She laughed. “So what was the topic sentence supposed to be?”

He closed his hand over hers and squeezed. “I love you, and therefore I want to marry you.”

“And then you get into the crown jewels and the solid gold dog tags and all that.”

“Exactly.”

“What about your rules?”

“Oh, fuck my rules.”

Dani was a little startled. Max had an endearingly formal way of speaking, and though he let loose the occasional damn, she rarely heard anything stronger than that. She leaned down and kissed him. Grabbed his cheeks and planted one on him, both of them grinning.

“So what about it?” he said when she pulled back. “Will you marry me?”

“Not yet.”

He clutched his heart and fell back onto the bed.

“Max. It’s too soon. Think of all the upheaval we’ve both experienced. Think of all the upheaval that’s to come.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, rolling his eyes like he knew she was right but didn’t care. “We should wait a bit.” He turned serious as he stared at her for several moments. “What about now? Will you marry me now?”

“Still no.”

“I’m not going to stop asking, you know. I’m going to ask you every single day.”

She smiled. “I look forward to it.”

The next week and a half was a whirlwind. Dani tried to help Max and Sebastien as much as she could, but mostly that meant staying out of the way as they worked through stuff with the guy who was in charge of the estate and with the CEO of the mining company. She had one fraught encounter with their mother when they randomly encountered each other in a corridor and Dani tried to express her condolences, but other than that, the widowed duchess—was she still even a duchess? Dani didn’t know—kept to herself.

Mostly Dani wrote. Suddenly, she was able to work on the novel again. Max installed her in the cottage, and the hours and pages flew by. When she grew stiff from sitting at her desk for long stretches, she walked the grounds and up the mountain and immersed herself in the hot spring. She was starting to get familiar with the rhythms of Riems.

Max came to her at night. She held him and listened to him as he muddled through a swirl of mixed emotions regarding his father and the advent of his tenure in a job he had never wanted.

On the evening of December 22, when he climbed the stairs to the garret, he said, “I booked us a flight for New York tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“So we can spend Christmas with your family.” His brow furrowed. “I am invited, yes?”

“I told them we weren’t coming!”

“Why would you do that?’

“Because we’re here! Because your father just died! Because you’re the duke now!”