Max chuckled. “Sebastien is apparently not single, but Sebastian, it turns out, is also not straight.”

“Really?” She was surprised Max hadn’t told her. Also a little hurt. She’d thought they told each other everything.

“Yeah. He told me he was gay the day you arrived. I would have told you,” he said, addressing her unarticulated wound, “but I wasn’t sure if it was my place. He didn’t specifically ask me not to, but I thought I should keep his confidence. I was the first person he told—other than the mystery man he is apparently seeing.”

“Wow! Of course I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me.”

“I know. I do.” He was giving her a strangely intense look. She’d been getting more of those lately, but this one was on steroids. His brow was furrowed, and if she didn’t know better, she would have said he was angry over the fact that he trusted her. But then his face relaxed. “As it relates to Sebastien, I must now double down on my original stance that I can’t leave him to shoulder the burden of being heir. Can you imagine? My god, my parents would probably make him marry a woman, and he’d probably go along with it to keep the peace.”

“What if your brother walked away, too?” she asked. “Is there a dreadful, social-climbing cousin in line like in Jane Austen novels?”

He chuckled. “There is a cousin. He’s seven. I can’t quite see my way through to dumping this all on a seven-year-old.” He sat up and spun himself so he was right way round on the bed, next to her. “Listen. I appreciate that you’re trying to solve my problems, but they’re fundamentally unsolvable. We need to talk about what we do now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think we should leave at dawn. Head to the palace a bit early.”

“Leave at dawn! Like a Western!”

“I would suggest leaving now, but driving over the mountain in the dark is a bad idea.”

“What would you tell your parents? I suppose our man of honor and best woman duties could kick in early.”

“I could tell them that, but that would require me to talk to them. I did more than enough of that this evening, and honestly, I’m inclined to just leave. Get up before the sun and run away.”

Dani smiled. “All right, Clint Eastwood. We leave at dawn.”

Chapter Sixteen

When they got to the palace, Max was surprised to find Sebastien already there.

“He arrived in the middle of the night, and he’s in the yellow bedroom,” said Marie, who greeted them outside. “You know, the one we all used to play Narnia in because the armoire was so huge? I don’t know if he’s there at the moment, but you could try.”