For All Time (Nantucket Brides 2)

Graydon was behind Victoria and he looked over her at Toby with his eyebrows raised. He wasn’t used to people pushing past him and not waiting to be introduced. His exaggerated expression of surprise made Toby stifle a laugh.

When Victoria looked into the dining room and saw the sketches on the table, she lost no time going to them. With Toby on one side and Graydon on the other, she slowly moved along the table, looking at each one. “Pirates, how imaginative! And fairy tales. Rather a lot of them. Green. I like that very much. Banjos, harps, violins, quite a variety of music.”

At the end of the table she stopped and looked at Graydon’s and Toby’s expectant faces. “No, my dears, I think not. While they’re all quite interesting, there’s nothing that actually appeals to me. You’ll just have to come up with something else. Now, I have to go.”

She kissed Toby’s cheek, then turned to Graydon and kissed his cheek also. “Welcome to the family. Toby, dear, let me know when you can present your real ideas to me. I’ll let myself out. Goodbye.” She left through the front door.

Toby collapsed onto the couch and Graydon dropped down beside her.

“I once went through a hurricane that had less force to it,” Graydon said.

“Did you say even one word while she was here?”

“None. And to think people wait in line to be presented to me.”

“Not Victoria.” Toby looked at him. “So what are our real ideas?”

“I don’t know,” Graydon said as he stood up and held out his hand to her. “Right now you and I are going to walk into town and I’m going to see some of Nantucket. It may be our only chance before Victoria decides that we’re to dedicate our lives to the wedding of her and her beloved Caleb, the man who knows everything.”

Laughing, Toby took his hand and let him pull her up. “Thank you,” she said and meant it. “I don’t want to fail at this.”

Graydon lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “You won’t. I promise. Do you have ice cream in America?”

“Americans invented ice cream,” she said with a straight face.

“Actually, it’s not a well-known fact, but it was first made by Rowan the Great. He was charging a wild boar through the forest and needed to cool off. Ice cream was his solution.”

“That’s totally untrue,” Toby said. “It was Martha Washington who left milk on a doorstep.”

Laughing, they pretended to argue all the way down the lane.

Only one more day, Toby thought, and glanced at Graydon. They were sitting at the little table in the sunroom and looking at the sketches for Victoria’s wedding. In just one more day he’d have to return to Lanconia and she’d probably never see him again. Except at his wedding, she thought, and yet again imagined sitting in the front row and watching him marry someone else.

It wasn’t as though she and Graydon were in love, she reminded herself, but in six days they’d become friends. They hadn’t been apart all that time. They’d explored Nantucket, walking around beautiful ’Sconset, seeking out unique shops.

Graydon was excellent company. He was always cheerful and smiling, and he knew how to talk to anyone. Only once had there been any difficulty. A woman had recognized him as the Crown Prince of Lanconia and had loudly said so. Toby had frozen in place, unable to speak. They were in a store by the wharf and everyone had stopped and stared. But not Graydon. He turned to the woman and grinned—and showed that he had what looked to be a missing front tooth. “Honey,” he said in a heavy Southern American accent, “she thinks I’m a prince. That ain’t what you say about me.”

It took Toby a second to catch on, but she said in the same accent, “You a prince! Ha-ha. Now, your cousin Walter, he could be.”

“Always Walter!” Graydon said, his voice angry. “Don’t start on me again.” Toby threw up her hands and headed out the door, Graydon close behind her.

They kept going until they reached the fountain on Main Street, then stopped and started laughing. “Your tooth!” Toby said, and Graydon held up the packet of chocolate-covered cranberries they’d bought earlier.

“Think she believed it?” Graydon asked.

“Not for a minute, but her husband thought she was crazy so maybe he’ll talk her out of what she thinks she saw.”

“My opinion too,” he said.

It had been like that all week, she thought, the most pleasant of experiences, laughing, agreeing on everything. But to Toby’s mind, there were two things missing. One was that Graydon never, ever came close to revealing anything private about himself. He told her where he went to school, who his friends were, but he never really confided in her. Any questions she asked about his private feelings, he stepped away from, deflecting them with a joke or a glib little remark that revealed nothing.

Toby told herself that he had to do that. He was a prince and there was the press and he had to be careful. He couldn’t risk telling a stranger his true feeling about anything.

But Toby didn’t want to be thought of as a stranger. She wanted … She wasn’t sure how to fill that in. All she knew for certain was that when he became The Prince, that made her The Peasant.

The other thing missing was how she was coming to feel about him physically. She remembered her last phone call with Lexie.

“So?” Lexie asked in her usual blunt way. “Have you leaped into bed with him yet?”