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Toby drew back and stood up. “Lanconia sounds wonderful. Maybe I’ll visit someday. Right now I have a date.” Smiling at him in her cool way, she left the room.
Graydon wanted to run after her and demand to know who her “date” was. A man? That was the first time it truly hit him that on Nantucket he was just a regular person. He had no princely rights and no one was looking at him as though they lived to please him.
On the third day of Toby’s never-ending courtesy, Graydon started watching Daire and Lorcan. His original objective was to prove that Toby was wrong. Maybe it was true that Lorcan was “in love” with Daire. After all, he’d been her teacher for many years. But Daire had taught a lot of people and never once had he hinted that he felt anything personal for any of them. At least not to Graydon.
He began to watch the two of them training together. Lorcan’s bruises were healing from her fall, but still, Daire was quite solicitous of her.
When Graydon was working out with them, both Daire and Lorcan showed nothing personal between them. It was only when he went inside and watched them through an upstairs window that he began to see what Toby had.
Many times Daire put his arms around Lorcan as he showed her some movement that Graydon was sure she knew well. Twice he saw Daire close his eyes for a moment as Lorcan’s body grazed his.
That night when they were alone Graydon asked Daire about the woman he was pledged to marry. “How is Astrie?”
For a moment Daire looked blank. “Well, I assume.”
“You don’t keep in contact with her?”
“My family does. That is enough.”
“And when is your wedding?” Graydon asked.
“Why all these questions?”
“I was just curious, is all,” Graydon said, then turned away. At meals he began to see the way Lorcan and Daire moved certain dishes toward each other. It was subtle, something he’d never noticed before, but it was there. One morning he glanced up and saw Toby looking at him as though to say “I told you so.” It was the most personal she’d been all week.
When the historic clothes arrived from Lanconia, Graydon was sure that they’d melt Toby’s coolness. His grandparents had sent a dress for her that was truly beautiful.
Gently, Toby held it up. “This should be in a museum.”
“No, it should be worn by a beautiful woman,” Graydon said in a voice that in the past had made several women look at him with dreamy eyes.
But Toby ignored him.
“Toby, I—” Graydon began as he stepped toward her.
But her cell phone rang. “It’s Jared,” she said as she went outside to answer it. Minutes later she returned, smiling. “He’s given me a job! I’m to design an entire garden for his cousin’s house. Alix is drawing the remodel now and …” She took a breath. “I have to go measure things. Lorcan? Want to hold the end of the tape?”
“I would like to—” Graydon began but his cell rang and it was Rory with yet another emergency. Their father was recovering and wanted to talk to him.
“Now I really have to be you,” Rory said, panic in his voice. “Maybe you should come home for this one.”
Graydon looked at Toby and Lorcan talking together, both of them with their eyes alight, and he thought that if he left now he didn’t think Toby would let him back in the house. “I can’t do it,” Graydon said in Lanconian. “I have business here.”
“You think bedding some American girl is more important than your king?” Rory shot at him.
“I’m not touching her and don’t try to bully me. You can do this! I’ll walk you through it.”
Rory seemed shocked at what his brother had said. “You’ve had weeks but you haven’t won the girl? What’s wrong?”
Graydon gave a half smile. “It seems that to Toby I’m not a prince by birthright. She expects me to earn the position.”
Rory laughed so hard that Graydon rolled his eyes and very nearly hung up on his brother.
It was just before Rory was to go see their father—and try to fool him about his own sons—that Graydon asked his brother to do something for him.
“Besides try to be you?” Rory snapped.
In the past Graydon had been almost patronizing about Rory’s reluctance to spend time with their parents. But since Graydon had heard the
