For All Time (Nantucket Brides 2)

Suddenly, Toby understood it all. For all the changes she and Graydon had made to the past, they hadn’t taken away her mother’s very deep fear of the future. Toby stepped away from Graydon, and for the first time in many years, she put her arm around her mother’s shoulders.

“It’s all right,” Toby said softly. “He won’t go to sea, and he won’t leave us to fend for ourselves. Remember? Garrett stayed with us.”

For the flash of a second, Lavidia’s angry, worried face showed relief, then she frowned and stepped away from her daughter. “Whatever are you talking about? The sea? What does the ocean have to do with anything? Carpathia, I offered you a man who has an excellent future.” She looked Graydon up and down. He had on a sweat-drenched T-shirt and ratty old sweatpants. “What can this man offer you?”

“A crown, a palace,” Millie said from beside her son.

“Lavidia!” Toby’s father said as he burst into the room, Steven Ostrand close behind him. “What on earth are you doing?” Turning, he looked at his daughter, the tall dark young man behind her, and the older woman beside them. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He was a man who kept up with world news and he recognized the people he saw. “By all that’s holy, you are …” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

In the next moment six tall young men wearing suits and earpieces entered the room. They were surrounding an equally tall older man who even in his workout clothes looked distinguished.

Toby’s father was staring, eyes wide. He looked at his daughter. “Is he—? Are you and he going to—?” he managed to gasp out.

“Yes,” Toby said. She and her father had always been able to understand each other.

“I don’t like any of this,” Lavidia said angrily. “Steven, would you please—?”

She cut off because her husband put his arm tightly around her shoulders. “They are the King and Queen of Lanconia, and this young man is

the prince. He’s going to marry our daughter and Toby is going to be a princess.”

It took Lavidia a full minute to understand what her husband had said to her. Her lifelong job had been to make sure her only child would be taken care of and now she was seeing that it was going to be done. Decades of worry were released from her in one giant gush.

She looked at her husband. “I—” She didn’t finish, as she fainted in his arms. With laughter in his eyes, Toby’s father looked up. “I think she’s very happy.”