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  Graydon’s first thought was that he should leave the room, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted her to a sitting position, slipped the gown over her head, put her back down, then wrestled her trousers off from under the gown. He folded the big coverlet over her and stepped back to look at her.

  She was changing his life, he thought. She complained that he had taken over her life, but it was nothing compared to what she’d done to him. From the moment he’d first seen her he hadn’t been the same person. It was as though everything that had ever been important to him had abruptly been taken away.

  His country and all it meant seemed to have been pushed to the background. Never in his life would he have believed that he was capable of setting duty aside so he could spend a week with some woman he hardly knew. Had it been a week of wild sex that he’d wanted before marriage, he could have understood. But he’d spent an entire week with Toby planning some other woman’s wedding. He would never have believed himself capable of such a thing.

  But he had enjoyed it! What was it she’d said? That he’d been her “best girlfriend.” That idea made him smile. At night, alone in his bed, the last thing he’d felt like was a female.

  He wanted to believe that at the end of the week he would have said goodbye to Toby and flown home to his real life. He would have invited her to his wedding with Danna and maybe even smiled at her as he stood at the front waiting for his bride.

  But he’d made no plans to return home, and when Daire and Lorcan showed up and Graydon was given an excuse not to leave, he’d taken it instantly.

  He should be in Lanconia now. Even if he had to put on a fake cast when he appeared in public, he should do it. Their family doctor would cover for him. Rory could run off to wherever he went when he wanted to retreat and Graydon could carry on with his duties.

  But he wasn’t doing that. Instead, he was still on this island, still with this young woman, and downstairs were his two trusted friends, who were trying to understand why Graydon wasn’t doing what he should.

  He had no explanation for them because he didn’t understand it himself.

  “Don’t leave,” Toby said.

  “You need your sleep.”

  “Why were you so interested in my dream?” she asked.

  “It’s a haunted house.” He was standing over her and looking down. Her hair had come loose and was flowing out around her. Moonlight came into the room and he could see her blue eyes. With her golden hair and the white gown, he knew he’d never seen anything more desirable. He could no more leave the room than he could teleport himself back to Lanconia.

  Even while telling himself that he shouldn’t do it, he stretched out on the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms, her head on his chest. When she looked up at him as though she meant for him to kiss her, he moved her head back down.

  “Why won’t you kiss me?” she whispered.

  “I am afraid of what will happen,” he said.

  “Afraid I’ll fall so hard in love with you that when you leave my heart will break?”

  “No,” he said. “Afraid my heart will break.”

  “But today you said you wanted to seduce me. You don’t seem to be making any progress.”

  “You are here now, in my arms, there is moonlight and darkness. Is that not success? Or would you prefer that I ride a horse up the stairs?”

  Toby snuggled against him. “I like this better. I find you very attractive. Do you know that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She ran her hand over his chest, putting her fingertips inside his shirt to touch his warm skin. She moved her leg over his. “I’m here and it’s now.”

  He pushed her leg off his and kissed her fingertips. “You are most tempting, but you have consumed a great deal of alcohol. You might regret this in the morning. In my country we take the losing of a maidenhead very seriously.”

  “In my country it tends to be in the backseat of a car.”

  “But not for you,” he said. “You are different.”

  She relaxed against him. “Why have you stayed?”

  “I don’t know. It’s as though something is compelling me to remain here. As though there’s something I need to do.”

  “No time like the present,” she said suggestively as she ran her leg against his.

  Graydon laughed. “You are a very happy drunk, are you not?”

  “I’ve been happy since you came into my life.”

  “Except when you were shouting at me.”

  “Did I hurt your feelings very much?”

  “No,” he said. “It was wonderful. I’ve been afraid to be myself, afraid that you were such a fragile, delicate little thing that I could easily break you, snap you in half.”

  “Ha!” Toby said. “My mother has hardened me so much that nothing anyone says to me gets through my skin.”

  “At least your mother doesn’t wear a crown and rule a couple of armies.”

  Toby drew in her breath. Never before had he said anything so personal. “Does she demand a lot of you?”

  “More than I know how to give,” Graydon said.

  Toby slipped her fingers through his, intertwining them. “We’re alike in that.”

  “I think perhaps we’re alike in many ways,” he said softly.

  When Toby put her face up to his, he couldn’t resist. He put his lips on hers, meaning to kiss her sweetly and gently, but at the first touch, the kiss deepened. His hand went to her head, burying in her hair.

  He kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks, then back to her lips. His tongue touched the corner of her mouth, a tantalizing bit that made her want more.

  Toby’s hands went around his chest and pulled him on top of her.

  It was as though some memory was stirring inside her. This wasn’t the first time, she thought. This man, his breath, his face, his body were familiar to her. She knew him. She knew how he worried about living up to the heavy responsibilities that had been placed on his shoulders. He worried about her and her family, about whether she would love him as much as he did her. If anything happened to her, she knew his soul would go with hers. “Tabby, don’t leave me,” she seemed to hear inside her head. Or had Graydon said that?

  She pulled back to look at him and for a moment she thought she saw tears in his eyes, but surely it was a trick of the moonlight.

  He rolled onto his back and pushed her head down onto his chest. “Sleep, my lovely one,” he whispered.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said as she clung to him.

  “I’m not sure that I can,” he said.

  They fell asleep together, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Toward morning, Toby began to dream.

  “I can’t marry you! Do you not understand that? I have too many people depending on me. Silas can help support us. He will—”

  “I’ll burn his store down before I let you marry him!”

  Tabby drew in her breath. The houses on Nantucket were close together and nearly all of them were wooden. Fire was a very dangerous threat. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “How can you think I would?” Garrett grabbed her upper arms. “Tabby, you must marry me. I love you more than life.”

  “More than the sea?”

  When he moved away from her, his face was filled with anguish. “I have to make a living and the sea is what I know. Would you have me open a store like that truck-bellied, brocky Silas Osborne? Is that what you want of me? To emasculate me? Would you cut off the parts of me that make me a man?”

  “I don’t know,” Tabby said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  The ringing of a phone woke Toby, and for a few seconds she was disoriented. Was she with Garrett wearing a long brown dress or was she in Nantucket in her nightgown?

  She looked at the other side of the bed and saw the indentation where Graydon had slept—or had that been part of her dream? When she sat up, her head hurt, her mouth was dry, and her stomach was queasy.

  The phone stopped, and she pul