“You always think that,” he said, laughing.
She could see he was teasing her. She put her hand to his cheek. “Just today I said that I’d never love you.”
“How could you not when I love you so much?” He kissed her palm. “Who is your mother trying to marry you to now?”
“Someone named Silas.”
Smiling, Graydon began kissing her face. “I’m here now and you’ll only marry me.”
“But what about the widows?”
He pulled away to give her a very serious look. “I have been in countries where a man has many wives.” He sighed. “So I will do my duty and take them all. Except your mother. She is too much for any man!”
“You!” Toby said, laughing, and again she caressed his cheek. She could feel the stubble of whiskers and knew he was the man in her first dream. “Did you bring me back a red paisley shawl?”
“I did, but how did you guess?”
“I dreamed of it. I was in the little room upstairs, the library, and I dreamed I was wearing the shawl. And you were kissing my hand.”
“I would like to kiss all of you. Come, lay with me now, and tomorrow we will be married.”
“I don’t think I have a right to do that,” Toby said. “It’s not my body and not my future.”
Graydon pulled back to look at her. “Are you now owned so fully by your mother that you cannot claim even your own body?”
“I meant that Tabitha owns it.”
He didn’t pause in holding her, just kept smiling. “If you are not Tabitha, who are you?”
“Toby. At least that’s the nickname my father gave me. My real name is Carpathia.”
“I like that. Good name for a ship,” he said. “And I love you whatever your name. Will you marry me this day? I will build us a house here on my family’s lane and I will love you forever.”
“Unless you are made a king,” Toby said.
“I do not understand you. When I left we said that we’d marry no matter what objections there were. All your letters to me have said that. I know your mother doubts me, but I will be a good husband.”
“Will you give up the sea for Tabitha?”
Graydon laughed. “I am the sea; the sea is me. It is in my blood, in the veins of all my family.”
“Like Lanconia is in Graydon’s,” Toby said.
“I have heard of that place. Wild and full of men who carry spears. It’s said that in Lanconia even the women fight. It is not somewhere I want to go. And who is this Graydon?”
“What is your name?”
Laughing, he picked her up to twirl her around. “I have missed you every minute I was away. I bought you so many gifts that my brother Caleb laughed at me. He says that loving a woman would unman him and he vows to never do it.”
“Don’t worry, Valentina will fix him.”
“And who is she?”
“She’s—Act
ually, I’d rather you didn’t meet her. She’s too beautiful for any man to resist.”
“I doubt that. I saw some Chinese women who took my breath away. They have tiny feet and—”