For All Time (Nantucket Brides 2)

Toby’s heart was pounding. She’d never been this close to a man before. Feeling a bit embarrassed, she put her legs down on the bed. “I understand,” she said. “We can’t take a chance that ol’ True Love will rear its head and …”

He rolled off her but stayed near, his hand stroking her cheek. “How about if today we go explore that old house? Aunt Cale has to finish a book before she can take possession of it, so she wanted me to see if the roof was okay, that sort of thing. If I’m with you, maybe when you’re there you won’t fall asleep and dream of kissing another man.”

Toby couldn’t get her mind off his closeness, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Did this happen to people, that lovemaking became blasé after a while? Something that was easy to turn off and on?

“Sure,” she said as she tried to still her heart. “But I need to sketch Victoria’s wedding from what I saw in the dream. Oh! I forgot. This morning I had another one.”

Graydon got off the bed, took her hand, and pulled her up. “I have to shave. Sit with me while I do it and tell me of this dream. Did I kiss you and ask for your hand in marriage?”

“This time you were so angry at me you threatened to burn the town down.”

“I guess that means this one’s about Silas,” he said heavily.

“What do you think ‘truck-bellied’ means?”

“If I said it and it was about the other man, my guess is that it’s not good.”

“You think?” she said and followed him into the bathroom.

The four of them worked together in the dining room. Toby and Graydon took the ends of the table, laptops open before them, while Lorcan and Daire were in the middle. Graydon had to walk Rory through a meeting with an ambassador from Lithuania. Graydon had played golf with the man and had met his family so Rory had to know everything his brother did. Instead of memorizing facts, Daire and Graydon came up with the idea of strapping a phone onto Rory’s cast. He kept it on so Graydon could hear what was said and quickly tap out a reply. It caused some delays in the conversation, but Rory was good at coming up with distractions before he answered.

Toby was researching what she’d seen in her dreams. Maybe if she showed Victoria some drawings or photos of dresses of that time period, she would like them, which would mean that Toby could go ahead with planning the wedding. Food, flowers, all of it was going to take a lot of work, and she needed to get started. When what she saw in her research was so much like her dream, she had to remind herself that it wasn’t real.

Graydon was by the kitchen door, his phone to his ear. “How many of those dreams have you had now?”

“Three,” she said. “Is this a Lanconian thing, because Americans don’t pay much attention to dreams?”

“Last year I—” Graydon broke off as Rory spoke to him. “Tell her,” he said to Daire, then went through the kitchen to the sunroom to talk in private.

“Last year His Royal Highness—” Daire began.

“You mean Graydon?”

Daire smiled. “Yes, of course. Gray’s father—the king—sent his son up into the mountains to a remote little village. It seemed that some of the Ultens had decided a woman in the village was a witch. They wanted to stone her.”

“Were their goats dying, that sort of thing?” Toby asked.

“No. She was a very pretty young woman and the husbands found her irresistible. When we investigated, we found that the problem was that she never said no.”

“Some witchcraft!” Toby said, smiling. “So what did Graydon do?”

“He gave her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and an introduction to a movie producer. So far, she’s been the pretty girl who gets killed in four horror movies.”

Toby laughed. “Cold Comfort Farm comes alive,” she said, and went back to work.

Unfortunately, all these jobs left Lorcan with nothing to do. So far, Toby’d had little interaction with her. They had advanced to there being a sense of both of them working to help Graydon, but it hadn’t moved past that.

Toby did a computer search for Regency costumes and came up with some beautiful examples from various museums. She printed them out, then spread them on the table to look at them.

Graydon was still on the phone and Daire was absorbed by the computer, so Toby pushed them toward Lorcan. “What do you think?”

“They are nice,” Lorcan said.

Toby was disappointed by her reticence. Not exactly girlfriend material. She pulled the photos back.

“They are better in person,” Lorcan said.

“Oh? You’ve seen them in museums in Lanconia?”