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“Everybody who drives this truck complains about it,” Toby said. “Except Jared, that is, but then it’s his truck. People say it’s hard to get it into second gear, and I think the clutch sticks sometimes. And this driveway is very narrow. If you don’t back straight out, you can tear off the mirrors. And it’s hard to see into the lane so if anyone’s coming you have to be careful not to get hit. For that matter, the lane is also very narrow and it’s two-way. When I first got to Nantucket, I had a really hard time driving around. I was afraid of hitting people or parked cars, or of crashing into vehicles that were coming toward me and …” She trailed off because he had his arm across the back of the seat, ready to reverse, but he was waiting for her to finish.
“Anything else I should know?” he asked.
“I guess not.” As he began to back out of the drive, she held her breath, sure that between the tall fence and the side of the house, he’d at least scrape a mirror. But he didn’t.
He stopped to let a car pass, then smoothly backed onto the lane.
“Be careful,” she said. “It’s summer and there are thousands of tourists here who are looking at the scenery and not at the road.” Just then a big black SUV came toward them. A woman was driving, a cell phone plastered to her ear, and she didn’t even seem to see the truck. Toby drew in her breath and grabbed the seat with one hand and the armrest with the other.
Graydon easily moved to the right, so close to a wall that Toby could have touched it, but he didn’t scrape anything. When she
looked at him, he didn’t seem to be perturbed at all, as though two vehicles passing with only inches between them was an everyday occurrence.
He stopped at the end of the lane, looked both ways, then took a left onto Main Street. Toby’s hands relaxed as she watched him smoothly slide the old transmission from one gear to another.
“I thought we’d go down Centre and onto Cliff Road,” he said. “Or do you have another way you’d like to go?”
“No, that’s fine,” she said, watching him. “Did you memorize a map?”
“On the flight here, yes, I did look at one.” He turned left onto Centre Street. “I haven’t really had time to look at the island, but this is quite beautiful.”
Toby glanced around at what was a familiar sight to her. The old houses, so perfectly preserved, the exquisite shops, a feeling in the air of the history of the island, were all there. Past the two candy stores, he knew to go left at the JC House—Jared Coffin—and she glanced down the street at the beautiful whaling museum. Beyond that was the sea. “You’ve done a lot of driving, haven’t you?” she said.
“A fair bit. Much of it has been on dirt roads, sheep tracks, that sort of terrain. Two of the Lanconian tribes have small towns high up in the mountains along a narrow road with a drop-off on the side. When I go up there I like to drive, although I give my bodyguard Lorcan heart attacks.”
“I can understand that,” Toby said. “You can do that but you’ve never used a credit card?”
“Never,” he said, smiling. “I wonder if Rory left me his?”
“Do you know how to use a computer?”
“Not very well,” he said, but there was a tiny smile on his lips that made her suspicious.
“Does that mean you don’t know how to turn one on or that you write programs as a hobby? I got the impression you weren’t good at driving but you seem to do rather well at it.”
“You sound as though I’ve disappointed you,” he said as he pulled into the driveway where the chapel was.
She didn’t answer him as she got out, pulled her metal toolbox out of the back, and looked around. There were four trucks at the site. Chairs and tables were being packed away, generators were being loaded onto a flatbed, and the big tent was coming down. Toby started toward the middle of the commotion.
Graydon moved to stand in front of her. “I seem to have done something wrong,” he said. “Or are you disappointed that I’m not actually a fairy-tale prince who can’t do ordinary things?”
When he said it like that, Toby saw how ridiculous she was being. But still … “Yeah, I think maybe I am,” she said. “People like their illusions.”
Graydon looked surprised for a moment, but then he laughed. “Does this mean I can stop trying to impress you? My brother’s valet packed his luggage and there seems to be a system to it, but I can’t figure it out. It took me half an hour to find a shirt and trousers. And what I went through to be able to shave! For a while I thought I was going to spend the day wearing only a towel. When your roommate dropped a drinking glass I had nothing to put on.”
“ ‘Broken glass and towels that barely close,’ ” she quoted. “I’m beginning to understand some things now. I—” She broke off because there were loud voices and she turned to look. There seemed to be an argument between one of the tent people and a caterer.
Graydon looked at Toby. “I am rather good with staff, so perhaps I could be allowed to handle this.”
She remembered how he’d commandeered three people to set up the dinner for them. “It’s yours,” she said. “I’ll be in the chapel.”
Graydon left to go to the men and for a moment she watched him. Would he be autocratic and order people about? But no, he listened to the problem, then said a few quiet things to the two men and they walked away, seeming to be satisfied with his solution.
Smiling, Toby went into the chapel. It was a mess! Yesterday there had been over two hundred people at the wedding and most of them had been jammed into the little building. There were scuff marks on the walls, the floors were filthy, and every flat surface had candle wax stuck to it. It wasn’t going to be easy to return it to the pristine state it had been in before the wedding.
There was a tall water spigot at the front of the property and she was going to have to go there to fill the buckets to start cleaning. But first she needed to get at the wax. As she scraped, she tried to think of a theme for Victoria’s wedding.
She went through the usual ideas of hydrangeas—they grew magnificently well on Nantucket—and seashells, but she needed something different, an idea that might intrigue Victoria.
