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  “I saw it in the greenhouse.”

  Toby’s eyes widened in panic. “I forgot to do the watering.” She stepped over three suitcases and started for the door.

  “I did it,” Graydon said. “When I put away the tools, I thought the plants looked a bit dry so I watered them. Was that all right?”

  She smiled in relief. “Very all right.” It looked like he wasn’t going to be the burden she’d thought he would be. She went back to unpacking, putting his shaving gear in the bathroom. He didn’t use an electric shaver but an old-fashioned brush, a little tub of soap, and a safety razor.

  By the time the luggage was unpacked, Graydon had nearly twenty sketches of their different ideas. With a great sigh of relief that the job was done, Toby flopped down on the little couch beside him and went through the drawings. There were historical themes, from medieval to the 1940s, and places ranging from barns with banjos to a fake mansion a la The Great Gatsby. They’d done four fairy tales, one of them Lanconian that involved fairies and dwarves. (They left out the evisceration parts of the story.)

  “Your drawings are good. What did you study in school?” Toby asked as she checked her phone messages. Victoria had sent a text saying she’d found someone for Toby’s job and she’d start in the morning.

  “Everything,” he answered. He was looking at her, so close to him, her skin warm and pink, her hair in its long braid. She was in profile and he could hardly keep his eyes off her lips.

  He looked away just as she turned to him. “Eclectic,” he said. “I studied a bit of everything but nothing in depth. I had a drawing master from the time I was a child, as well as tutors for music and dance, horseback riding, and fencing. What about you? What did you study?”

  “Mostly art history. My mother wanted me to study ‘husband catching’ but she couldn’t find such a course, although she did search.”

  “That sounds like something you truly need to learn how to do. So tell me, how many proposals of marriage have you turned down?”

  She laughed. “Three, but don’t tell my mother.” She looked at him. “How did you know I’d had proposals?”

  “There are women you spend time with and women you marry. You are the latter.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I can’t give away universal male secrets, now can I?”

  Smiling, Toby got up. “On that note, I think I’ll call it a night. Tomorrow I have to …” She smiled. “I don’t have to do anything, do I?”

  “We need to get some watercolors so I can finish the green theme.”

  “That’s easy, and after we get them we can go to a beach. And this time you can work while I do nothing.” She nodded toward the empty cases.

  “I’m a prince,” he said haughtily. “I don’t do luggage.”

  “Why, you—!” Toby took a step toward him but stopped herself. “Just be warned that I put a pea under your mattress.”

  “Oh, my aching back!”

  They laughed together and for a moment it was a bit awkward between them. How did they say goodnight?

  Graydon solved the problem by getting up, taking her hand in his, and kissing the back of it. “Goodnight, my lady,” he said softly.

  Toby looked at him for a moment, the soft light of the room, the deep sound of a foghorn outside the open window, and she almost stepped toward him. But she didn’t. “I put your toiletries in Lexie’s bathroom and the sheets are clean and … I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” he said.

  Toby went into her bedroom and closed the door, but she felt too restless to sleep. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she was beginning to feel what the girls in school used to giggle about. Graydon wasn’t like other men she’d met. He wasn’t making little excuses to touch her, to reach across her. He wasn’t giving her long looks that he hoped would send her flying into his arms.

  The truth was, he seemed to think of her as, well, a friend, or maybe a relative.

  And that’s good, Toby thought as she put on her pajamas. He’s a man who is about to become engaged so he shouldn’t be even looking at other women. On the other hand, it would be nice to think he had, well, a little bit of desire for her.

  Graydon was in the shower. He had his head against the wall and the water pounding down on him was ice cold—but it wasn’t cold enough to stop the furnace that seemed to rage inside him.

  “Irial, Zerna, Poilen, Vatell, Fearen, Ulten,” he said, reciting the names of the six tribes of Lanconia. It was a trick he’d used since he was a boy. When his mother—never his father—was bawling him out about some minor infraction, he’d distracted himself with the chant.

  But right now it wasn’t helping. All he could think of was how close Toby was to him. Just a few feet away. One wall separated them. He had visions of slashing through that wall with a broadsword and going to her.

  “Too much Lanconian,” he muttered as he got out of the shower and stood there for a moment. He’d opened the window and the cool night air felt good on his wet, bare skin.

  He reminded himself that a quarter of him was American. “And I must be politically correct,” he said aloud. American men didn’t slash down walls, didn’t jam swords into beds, and most certainly didn’t rip off a woman’s clothes.

  He dried off and got into bed, but it was a long time before he slept.

  In the morning Toby quietly dressed and tiptoed down the stairs. She thought she’d make corn muffins before Graydon got up. But when she entered the kitchen she saw him sitting at the little round table in the newly cleaned sunroom, a laptop open before him. “Good morning,” she said.

  Looking up, he smiled as though she were the person he most wanted to see. “Good morning. I thought I’d look online and see whether or not my brother has brought about the downfall of my country.”

  “Has he?” Toby asked as she got a box of cornmeal out of the pantry.

  “So far, no. He has a factory opening ceremony tomorrow, so later I’ll check to see if he set fire to the ribbon and kissed three pretty girls while it burned.”

  Again, Toby wasn’t sure if he was kidding or being honest. “Did you have any new ideas about the wedding?”

  “Pirates? What about American gangsters?”

  “That’s possible. The bridesmaids could wear flapper dresses with long pearls. Victoria would like that.”

  “What about you? If you were getting married, what theme would you want?”

  “No theme,” she said. “I just want a beautiful white gown with yards of lace and all my best girlfriends wearing dresses in shades of blue. I’d have white and blue flowers everywhere. Pale blue tablecloths and white dishes, and a cake with icing cornflowers falling down the side.”

  Suddenly, she stopped, embarrassed at having gone on in such detail. “Sorry. At the shop we deal with weddings all the time so I’ve thought about mine.” She shrugged.

  Graydon got up and walked to stand behind her. “I think your wedding sounds more beautiful than all the themes we’ve come up with.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, still embarrassed. When he didn’t move, she looked up at him. For part of a second there was a look in his eyes that made her step toward him.

  When Graydon turned and stepped away, Toby couldn’t help her frown. All right, so he wasn’t interested in her that way. Good. Didn’t that show he loved the woman he was to marry? And wasn’t that good?

  She turned back to the stove.

  After breakfast, they bought watercolors, then drove to the Jetties and walked for a long way by the water. At first, they came up with a few more themes for the wedding, but then they began to talk about their lives—at least Toby talked about hers. Graydon asked her questions about her childhood, her schooling, her friends, what she liked and what she didn’t.

  She answered everything, but she was cautious and careful not to reveal anything that was truly private. When it came to her mother, she told how efficiently she ran the household, but Toby le