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  “Sorry,” he said and he was. All of them liked Toby and her work was excellent.

  Toby spent some time with her coworkers, sharing hugs and stories of the work they’d been doing, but when she began to feel in the way, she left and walked to Jetties Beach. But it was where she and Graydon had walked together and there were too many memories.

  She took herself to Arno’s for lunch, then went shopping at Zero Main. Noël and her staff always made Toby feel better.

  At five she started home. She knew she’d made some decisions, and she planned to stick with them. The first thing was that she was going to stop disparaging Graydon’s country. It wasn’t any of her business what they did. She was an American and had different views, but that didn’t make them the only way or even a better way. It was Graydon’s life and if he wanted to marry a woman he didn’t love, he had that right.

  The main thing Toby knew was that she needed to protect herself. She’d laughed about it to Lexie, but the way Toby was going, she was going to fall in love with Graydon. Then what? She’d kiss him goodbye as he went off to marry someone else? No, she wasn’t going to do that.

  By the time she got back to the house, she was smiling.

  “Where have you been?” Graydon demanded as soon as she stepped inside. His hair was rumpled and his eyes were red. A deep frown creased his forehead.

  She put her shopping bags on the floor and her handbag on the little table in the hall. “How did it go with your Russian businessman?”

  Graydon stepped forward, his arms extended, as though he meant to pull her into them. But Toby took a step back, her body stiff, and her face wore what Lexie called the don’t-touch-me look.

  Graydon dropped his arms. “I apologize for what I said.” His voice was so soft only she could hear him. “We Lanconians are too inflexible. We—”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Different countries; different ways. I had no right to criticize you or your country.”

  He smiled at her. “Shall we kiss and make up?”

  “No,” she said firmly, then took her shopping bags and went upstairs.

  It was early morning on Saturday, the day of the dinner party, and Graydon was looking out the upstairs window as Toby watered the garden. It was cool and foggy, perfect Nantucket weather, and he would have liked to be with her, but he knew that things had changed between them. Ever since he’d explained to Toby why Daire couldn’t possibly marry someone like Lorcan, it was as though she had closed a door on him.

  She seemed to have left their private little world for two and returned to her life on Nantucket. Twice she’d been out to lunch with her girlfriends. At six one morning he saw her outside cutting flowers for a wedding. Graydon had asked if she needed help but Toby had politely told him no. No teasing or laughing, just her extreme courtesy—and it was getting him down. Every sentence she addressed to him was polite. She smiled at him, made small talk, and was always endlessly courteous.

  “I don’t know what you did to her,” Daire said after a few days, “but if I were you, I’d be afraid to close my eyes.”

  The truth was that Graydon had no idea what he’d done to make her go from … well, almost loving to smiling at him as though she’d just met him that morning.

  Twice he’d tried to talk to her. Both times he’d used his most patient—and certainly most charming—voice to explain his country and hers. He’d talked of how his homeland was very old and that it was based on centuries of tradition. He’d smiled as he told her that her country was so young that it couldn’t understand having customs that went back hundreds of years.

  She’d seemed to be listening—until he reached out to take her hand in his.

  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