinner, which they generally had in front of the fire in the library, though once they ate with Sebastien in the main house, she might work some more, but there was usually a point at which she climbed down the ladder and they ended up talking late into the night.