Toby took a moment before answering. “If we did, his family would hate me. He has a mother who …” She took a breath. “I spoke to her once, or rather, listened to her. I felt sorry for Graydon. His childhood must have been very lonely with her for a mother. Ow!”
“Sorry,” Millie said. “Your hair twisted around the comb. Couldn’t you work out something so you two could marry?”
“That’s what Graydon wants. He wanted us to go to the courthouse and get married today, but I said no. Can you imagine the two of us going to Lanconia and how he’d tell his ferocious mother that he’d married some American nobody? I’d spend my life being snubbed by her.”
“Your comfort is more important than marrying the man you love?”
“No,” Toby said. “The problem is that Graydon would be torn in half. How could he focus on helping his country if he were caught in a war between women? And if Lady Danna’s father moves his business out of the country because of me, Lanconians would protest. Graydon couldn’t do his best job under that kind of stress.”
“How very noble of you,” Millie said.
Whether it was the words or the way Millie said them, the tears began to come. Millie sat down on the ottoman beside Toby and put her arms around her.
“I’m not noble. I’d like to spit in the eye of all of them! I’d like to elope with Graydon then stand before that mother of his and dare her to say even one nasty thing to me. But I can’t hurt Graydon. I love him too much to do that to him.”
Millie held Toby away from her to look into her eyes. “All right! That’s all the time we have for wallowing in self-pity. We need to get your face made up, put your dress on, and hurry to the chapel. Otherwise, we’ll miss Victoria and Caleb’s wedding.”
“I don’t think I can—”
Millie stood up, her shoulders back, and she looked down her nose at Toby. “You want the man you love to be a king, so you need to act like a queen. Queens do not allow others to see what they feel inside.”
“Maybe in Lanconia they don’t—”
“Carpathia!” Millie said in a tone that made Toby stand up.
“Okay, Your Majesty. My inner queen will now emerge.”
Millie didn’t smile, but put her hands on Toby’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes.
“Your prince will probably be there tonight. He’ll have on an eighteenth-century costume and look so handsome you’ll swoon on your feet. If he again asks you to run away with him, will you?”
“Probably.”
Millie glared at her.
“Okay. No to running away, no to a quickie marriage, but yes to a bedtime romp.”
Millie frowned.
“That’s the best you’re gonna get.”
“All right, then,” Millie said. “Just let me know and I’ll stay at Jilly and Ken’s house tonight.”
Toby grimaced. “With my luck with men, Graydon will have found another girlfriend by now.”
“Not with all that blonde hair of yours. If he steps away, just lasso him with it and he’ll come back.”
Toby laughed. “How do you know about Graydon and my hair?”
“You told me, remember? Now let’s see how fast we can get you made up.”
Roger Plymouth’s big, glass-fronted house was on the water at the south of the island. It was the kind of house that appeared in Architectural Digest. Inside, the furniture was all perfectly placed and everything was white and blue, the colors of the water and the clear air.
Lexie hated the look of the interior. People who lived on Nantucket wondered why the expensive off-island decorators could think of nothing except white furniture with blue pillows. The walls were artistically covered with cute reproductions of whales, with an anchor here and there. There wasn’t a breath of creativity in the whole house.
Lexie had already told Roger that after they were married she wanted to redecorate the entire house. His reply was “Tear the place down and get your cousin Jared to build a new one if you want.” Lexie’s reply had been a lecture on useless extravagance. It had taken four hours in bed together to make up after that argument.
Right now Lexie was sitting on the white couch across from the identical white couch Graydon was sitting on. They were both in eighteenth-century costume and ready to go to the chapel for the wedding ceremony. She knew that he’d spent most of the day on the phone talking to people in Lanconia. It looked like it hadn’t gone well because right now Graydon was slumped down, not sitting with his usual upright bearing. It was almost impossible to believe that he was descended from kings.