“He’s the director of the NHS, the historical society.” She looked at her watch. “He’s probably at work now.” She looked down at her jeans and T-shirt. “I’ll change,” she said as she headed up the stairs.
Graydon was right behind her. “Should I wear a tie?”
“Heavens, no! You’ll look like an off-islander. Put on that light blue denim shirt and the dark brown trousers.” She went into her bedroom and stripped down to her underwear. “And put on those shoes that lace up,” she called through the open doors.
“Brown or black?” he called back.
“Brown,” she said as she stood there looking in her closet. It was less than a third the size of Lexie’s big walk-in, so all her clothes were jammed together. Where was her pink and white dress?
“Which shoes?” Graydon said from the doorway. He had on trousers and an open shirt, and he was barefoot and holding two pairs of shoes. “Oh, sorry,” he said when he saw her in her underwear. He turned around but he didn’t leave the room, just held the shoes out behind his back.
“The ones on my left, your right.” She pulled the dress out and held it in front of her. Graydon was still standing inside her bedroom, his back to her. “Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead and get dressed.” He didn’t move.
That wasn’t what she meant. She stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door half open.
Graydon sat down on the end of the bed and put on his socks. “So what do we ask this man?”
“I don’t know,” Toby said. “To tell us Victoria’s innermost secrets, I guess. Her fantasy wishes.” She pulled her dress on over her head and looked in the mirror to start applying makeup.
“That should go over well,” he said sarcastically. “You wouldn’t have a shoehorn, would you?”
“Bedside table,” she said. “Maybe we should be more subtle and lead up to what we want to ask. My worry is that he won’t want an inexperienced person like me overseeing his wedding.”
Graydon pushed the bathroom door all the way open as he began to button his shirt. She was applying mascara. “What do you know about this Dr. Huntley?”
“Not much. I didn’t even know he and Victoria were serious about each other until Alix’s wedding. There they were, holding hands and looking at each other with big cow eyes. It was a shock to me. My hair is a mess! I’m going to have to take it down and rebraid it.” She was referring to the strands that were hanging down the sides of her face.
“Here, let me,” he said and took her hairbrush from her. Gently, he began to smooth the strands back.
All Toby could do was stand there and watch him in the mirror. This, she thought, this simple but incredibly intimate act of a man brushing her hair, was the kind of thing she’d always imagined as marriage. She’d never wanted the frantic tussles in the back of a car that girls giggled about. When she was growing up, a man brushing her hair was the kind of thing she’d dreamed about. Graydon had his head down, his eyes on her hair, and she thought how much she’d like to turn and slip her arms around his neck and kiss him.
She made herself look away. He’s not yours, she told herself. He isn’t; he can’t be. Besides, in the last week she’d seen how he ignored anything that could lead to any physicality between them. There’d been a couple of times when she’d turned toward him in the hopes that he’d kiss her, but he’d always moved away. She’d been pursued by boys since she was fifteen years old and to suddenly have a man step away when she got too close hurt. Actually, it was crushing her ego.
When she looked back up at Graydon she was smiling, determined to not let him see that she wanted more than he was willing to give.
Graydon looked at her in the mirror. “Better?”
“Perfect, and thank you,” she said, then slipped away from him to go back into the bedroom. She pulled a little heart locket necklace out of her jewelry box and started to put it on.
Graydon brushed her hands away and fastened it around her neck. “A gift?”
“From my father for my sixteenth birthday.” For a moment they both looked into the mirror, and again Toby wanted to turn to him.
As always, Graydon stepped away. “Excuse me for a moment. I’ll meet you downstairs.” He went back to his own bedroom, closed the door, and leaned against it. What the hell was he doing?! When he saw Toby in her undressed state he should have left the room but he couldn’t make himself do it. A lifetime of discipline seemed to disappear in a moment. He was so aroused at the sight of her seminude state that he’d been tempted to fling her onto the bed and tear off her clothing. But then what? Tomorrow he’d fly away and never see her again? Maybe she’d recover from a one-night stand, but he wasn’t sure he would. He’d be condemned to a lifetime of living with another woman, while Toby …
He closed his eyes. He had to go home. Next week a couple of ambassadors were visiting Lanconia and Rory knew nothing about them. It wouldn’t take long for the exchange of twins to be found out. Graydon could see the headlines now. “Royal Twins Fool the World.” Lanconia would be an international joke. It would go down in Lanconian history books, and a hundred years from now schoolchildren would laugh about it. Would Toby’s photo be beside Graydon’s? Worse, would the textbooks tell how Graydon’s scheme had brought down the Lanconian throne?
He knew he had to return home, but the idea of leaving tomorrow made his heart ache. It took a lot of work on his part to get himself fully under control before he could go downstairs.
Toby was waiting for him, looking very pretty in her pink and white striped dress and her little sandals. “We can walk to Dr. Huntley’s office,” she said, then looked at him. “Are you all right? You look like something has upset you.”
“No, nothing,” Graydon said curtly.
Toby knew he was yet again, as always, not confiding in her. When he opened the front door, they both came to a halt. Standing there were two magnificent-looking people, a man and a woman. “Your Royal Highness,” they said as they bowed to Graydon.
When Toby looked at him, he wore the expression of a man whose life had just come to an end.
He opened the door wider to let them in.
Less than an hour after the accident in Lanconia, Lorcan and Daire got on a private jet to New York. At JFK airport they’d been hurriedly escorted to a small jet that took them to Nantucket. Daire was concerned about Lorcan’s injuries, but he’d not directly asked her about them. For one thing, there were too many people around them and too much secrecy involved for either of them to speak freely. And besides, Lorcan wouldn’t have liked his implication that a few bruises had lessened her abilities as a royal bodyguard. Prince Graydon needed her, so she would be there.
It was Daire, who was always at ease with people, who chatted about the weather and thanked them for their help.
As for Lorcan, she was mostly silent during the long journey halfway around the world. Very tall, with her long black hair slicked into a ponytail that reached halfway down her back, she was a woman who caused heads to turn. But she didn’t respond to any of the glances. Even though it was her first trip out of Lanconia, she didn’t let her eyes stray from Daire. She followed him through airports and did what he told her was needed. When she winced in pain, he saw it, and his eyes asked if she was all right. She didn’t speak, just gave a curt nod.
Daire had to turn away to hide his smile of pride. He had taught her well.
When they got to the Nantucket airport, they waited for the wide doors to open and their crates and trunks to be put onto the ramp. Against Lorcan’s protest, Daire dealt with the bulk of it. They had brought what was needed to stay in contact with Lanconia, as well as training equipment and personal items. When it was all collected, they put it into a rented car.
It wasn’t until they were inside the vehicle that Lorcan felt she could speak. “What do you think she’s like?” she asked as Daire drove out of the airport.
He didn’t have to be told who she meant: the woman who had caused so much trouble with
Prince Graydon. “He doesn’t have a type. If it were Rory, it would be easy to say. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and willing to follow him into any dangerous situation he wants to blindly run into. But Gray …”
Daire was a royal cousin, sixth in line for the throne, so he could call Prince Graydon by his given name. But Lorcan was not of their class. She was a descendent of the Zerna tribe, orphaned young and taken in by her elderly grandparents, who were very happy when, at the age of twelve, she won a palace scholarship. From then on, she’d been fed, clothed, educated, and above all trained at government expense. Martial arts, boxing, swordplay, weaponry of all sorts were mastered by her. When she graduated in the top five of her class, she was hired by the royal family. Three years ago, after her quick thinking and decisive action had saved the life of a royal cousin, she was assigned to Prince Graydon.
“I have no idea what kind of woman he prefers,” Lorcan said. There was no jealousy from her in that area. She and the prince had become friends, and she aspired to no more than that. “Certainly not Danna.”
Daire laughed. “How many times in the last week has she had a private meal with Rory?”
Lorcan grimaced. “If she had fallen down the stairs with the king, I wonder who Prince Rory would have tried to save?”
Just a few hours earlier the King of Lanconia had fallen at the top of some wide marble steps. Rory—who people thought was Graydon—had leaped in front of his father to break his fall. Rory had landed on his left arm and broken his wrist. He would have been hurt worse, but at the first sign of movement, Lorcan had thrown herself in front of both men. Without a thought for her own safety, she’d used her body to cushion their landing. When everyone settled, Lorcan had been on the bottom, Rory on top of her, and the king at the crest of the pile. He was the one least hurt—at least physically. What the press didn’t know, and what everyone at the palace was working hard to conceal, was that the king had fallen because he’d had a stroke.
“Rory said Gray became fascinated with her because she could tell the twins apart,” Daire said.
“I wonder how she pulled off that trick.” Lorcan looked at him. “What do you think her game is?”
“I have no idea. Maybe she fell in love with him at first sight.” They looked at each other and scoffed.
“My guess is that she’s trying to get pregnant,” Lorcan said. “Needles in the condoms, that sort of thing.”
Daire shrugged. “But then, it’s a fashion for royals to produce a love child. It hasn’t hurt Albert of Monaco.”
“I thought our prince was smarter than that.”
“Smart has nothing to do with it,” Daire said, his voice almost angry. “Gray is facing a loveless marriage and a job nobody in his right mind would want. I hope he did fall for her, or her for him. It doesn’t matter which way it is, but I plan to help him all I can. And if a child is produced, good!”
“I reserve my judgment until I’ve met her,” Lorcan said. “I figure she’s either the lowest class produced in this country or she owns a mansion and the prince is her … her …”
“Plaything? Wild, with endless sex? Something for him to remember when he’s in bed with Ice Queen Danna?”
“Put that way, I hope he is being used by her,” Lorcan said.
“And since we’ll be staying there, I hope she has a mansion with multiple bedrooms. I don’t relish sleeping on the floor.”
“You’re getting soft as well as old.”
“Think so?” he said as he glanced at her. He and Graydon were the same age and they’d started training together when they were children. After Rory had been sent away to the first of several boarding schools, Daire was the only real friend Graydon had left. For years they’d schooled together, played sports, traded secrets. But as they grew up, Graydon’s mother, the queen, began to separate the boys. There was specialized education that Graydon needed, so he was gradually moved into royal duties in preparation for his future role.
It was only after university and after they’d both served in the military that they got back together. But then, Daire was the only person the queen considered sufficiently high ranking enough—and fit enough—to go through the rigorous training that Graydon preferred.
When Lorcan became his bodyguard, she fit in easily with the two of them and they’d been a team since then. At least they were until Graydon said he was flying down to Nantucket to be in a wedding. After that, everything had changed.
And now things were changing even more. Prince Rory’s arm was in a cast and the king was hidden away in a hospital in Switzerland, while Daire and Lorcan had been sent to Nantucket with orders to keep the man believed to be Rory away from his own country.
“There it is,” Lorcan said. “Kingsley Lane. Turn here.”
Toby could only stare at the two people as they entered the house. To say they were magnificent was an understatement. They were both very tall—he was six feet three or four, and she had to be at least six feet. They were both dark, with hair and eyes as black as midnight, their skin honey-colored. He was about Graydon’s age, early thirties, while she was quite a bit younger, maybe Toby’s age. They were wearing all black, a combination of leather and wool, with a bit of silver here and there. Their dress and their extremely erect posture would have been remarkable in itself, but their faces were beautiful: eyes slightly slanted, long, narrow noses, and full lips. Altogether they seemed to have come from a time long ago.
When they stepped inside, Graydon and the man started talking in what Toby assumed was Lanconian. She’d heard only bits of the language. It was deep, with words pronounced inside the throat, an old sound—and a beautiful one.
But it was obvious that something was wrong, as Graydon’s frown was growing deeper with every word the man spoke.
Toby stood to one side, waiting to be told what had happened. After a few moments, she reached out to put her hand on Graydon’s arm to ask him what was wrong, but the woman slashed a look at Toby that made her drop her hand and take a step back. She got the impression that if she dared touch The Prince the woman would strike her.
At last Graydon formally greeted the two people. He and the man clasped arms, with hands at the elbows, their heads bent forward. Graydon didn’t touch the woman but they smiled at each other with great warmth. Obviously, the three of them knew one another well.
Graydon turned to Toby. “I must …” he began, but he seemed to be so overwhelmed with what he’d heard that he couldn’t finish.
“If you need me, I’ll be outside,” she said softly, and gave him an encouraging smile. He looked at her with gratitude.
She went through the kitchen to the back door. Her guess was that something bad had happened in Lanconia and these two had come to tell Graydon about it. She truly hoped no one had died. In most people’s lives a death in the family was a tragedy, but in Graydon’s life it could mean that he was now a king.
She went to the greenhouse and began the daily watering. Now and then she’d glance toward the house but she saw no one. Whatever had happened, she felt sure that Graydon would soon be leaving. By now they’d probably gone upstairs and one of them—the woman?—was packing his luggage. She smiled as she remembered Graydon saying that he didn’t do luggage. Would they know that about him? That woman didn’t look like someone who knew how to fold sweaters properly.
Toby lifted the leaves of a scented geranium to water underneath. Wet leaves under glass tended to burn.
Of course Graydon would have to return a day early, she thought. He was a prince and he had duties. That she’d nearly forgotten that in the last few days didn’t matter. She hadn’t thought of it before, but now she’d have no one to help her with Victoria’s wedding. She could ask … Well, actually, right now there wasn’t anyone on the island whom she could ask for help. Toby had never been one of those people who had a thousand friends. No, she had a few close friends and when she was away from them …
She moved six pots of camellias to the floor and began to scour
and disinfect the bench. Maybe Jared or Lexie would know someone she could get for a summer roommate. But where would she find someone who could help her cook and help with Victoria’s wedding? Someone who’d make her laugh?
She was putting the plants back on the shelf when she glanced up to see the man from Lanconia walking toward the greenhouse. He certainly was beautiful! And he walked as though he might spring into action at any second.
She went to the door, wiping her hands on the big apron she wore, and stepped outside.
“How bad is it?” she asked, then stopped. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but I could see that something is wrong. Could I help pack?”
The man was looking at her as though puzzled by something. “His Royal Highness has sent me to inform you of everything.”
For a moment Toby didn’t know who he meant. “When is Graydon leaving?”
“He is not. He must stay longer, and we’d like to remain in your house. With your permission, that is. Perhaps my colleague and I could use your second bedroom.”
Toby felt such relief that Graydon wasn’t going away, that she wasn’t going to be left alone, that she smiled deeply. “Mr.—?”
“Daire,” he said, not giving his title or even his last name.
“Appropriate,” she murmured. “Why don’t you sit down there”—she nodded to a raised bed—“while I tend to the garden and you tell me what’s going on? Oh! And we’ll have to make a place for you downstairs—unless you share a room with Graydon.” She looked at him. “Or does he share with … with her?”
Daire’s eyes widened in surprise. “With Lorcan? She is his protector. I believe the American term is bodyguard.”
Toby gasped. “Is there some danger? Has someone threatened Graydon?”
“No,” Daire said, his voice lowered.
Toby thought it was a nice voice, but she couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t as rich and deep as Graydon’s.
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