For All Time

  Graydon’s first thought was that he should leave the room, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted her to a sitting position, slipped the gown over her head, put her back down, then wrestled her trousers off from under the gown. He folded the big coverlet over her and stepped back to look at her.

  She was changing his life, he thought. She complained that he had taken over her life, but it was nothing compared to what she’d done to him. From the moment he’d first seen her he hadn’t been the same person. It was as though everything that had ever been important to him had abruptly been taken away.

  His country and all it meant seemed to have been pushed to the background. Never in his life would he have believed that he was capable of setting duty aside so he could spend a week with some woman he hardly knew. Had it been a week of wild sex that he’d wanted before marriage, he could have understood. But he’d spent an entire week with Toby planning some other woman’s wedding. He would never have believed himself capable of such a thing.

  But he had enjoyed it! What was it she’d said? That he’d been her “best girlfriend.” That idea made him smile. At night, alone in his bed, the last thing he’d felt like was a female.

  He wanted to believe that at the end of the week he would have said goodbye to Toby and flown home to his real life. He would have invited her to his wedding with Danna and maybe even smiled at her as he stood at the front waiting for his bride.

  But he’d made no plans to return home, and when Daire and Lorcan showed up and Graydon was given an excuse not to leave, he’d taken it instantly.

  He should be in Lanconia now. Even if he had to put on a fake cast when he appeared in public, he should do it. Their family doctor would cover for him. Rory could run off to wherever he went when he wanted to retreat and Graydon could carry on with his duties.

  But he wasn’t doing that. Instead, he was still on this island, still with this young woman, and downstairs were his two trusted friends, who were trying to understand why Graydon wasn’t doing what he should.

  He had no explanation for them because he didn’t understand it himself.

  “Don’t leave,” Toby said.

  “You need your sleep.”

  “Why were you so interested in my dream?” she asked.

  “It’s a haunted house.” He was standing over her and looking down. Her hair had come loose and was flowing out around her. Moonlight came into the room and he could see her blue eyes. With her golden hair and the white gown, he knew he’d never seen anything more desirable. He could no more leave the room than he could teleport himself back to Lanconia.

  Even while telling himself that he shouldn’t do it, he stretched out on the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms, her head on his chest. When she looked up at him as though she meant for him to kiss her, he moved her head back down.

  “Why won’t you kiss me?” she whispered.

  “I am afraid of what will happen,” he said.

  “Afraid I’ll fall so hard in love with you that when you leave my heart will break?”

  “No,” he said. “Afraid my heart will break.”

  “But today you said you wanted to seduce me. You don’t seem to be making any progress.”

  “You are here now, in my arms, there is moonlight and darkness. Is that not success? Or would you prefer that I ride a horse up the stairs?”

  Toby snuggled against him. “I like this better. I find you very attractive. Do you know that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She ran her hand over his chest, putting her fingertips inside his shirt to touch his warm skin. She moved her leg over his. “I’m here and it’s now.”

  He pushed her leg off his and kissed her fingertips. “You are most tempting, but you have consumed a great deal of alcohol. You might regret this in the morning. In my country we take the losing of a maidenhead very seriously.”

  “In my country it tends to be in the backseat of a car.”

  “But not for you,” he said. “You are different.”

  She relaxed against him. “Why have you stayed?”

  “I don’t know. It’s as though something is compelling me to remain here. As though there’s something I need to do.”

  “No time like the present,” she said suggestively as she ran her leg against his.

  Graydon laughed. “You are a very happy drunk, are you not?”

  “I’ve been happy since you came into my life.”

  “Except when you were shouting at me.”

  “Did I hurt your feelings very much?”

  “No,” he said. “It was wonderful. I’ve been afraid to be myself, afraid that you were such a fragile, delicate little thing that I could easily break you, snap you in half.”

  “Ha!” Toby said. “My mother has hardened me so much that nothing anyone says to me gets through my skin.”

  “At least your mother doesn’t wear a crown and rule a couple of armies.”

  Toby drew in her breath. Never before had he said anything so personal. “Does she demand a lot of you?”

  “More than I know how to give,” Graydon said.

  Toby slipped her fingers through his, intertwining them. “We’re alike in that.”

  “I think perhaps we’re alike in many ways,” he said softly.

  When Toby put her face up to his, he couldn’t resist. He put his lips on hers, meaning to kiss her sweetly and gently, but at the first touch, the kiss deepened. His hand went to her head, burying in her hair.

  He kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks, then back to her lips. His tongue touched the corner of her mouth, a tantalizing bit that made her want more.

  Toby’s hands went around his chest and pulled him on top of her.

  It was as though some memory was stirring inside her. This wasn’t the first time, she thought. This man, his breath, his face, his body were familiar to her. She knew him. She knew how he worried about living up to the heavy responsibilities that had been placed on his shoulders. He worried about her and her family, about whether she would love him as much as he did her. If anything happened to her, she knew his soul would go with hers. “Tabby, don’t leave me,” she seemed to hear inside her head. Or had Graydon said that?

  She pulled back to look at him and for a moment she thought she saw tears in his eyes, but surely it was a trick of the moonlight.

  He rolled onto his back and pushed her head down onto his chest. “Sleep, my lovely one,” he whispered.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said as she clung to him.

  “I’m not sure that I can,” he said.

  They fell asleep together, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Toward morning, Toby began to dream.

  “I can’t marry you! Do you not understand that? I have too many people depending on me. Silas can help support us. He will—”

  “I’ll burn his store down before I let you marry him!”

  Tabby drew in her breath. The houses on Nantucket were close together and nearly all of them were wooden. Fire was a very dangerous threat. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “How can you think I would?” Garrett grabbed her upper arms. “Tabby, you must marry me. I love you more than life.”

  “More than the sea?”

  When he moved away from her, his face was filled with anguish. “I have to make a living and the sea is what I know. Would you have me open a store like that truck-bellied, brocky Silas Osborne? Is that what you want of me? To emasculate me? Would you cut off the parts of me that make me a man?”

  “I don’t know,” Tabby said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  The ringing of a phone woke Toby, and for a few seconds she was disoriented. Was she with Garrett wearing a long brown dress or was she in Nantucket in her nightgown?

  She looked at the other side of the bed and saw the indentation where Graydon had slept—or had that been part of her dream? When she sat up, her head hurt, her mouth was dry, and her stomach was queasy.

  The phone stopped, and she pul
led on jeans and a T-shirt, but when she left the bathroom, it started ringing again. It was Graydon’s phone and there was a photo of a crown as the ID. Probably Rory, she thought. “Hello?” Her voice was hoarse.

  There were some unintelligible words spoken by a woman and Toby recognized the Lanconian language. “Sorry,” she said, her hand to her aching head. “He isn’t here right now.”

  The woman’s voice changed from strident to sweet, from Lanconian to English. “Oh, my goodness, you sound as though my son has given you a difficult night.”

  Toby could feel the blood leaving her face. She was talking to Graydon’s mother—who was a queen. Toby was glad she hadn’t said Graydon’s name and exposed the exchange.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “I mean, no, ma’am. He …” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Well, dear,” the queen said, “perhaps you could find my son and give him the phone. I doubt he’s very far from your side.”

  “Of course,” Toby said. As much as it hurt, she started running, the phone held tightly in her hand. When she heard the shower she went into Lexie’s, now Graydon’s, bedroom. The bathroom door was open and she peeped in. He was behind the foggy curtain, steam rolling upward.

  Toby started to say his name but couldn’t. Graydon was supposed to be Rory. “Your mother is on the phone,” she said as loudly as she could without being heard all the way to Lanconia.

  Instantly, Graydon shut the water off and put his head and arm around the curtain. Toby started to hand him the phone but he shook his head. He was too wet. She turned it on speaker and held it up for him.

  “Hello, Mother,” Graydon said formally, sounding as though he were in a tuxedo at a formal reception.

  The sweet-voiced woman who’d spoken to Toby was gone. “Roderick,” she said in English, her voice as sharp as a whiplash. “I have something important to say to you, and for once in your life I want you to listen to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

  “I assume you have been told of your brother’s heroic act in saving your father.” Graydon nodded toward a towel hanging on the rack. Toby reached for it with one hand, phone in the other. He took it from her, wrapped it around his waist, and stepped out of the tub and from behind the shower curtain.

  “Yes, ma’am, I have and may I say that he—”

  “No, you may not say anything,” his mother snapped. “Just listen. I don’t want you to come here to this country and pile more work on your brother. He has enough to do without you here being a demon of temptation and trying to get him drunk. And with his engagement coming up, he can’t have you throwing your mindless girlfriends at him. Your father needs to heal, and the less stress put on him, the faster that will happen. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you are.”

  Toby could see the shock on Graydon’s face. When he started to take the phone from her, she grabbed the falling towel and tied it around his waist.

  The phone was still on speaker and Graydon was holding it away from his head, as though he couldn’t bear it to be near him.

  “I am pleading with you,” his mother said, “to stay away. Graydon takes his coming rulership very seriously, while you have only contempt for what we stand for.” She made a sound of exasperation. “You and I have been through this many times before. Do I have your word that you will remain wherever you are and put as little stress as possible on your father and brother?”

  “Yes,” Graydon said, his voice hard and cold. “I can assure you that I will not interfere with my brother’s obligations.”

  His mother wasn’t bothered by his tone. “As for that American strumpet who answered the telephone, get rid of her. If the media find out your father is ill, there will be plenty of negative press about us without your dangling one of your cheap harlots in front of the journalists. And Danna doesn’t need to be insulted by having to meet whomever you’ve picked up this time. Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly,” Graydon said, and without a further word, she hung up.

  For a long moment he stood there, immobile. Toby gently pushed him out the door and into the bedroom to the little couch by the fireplace. There was an old quilt over the back and she draped it around his bare shoulders, which were still wet.

  “Was that the first time you heard that?” she asked as she sat down beside him and took his hand in hers.

  “Yes. Rory never told me that our mother speaks to him in that way. No wonder he so rarely comes home.” He turned to her. “What she said about you … I can’t apologize enough.”

  Toby raised her hand. “My mother says about the same things to me. I never live up to whatever she wants me to do and be.” She didn’t add that in his case it was his brother who was the disappointment.

  “Sir?” Daire’s voice came to them from the sitting room. “Prince Rory asks that you call him.”

  “We’re in here,” Toby said.

  When Daire, with Lorcan close behind him, saw them sitting so close together on the sofa and Graydon with little clothing on, they turned away. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Graydon just heard the way his mother talks to his brother,” Toby said.

  Graydon looked at her as though she had betrayed his confidence, but Daire shrugged as though to say he’d heard it many times.

  “Does everyone know?” Graydon asked.

  “Within a close circle of people, yes,” Daire answered, and Lorcan nodded.

  “But no one, not even Rory, told me.” Graydon looked at them. “Were you protecting me from the truth?”

  “Yes,” Daire said as he went to the closet to get Graydon some clothes.

  “Get the blue denim shirt,” Toby called to him. “And jeans. He’ll want to stay in today and talk to Rory about damage control.”

  “And his sneakers,” Lorcan said from the doorway. She went to the big chest of drawers. “Socks?” she asked as she looked at Toby.

  “Top left. Get the white ones.”

  Graydon was beginning to recover himself. “I believe I’m capable of dressing myself,” he said.

  With a curt nod of their heads, Daire and Lorcan put the clothes on the bed, then left. “I’ll let you get dressed,” Toby said and started to leave, but Graydon stopped her.

  “No. Please stay,” he said as he stood up, the quilt falling away. “Unless you want to go, that is.”

  For a moment she looked at him standing there in just a towel and she seemed to remember being in his arms last night. Was it real or one of her dreams? She took a step toward him, her hand extended as though she was going to touch him, but he turned away and the moment was lost.

  Graydon got underwear out of a drawer and Toby looked away as he put it on. When he had his jeans on but not fastened, she looked back at him. “What are you going to do about this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like anyone talking to my brother like that.” He was frowning. Toby sat down on the end of the bed and watched as he got dressed. He was striding across the room as though he were marching into battle but he was saying nothing.

  “Can your mother tell you twins apart?”

  “As proof that it’s True Love? Not quite,” he said, a sneer in his voice. It took Graydon nearly a minute before he realized what he’d said. He came to a halt, his shirt on but hanging open, and looked at Toby.

  Only a paleness of her skin showed that Toby had heard him. She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the ceiling. “I see. I could tell you weren’t your brother, so you—the king to be—decided to stick around and see if I could be your True Love. You know, like in a fairy tale. Only in this story the prince is going to run away and marry the princess, not the strumpet who has a hangover.”

  Graydon put his shoulders back, his body went rigid, and his face became expressionless.

  Toby, still sitting on the bed, glared at him. “So help me, if you turn yourself into The Prince and freeze me out, I’ll show the lot of you to the front door.”

/>   Graydon’s eyes widened for a moment, then he flopped down onto the bed behind her. “Oh, hell! I don’t feel much like a prince. My mother just cut my brother and my girl to pieces. I’d like to tell her what she can do with her opinions but she’s a queen. It’s not done.”

  Toby stretched out on her back beside him but not touching. “What’s this about the True Love thingy?”

  Graydon laughed. “How American. A ‘thingy.’ It’s just a family legend and ridiculous—except that it keeps coming true. Aunt Cale loves to tell how her husband, Uncle Kane, hated her when they first met. But she could tell him from Uncle Mike so they were doomed to be together.”

  “Interesting,” Toby said, then rolled to her side to look at him. His shirt had fallen open and she did truly love the sight of his bare, muscular chest. All those fights with Daire certainly paid off! “So you set up dinner in a tent in order to find out what your True Love was actually like?”

  “Mmmm,” Graydon said. “More or less.”

  “And that’s what Rory was so angry at you about? You said you two argued about me. Wait a minute! I bet you weren’t even going to tell me what you do for a living.”

  Graydon, with his eyes on the ceiling, tried not to smile. “Sometimes my, uh, ‘occupation’ tends to overwhelm people.”

  Toby flopped back on the bed. “Sure it isn’t your ego that smothers them?”

  Graydon rolled onto his side, his face close to hers. “I just wanted to present myself as me, a man, and nothing else.” He picked up a strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger.

  “You and your Poor Prince act,” Toby said. “Did you think I’d get giddy at the mere mention of you and a palace?”

  “Some girls do,” he said and rolled onto his back—but he didn’t let go of her hair.

  “Ow!” Toby turned toward him and with a twist from him, she ended up on top of him. “Is this more of your seducing?”

  “Yes. Do you like it?” He had his hands in her hair.

  “I rather do,” she said softly.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are? Your skin is like cream and takes my breath away. Your eyes are the color of a mountain stream, your lashes like butterfly wings, and your lips are like the ripest cherries.”