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His calm brought Toby back to reality. She collapsed onto the couch beside him. “I don’t believe in destiny. Why couldn’t we change history for the better? Maybe Garrett and Tabby could make a child who is more important than any of them. Maybe he or she will cure cancer. Maybe we’ll change history so much that we return to find out there was no World War II.” Her eyes were pleading with him for help.
He picked up her hand and kissed her palm. He was glad to see color coming back to her face. “I will do all in my power to help us bring this about. I pledge all that I have to you. Now, shall we go exploring?”
She knew he meant that they should go look inside BEYOND TIME. Perhaps there they’d find the answer. “Yes,” she answered, smiling with her heart in her eyes. “Let’s go.”
“How do you seduce a man?” Toby asked Lexie on the telephone. Usually Lexie dominated their calls as she excitedly told of all she and her boss were doing on their long road trip. But today Lexie was unusually quiet. Toby knew she should ask Lex what was wrong, but she couldn’t. At the moment, Toby’s own problems were too urgent.
“I don’t know,” Lexie said. “Breathe. Be. Exist. It doesn’t seem to be too difficult to get one of them to make a pass at you. You aren’t after your prince, are you?”
Toby took a breath. “Yes.”
“Don’t do this!” Lexie said. “He’s going to leave and—Wait a minute. You want to and he’s telling you no?!”
“Yes. That’s exactly what’s happening.”
“That’s insulting,” Lexie said. “Does he think he’s too good for you? He’s a prince and you’re a peasant? That sort of thing?”
“No, no, no,” Toby said. “It’s not like that at all. I think he wants to but I’m cursed with a second virginity and he doesn’t want to take it again.”
“Toby,” Lexie said slowly, “you need to explain that remark.”
She started to, but Toby knew she couldn’t. Maybe if Lexie were there and surrounded by the mystique of Nantucket, what she had to say would be believable, but not over the phone. Not to someone who was in the sunny south of France. “It doesn’t matter,” she said at last. “It’s just that Graydon leaves in two days and he refuses to go to bed with me again, and I want him to. And before you protest, let me remind you that you told me to have an affair with him.”
“Yeah, well, that was before I learned how serious affairs can be.”
Toby heard what sounded like misery in her friend’s voice. “How’s Roger? Are you two still just having fun sex, with no commitments?”
In other circumstances, Lexie would have said yes to the sex but admitted that feelings were being added. But Toby sounded so down that Lexie decided against it. “Have you tried exceptional underwear?”
“Aubade,” Toby said. “I ordered it online.”
“You are serious. Booze?”
“He insists that I drink with him, I fall asleep after two drinks, and I wake up in my own bed. Fully clothed.”
“Do you spend time together?”
The answer to that question made Toby’s mind spin. It had been a whole week since they’d gone to see Dr. Huntley, and since then she and Graydon had rarely been apart. They were both obsessed with fixing what they’d done wrong. They wanted to save Garrett and Tabby. It had been Graydon’s idea that when—if—they returned they could leave a letter behind explaining how to prevent death in childbirth. But before they could write such a letter, they needed to do some research. They’d ordered out-of-print books on the history of childbirth, downloaded books on their eReaders, and done online searches. When they went back they wanted to know all the possibilities so they could prevent Tabby’s death no matter what. Their conclusion was that if she’d died from something simple—dirty midwife hands?—they’d be able to fix it. But if it was something like preeclampsia, there was no hope.
In addition to their research, they slept at the BEYOND TIME house. The first night they’d used sleeping bags they’d found in the attic of Kingsley House. But Graydon said his back couldn’t take more of that so he’d bought mattresses from Marine Home and had them delivered.
Mattresses. Plural. Two of them, twin size.
At first Toby had laughed. She thought he’d done that to make Daire and Lorcan believe they weren’t lovers—which, to Toby’s mind, they were. But no, Graydon made the ridiculous comment that he wasn’t going to take her maidenhood a second time.
“This isn’t Lanconia,” Toby said to him. “This is America, and any virgin over the age of twenty is put on the cover of People magazine, or they go on Ellen and explain themselves.”
Graydon didn’t give in. In the ensuing week Toby did everything she could think of to entice him onto her mattress, but he wouldn’t budge.
She finally answered Lexie’s question. “Yes, we’re together whenever he isn’t working with his brother. I’ve neglected Victoria’s wedding and haven’t seen my friends for a week, but Graydon is wonderful. He holds me when I cry; he talks me out of sadness. He does everything except make love to me.”
“Toby,” Lexie said, “what do you mean he holds you when you cry? What is that man doing to you?!”
“It’s not like that,” Toby said, her voice hesitant. “It’s … You see, he and I are working on a historical project for, uh, for Victoria’s 1806 wedding and I keep reading about things like medical practices back then and, well, I get a bit teary about it.”
“It doesn’t sound to me like you’re neglecting Victoria’s wedding at all. It sounds like you’re obsessing on it.”
If you only knew, Toby thought, but didn’t say. During the day she and Graydon watched the old house. When he wasn’t working out, he took calls from Rory while in front of the window, always watching.
