For All Time

  “I saw it in the greenhouse.”

  Toby’s eyes widened in panic. “I forgot to do the watering.” She stepped over three suitcases and started for the door.

  “I did it,” Graydon said. “When I put away the tools, I thought the plants looked a bit dry so I watered them. Was that all right?”

  She smiled in relief. “Very all right.” It looked like he wasn’t going to be the burden she’d thought he would be. She went back to unpacking, putting his shaving gear in the bathroom. He didn’t use an electric shaver but an old-fashioned brush, a little tub of soap, and a safety razor.

  By the time the luggage was unpacked, Graydon had nearly twenty sketches of their different ideas. With a great sigh of relief that the job was done, Toby flopped down on the little couch beside him and went through the drawings. There were historical themes, from medieval to the 1940s, and places ranging from barns with banjos to a fake mansion a la The Great Gatsby. They’d done four fairy tales, one of them Lanconian that involved fairies and dwarves. (They left out the evisceration parts of the story.)

  “Your drawings are good. What did you study in school?” Toby asked as she checked her phone messages. Victoria had sent a text saying she’d found someone for Toby’s job and she’d start in the morning.

  “Everything,” he answered. He was looking at her, so close to him, her skin warm and pink, her hair in its long braid. She was in profile and he could hardly keep his eyes off her lips.

  He looked away just as she turned to him. “Eclectic,” he said. “I studied a bit of everything but nothing in depth. I had a drawing master from the time I was a child, as well as tutors for music and dance, horseback riding, and fencing. What about you? What did you study?”

  “Mostly art history. My mother wanted me to study ‘husband catching’ but she couldn’t find such a course, although she did search.”

  “That sounds like something you truly need to learn how to do. So tell me, how many proposals of marriage have you turned down?”

  She laughed. “Three, but don’t tell my mother.” She looked at him. “How did you know I’d had proposals?”

  “There are women you spend time with and women you marry. You are the latter.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I can’t give away universal male secrets, now can I?”

  Smiling, Toby got up. “On that note, I think I’ll call it a night. Tomorrow I have to …” She smiled. “I don’t have to do anything, do I?”

  “We need to get some watercolors so I can finish the green theme.”

  “That’s easy, and after we get them we can go to a beach. And this time you can work while I do nothing.” She nodded toward the empty cases.

  “I’m a prince,” he said haughtily. “I don’t do luggage.”

  “Why, you—!” Toby took a step toward him but stopped herself. “Just be warned that I put a pea under your mattress.”

  “Oh, my aching back!”

  They laughed together and for a moment it was a bit awkward between them. How did they say goodnight?

  Graydon solved the problem by getting up, taking her hand in his, and kissing the back of it. “Goodnight, my lady,” he said softly.

  Toby looked at him for a moment, the soft light of the room, the deep sound of a foghorn outside the open window, and she almost stepped toward him. But she didn’t. “I put your toiletries in Lexie’s bathroom and the sheets are clean and … I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” he said.

  Toby went into her bedroom and closed the door, but she felt too restless to sleep. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she was beginning to feel what the girls in school used to giggle about. Graydon wasn’t like other men she’d met. He wasn’t making little excuses to touch her, to reach across her. He wasn’t giving her long looks that he hoped would send her flying into his arms.

  The truth was, he seemed to think of her as, well, a friend, or maybe a relative.

  And that’s good, Toby thought as she put on her pajamas. He’s a man who is about to become engaged so he shouldn’t be even looking at other women. On the other hand, it would be nice to think he had, well, a little bit of desire for her.

  Graydon was in the shower. He had his head against the wall and the water pounding down on him was ice cold—but it wasn’t cold enough to stop the furnace that seemed to rage inside him.

  “Irial, Zerna, Poilen, Vatell, Fearen, Ulten,” he said, reciting the names of the six tribes of Lanconia. It was a trick he’d used since he was a boy. When his mother—never his father—was bawling him out about some minor infraction, he’d distracted himself with the chant.

  But right now it wasn’t helping. All he could think of was how close Toby was to him. Just a few feet away. One wall separated them. He had visions of slashing through that wall with a broadsword and going to her.

  “Too much Lanconian,” he muttered as he got out of the shower and stood there for a moment. He’d opened the window and the cool night air felt good on his wet, bare skin.

  He reminded himself that a quarter of him was American. “And I must be politically correct,” he said aloud. American men didn’t slash down walls, didn’t jam swords into beds, and most certainly didn’t rip off a woman’s clothes.

  He dried off and got into bed, but it was a long time before he slept.

  In the morning Toby quietly dressed and tiptoed down the stairs. She thought she’d make corn muffins before Graydon got up. But when she entered the kitchen she saw him sitting at the little round table in the newly cleaned sunroom, a laptop open before him. “Good morning,” she said.

  Looking up, he smiled as though she were the person he most wanted to see. “Good morning. I thought I’d look online and see whether or not my brother has brought about the downfall of my country.”

  “Has he?” Toby asked as she got a box of cornmeal out of the pantry.

  “So far, no. He has a factory opening ceremony tomorrow, so later I’ll check to see if he set fire to the ribbon and kissed three pretty girls while it burned.”

  Again, Toby wasn’t sure if he was kidding or being honest. “Did you have any new ideas about the wedding?”

  “Pirates? What about American gangsters?”

  “That’s possible. The bridesmaids could wear flapper dresses with long pearls. Victoria would like that.”

  “What about you? If you were getting married, what theme would you want?”

  “No theme,” she said. “I just want a beautiful white gown with yards of lace and all my best girlfriends wearing dresses in shades of blue. I’d have white and blue flowers everywhere. Pale blue tablecloths and white dishes, and a cake with icing cornflowers falling down the side.”

  Suddenly, she stopped, embarrassed at having gone on in such detail. “Sorry. At the shop we deal with weddings all the time so I’ve thought about mine.” She shrugged.

  Graydon got up and walked to stand behind her. “I think your wedding sounds more beautiful than all the themes we’ve come up with.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, still embarrassed. When he didn’t move, she looked up at him. For part of a second there was a look in his eyes that made her step toward him.

  When Graydon turned and stepped away, Toby couldn’t help her frown. All right, so he wasn’t interested in her that way. Good. Didn’t that show he loved the woman he was to marry? And wasn’t that good?

  She turned back to the stove.

  After breakfast, they bought watercolors, then drove to the Jetties and walked for a long way by the water. At first, they came up with a few more themes for the wedding, but then they began to talk about their lives—at least Toby talked about hers. Graydon asked her questions about her childhood, her schooling, her friends, what she liked and what she didn’t.

  She answered everything, but she was cautious and careful not to reveal anything that was truly private. When it came to her mother, she told how efficiently she ran the household, but Toby le
ft out how much her mother’s constant criticisms hurt.

  But if Toby was concealing the truth about her life, she knew that Graydon was worse. He’d said he had some life problems he needed to solve. But no matter what she asked him, he never came close to revealing what they were.

  After lunch at Brant Point Grill, they drove back to the house. While Graydon finished with the watercolors, Toby took a shower and changed before Victoria arrived.

  When Graydon saw Toby come down the stairs, for a second that look was there again. She’d taken her time in dressing and put on a blouse that she’d been told matched her eyes. Graydon seemed to appreciate it, but in the next second his eyes cooled and he put back on what she was beginning to think of as his “prince face.”

  He saw that she was nervous. “I’m sure she will love so many of these ideas that tomorrow you’ll be ordering flowers.”

  Toby sighed. “All I hope is that she will like one of them.” The drawings were spread across the dining table, twenty-six sketches, some simple, some elaborate. Graydon had put color on a few of them. Based on what Toby had told him, he’d bought every color of green the store sold and later he’d mixed the paints so there were even more shades.

  At a knock on the door, Toby took a breath and was shocked at how anxious she felt.

  “I’ll be right here with you,” Graydon said and for a moment he held her hand, then he released it to open the door.

  Victoria was there, the sun glinting off her auburn hair, her outrageously curved figure clad in a green silk blouse and perfectly tailored dark trousers. “Prince Graydon!” she said as she walked past him and into the house. “How good to see you again. Toby, darling, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking better.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” Toby said as she kissed Victoria’s cheek.

  “Do either of you need anything? I can send my dear Caleb to visit, as he knows everything that can be known about this island. Or would you two rather be alone? So where is this fabulous presentation of yours?”

  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?”

  “No, and he hasn’t asked,” Toby said, trying to keep her voice light but not succeeding. “He’s not interested in me that way.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Lexie said. “Why would he go to all the trouble of staying with you if he weren’t dying to get into bed with you?”

  “Friendship,” Toby said. “We’re great friends. And besides, he’s about to become engaged. Really, Lexie, could we talk about something else?”

  “You haven’t fallen in love with him, have you?”

  “No,” Toby said. “He’s a friend but nothing more. When he leaves, we’ll wave goodb
ye and that’ll be it. What about you?”

  “Bored,” Lexie said. “When I met this kid before, I liked her, but now she’s a dud. I can’t even get her to go on a driving trip to see some of the countryside. She says she’s seen it all.”

  “Too bad,” Toby said. “The poor child has probably been dragged around everywhere in her short life, while you want to see the world. If you get too lonely, you should come home.”

  “But only after Saturday,” Lexie said. “After he leaves, right? Will you drive him to the airport or will a limo pick him up?”

  “He’s not a limo sort of guy,” Toby said. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that he’s a prince.”

  “Especially since he spends his days helping you with Victoria’s wedding.”

  Toby knew Lexie was trying to make her feel better with her insinuation that maybe Graydon didn’t like any females. But she’d seen him smile at pretty waitresses, seen his eyes widen at some girl in a nearly nonexistent bikini. He seemed to like every woman on earth except her.

  She and Lexie promised to keep each other informed and hung up.

  “I think I’m going to have to admit defeat,” Toby said to Graydon. They were looking at the pile of sketches, and so far, they hadn’t come up with any new ideas that they thought would intrigue Victoria.

  Graydon leaned back in his chair. “I wish I could say that we can do this, but I’m beginning to agree with you.”

  She looked back at the drawings. They’d come up with everything from having the pastor skydive in, to drawing the wedding Toby always envisioned for herself. They’d set up the table with the watercolors and she’d done most of the painting.

  “I’m beginning to think that the wedding has to be personal to Victoria,” Graydon said. “Unless we know more about her personally, all we can do is guess at what will please her.”

  As soon as he said it, they both knew. They looked at each other, their eyes locking, their minds in complete harmony.

  “Where?” Graydon asked.

  She knew what he meant. The person on island who knew the most about Victoria was the man she was going to marry, Dr. Caleb Huntley, and Graydon was asking where he could be found.