“But… we…” Désirée tried to find words. “If I’m a duke, anybody can be a duke.”
“Huzzah! Papa is also a duke.” Annie curtsied to Jack. “How do you do, Your Grace?”
“Don’t be silly, Annie,” Gloria said with a straight face. “It isn’t the Legend of the Baker’s Dozen.”
“You’re still a duke to me,” Annie stage-whispered to her father. “Even if you’re extra. Your Grace.”
Frederick looped his arm through Désirée’s and held on tight. “See? You can’t leave. We’d end up with only nine Dukes of Christmas.”
“Ten,” Annie whispered. “I knighted Papa a duke.”
“That’s not how it works,” Frederick snapped.
“If a constellation can be a duke, Papa can be a duke,” she hissed back.
Jack touched Désirée’s free elbow. “Is this arm spoken for?”
She shook her head in bemusement.
He placed her fingers in the crook of his elbow. “Your family might feel like outsiders because you came here eighteen years ago, but fifty years ago nothing was here on this mountaintop at all except a creaky abandoned castle. Mr. Marlowe created Christmas out of thousands of outsiders.”
Her heart pounded. “I thought I was a misfit toy.”
“We all are.” He gave her a crooked grin. “That’s what makes us family.”
Annie tugged Désirée’s scarf. “It’s like having a wholetownof breakfast sausages in your heart.”
Jack stared at her. “What?”
Désirée burst out laughing. “Wise words, indeed.”
She’d kiss all three of her favorite sausages if an entire tour group of witnesses weren’t watching.
