by Penny Jordan
The aide-de-camp, who was carrying his own plumed hat as protocol demanded, stood beside his king-to-be as the doors to the royal jet were opened. He bowed as Marco walked past him and stepped out onto the gangway steps and into Niroli’s sunshine. Just for a few seconds, Marco stood motionless and ramrod-straight at the top of the steps, not because he was the island’s future ruler, but because he was one of its returning sons. He had almost forgotten the unique scent of sunshine and sea, mimosa and lemons, all of which hit him on a surge of hot wind. Not even the strong smell of jet fuel and tarmac could detract from them, and Marco felt emotion sting his eyes: this was his home, his country, and the crowds he could see lining the wide straight road that ran from the airport to the main town were his people. Many of them had not had the benefit of being part of a wider, modern world, but he intended to change that. He would give to Niroli’s young the opportunities his grandfather’s old-fashioned rule had denied them. Determinedly, Marco stepped forward. The waiting military band broke into Niroli’s national anthem and the waiting officials removed their hats and bowed their heads. Their faces were familiar to Marco, although more wrinkled and lined than he remembered—the faces of old men.
As he reached his grandfather’s most senior minister the elderly gentleman placed his hands on Marco’s arms, greeting him with a traditional continental embrace. His voice shook with emotion and Marco could see that beneath his proud, stern expression and the determinedly upright stance there was a very aged, tired man, who probably would have preferred to spend his last years with his grandchildren than doing his king’s bidding. Tactfully, Marco adjusted his own walking pace to that of the courtiers surrounding him as they escorted him unsteadily to the waiting open-topped royal limousine.
At least his grandfather hadn’t sent the coronation carriage to collect him, Marco reflected ruefully; its motion was sickeningly rocky and its velvet padded seats unpleasantly hard.
This should be his moment of triumph, the public endorsement of the strength he had gained in becoming his own man. Soon the power of the Royal House of Niroli would become his, and he would step into his grandfather’s shoes and fulfil his destiny. So why didn’t he feel more excited, and why was there this sense of emptiness within him, this sense of loss, of something missing?
The cavalcade started to move, the waiting crowds began to cheer, children clutching Niroli flags and leaning dangerously into the road, the better to see him. Marco lifted his hand and began to wave. The cool air-conditioned luxury of the limo protected him from the midday heat. But what about the people? They must be feeling the heat, Marco. As clearly as though she were seated at his side, he could hear Emily’s gently reproachful voice. Angrily he banished it. The limousine travelled a few more yards and then Marco reached forward, rapping on the glass separating him from the driver and an armed guard.
‘Highness?’ the guard queried anxiously.
‘Stop the car!’ Marco ordered. ‘I want to get out and walk.’ As he reached to open his door the guard looked horrified. ‘Sire,’ he protested, ‘the king… it may not be safe.’
Marco’s eyebrow rose. ‘Knowing my grandfather as I do, I cannot imagine he has not had ordered that plain-clothes security men be posted amongst the crowd. Besides, these are our people, not our enemy.’
As they saw Marco stepping out of the limousine the crowd fell silent. At no time in living memory had their ruler done anything so informal as walk amongst them. Marco shook the gnarled hands of working men, his smile causing pretty girls to glow with excitement and older women to feel a reawakening frisson of their youths.
One aged woman pushed her way through the people to reach him. Marco could see from her traditional peasant costume that she came from the mountains of Niroli. Her back was bent from long years spent working in the orange groves and vineyards that covered their lower slopes, her face as brown and lined as a wrinkled walnut. But there was still a fiery flash of pride in her dark eyes and as she held out to him the clumsy leather purse she had obviously made herself Marco felt as though a giant hand were gripping his heart in a tight vice.
‘Highness, please take this humble gift,’ she begged him. ‘May it always be kept full, just like the coffers and the nurseries of the House of Niroli.’ It was plain that the old peasant could ill afford to give him anything. Indeed, Marco felt he should be the one to give something to her, so he was not surprised to see the angry, hostile glower on the face of the shabbily dressed youth at her side.
‘This is your grandson?’ Marco asked her as he thanked her for her gift.
‘Aye, he is, sire, and he shames me with his sullen looks and lack of appreciation for all that we have here on our island.’
‘That is because we have nothing!’ the youth burst out angrily, his face now seemingly on fire with emotion. ‘We have nothing, whilst others have everything! We come to the town, and we see foreigners with their expensive yachts and their fancy clothes. Our king bends over backwards to welcome them, whilst we mountain-dwellers do not even have electricity. They look at us as though we are nothing, and that is because, to our king, we are nothing!’
Suddenly, like a cloud passing over the sun, the mood of the crowd gathered around Marco had changed. He could see the anger in the faces of the group of rough-looking, poorly dressed young men who had joined the outspoken youth. The first of his grandfather’s security guards rushed to protect Marco, but very firmly he stepped between them, saying clearly, ‘It is good to know that the people of Niroli are able to speak their minds freely to me. This issue of getting electricity to the more remote parts of our island is one that has, I know, taxed His Majesty’s thoughts for a long time.’ Marco put his hand on the angry youth’s shoulder, drawing him closer to him, whilst he gave the hovering guards a small dismissive shake of his head. He could see the grateful tears in the old peasant woman’s eyes.
‘My grandson speaks without thinking,’ she told him huskily. ‘But, at heart, he is a good boy and as devoted to the king as anyone.’
The youth’s friends were hurrying him away and Marco allowed himself to be escorted back to his limo. Once inside, he realised that he was still holding the old woman’s carefully made purse. There was anger in his heart now, pressing down on him like an unwanted heavy weight. Niroli’s royal family was the richest in the world and yet some of its subjects were living lives of utmost poverty. He could well imagine how upset and shocked Emily would have been if she had witnessed what had just happened. The leather purse felt soft and warm to his touch. He was the one who should be giving to his people, not the other way around. His time away from the island had changed him more than he had realised, Marco acknowledged, and somehow he didn’t think his grandfather was going to like what he had in mind.
Huddled into an armchair in the sitting room of her small Chelsea house, a prettily embroidered throw wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, Emily let the full rip-tide of her anguish take her over. What was the point in trying to fight it or escape it? The reality was that Marco, no, Prince Marco, soon to be King Marco, she corrected herself miserably, had gone, not just from her life, but from Britain itself, to return to his home, his throne and his people. Ultimately her place in his life would be filled by someone else. She gave a small low cry as more pain seized her, and then reminded herself angrily that the man she loved did not exist; he had been a creation of her own imagination and his deceit. Everything they had shared had been based on lies; every time he had held her or touched her she had been giving the whole of herself to him, whilst he had been withholding virtually everything of his true self. But even knowing this, as the numbing shock of her discovery of the truth rose and retreated, she was left with the agonising reality that she still loved him.
As much as she despised herself for not being able to cease wanting him, because she knew just how much he had deceived her, her self-contempt could not drive out her love.
What was he doing now? Was he thinking at all of her? Missing her? Sto
p it, stop it, all her inner protective instincts demanded in agony. She must not do this to herself! She must accept that he had gone, and that she had to find a way of living without him and the comfort of being able to look back and know that they had shared something very special. It was over, they were over, and her pride was demanding that she accept that and get on with her life. She was as much a fool for letting him into her thoughts now as she had been for letting him into her life. There was one thing for sure: he would not be thinking about her. He would not have given her a single thought since she had walked out of his apartment, following that dreadful discovery and the bitterly corrosive row that had ended their relationship
What a total fool she had been for deluding herself into thinking that he would ever return her love.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘SO, MARCO, what is this that the Chief of Police tells me about your welcome parade? About your being threatened by some wretched insurrectionist from the mountains? Probably one of the Viallis. Mind you, you have only yourself to blame. Had you not taken it into your head to so rashly get out of the car, it would not have happened. You must remember that you are my heir and Niroli’s next king. It is not wise to court danger.’
‘There wasn’t any real danger. The boy—for he was little more than that—was simply voicing—’
‘His hostility to the throne!’ King Giorgio interrupted Marco angrily.
His grandfather had aged since he had last seen him, but the old patriarch still had about him an awesome aura of power, Marco admitted ruefully. The problem was that it no longer particularly impressed Marco—he had power of his own now, power that came from living his life in his own way. He knew that his grandfather sensed this in him and that it irked him. That was why he insisted on taking his grandson to task over the incident at his welcoming parade.
‘My feeling was that the boy was more frustrated and resentful than hostile.’
Marco watched his grandfather. There was a larger issue at stake here than the boy’s angry words, one which Marco felt was essential, but which he knew wasn’t something his grandfather would be happy to discuss.
Nevertheless, Marco had been doing some investigation of his own, and what he had discovered had highlighted potential problems within Niroli that needed addressing before they developed into much more worrying conflicts.
‘The boy was complaining about the lack of an electricity supply to his village. He resents the fact that visitors to our country have benefits that some of our own people do not.’ Marco held his ground as his grandfather’s fist came crashing down on the desk between them.
‘I will not listen to this foolish nonsense. Tourists bring money into the country and, naturally, we have to lure them here by providing them with the kind of facilities they are used to.’
‘Whilst some amongst our people go without them?’ Marco challenged him coolly. ‘Angry young men do sometimes behave rashly. But surely it is our duty to equip our subjects with what they need to move into the twenty-first century? Our schoolchildren cannot learn properly without access to computers, and if we deprive them of the ability to do so then we will be maintaining an underclass within the heart of our country.’
‘You dare to lecture me on how to rule?’ the king bellowed. ‘You, who turned your back on Niroli to live a life of your own choosing in London?’
‘You’re the one who has summoned me back, Nonno,’ Marco reminded him, lowering his voice and deliberately using his childhood pet name for his grandfather in an attempt to soften the old man’s mood. It was easy sometimes to forget his grandfather was ninety, yet still immoveable about what the right thing was for Niroli and its people. Marco didn’t want to upset the king too much.
‘Because I had no other choice,’ Giorgio growled. ‘You are my direct heir, Marco, for all that you choose to behave like a commoner, rather than a member of the ruling House of Niroli. At least you had the sense to leave that… that floozy you were living with behind when you returned home.’
Anger flashed in Marco’s eyes. It was typical of his grandfather to have found out as much about his private life in London as he could. It also infuriated him that Giorgio should refer to Emily in that way and dismiss their relationship. Worse, it felt as though, somehow, his grandfather had touched a raw place within him that he didn’t want to admit existed, never mind be reminded about. Because, even though he didn’t want to own up to it, he was missing Emily. Marco shrugged the thought aside. So what if he was? Wasn’t it only natural that his body, deprived of the sexual pleasure it had shared with hers, should ache a little?
‘As to what we agreed, it was simply that I should initially return to Niroli alone,’ Marco pointed out.
Immediately the king’s anger returned. ‘What do you mean, “initially”?’
When Marco didn’t answer him, the old man bellowed, ‘You will not bring her here, Marco! I will not allow it. You are my heir, and you have a position to maintain. The people—’
Marco knew that he should reassure his grandfather and tell him he had no intention of bringing Emily to Niroli, but instead he said coolly, ‘The people, our people, will, I am sure, have more important things to worry about than the fact that I have a mistress—things like the fact that ten per cent of them do not have electricity.’
‘You are trying to meddle in things that are not your concern,’ the king told him sharply. ‘Take care, Marco, otherwise, you will have people thinking that you are more fitted to be a dissident than a leader. To rule, you must command respect and in order to do that you must show a strong hand. The people are your children and need to look up to you as their father, as someone wiser than them.’
This was an issue on which he and his grandfather would never see eye to eye, Marco knew.
‘Emily, why don’t you call it a day and go home? No one else will come into the shop now and you don’t have any more client appointments. I know you hate me keeping on about this, but you really don’t look at all well. I can lock up the premises for you.’
Emily forced herself to give her assistant an I’m-all-right smile. Jemma wasn’t wrong, though she didn’t like the fact that the girl had noticed how unwell she looked, because she didn’t want to have to answer questions about the cause. ‘It’s kind of you to offer to do that, Jemma,’ she answered, ‘but…’
‘But you’re missing Marco desperately, and you don’t want to go back to an empty house?’ Jemma suggested gently, her words slicing through the barriers Emily had tried so desperately to maintain.
She could feel betraying tears burning the backs of her eyes. She had tried so very hard to pretend that she didn’t mind that she and Marco had split up, but it was obvious that her assistant hadn’t been deceived.
‘It had to end, given Marco’s royal status,’ she told Jemma, trying to keep her voice light. Initially, she had worried about revealing the truth of Marco’s real identity. But, in the end, she’d had no need to do so because her assistant had seen one of many articles appearing in the press about Marco’s return to Niroli; most of them had been accompanied by photographs of his cavalcade and the crowd waiting to welcome him. ‘I just wish that he had told me the truth about himself, Jemma,’ Emily said in a low voice, unable to conceal her hurt.
‘I can understand that,’ Jemma agreed. ‘But according to what I’ve read, Marco came over here incognito because he wanted to prove himself in his own right. He had already done that by the time he met you, yet I suppose he could hardly tell you his real identity—not only would it have been difficult for him to just turn round and say, “Oh, by the way, perhaps I ought to tell you that I’m a prince,” he most probably wanted you to value him for himself, not for his title or position.’
Emily could see the logic of Jemma’s argument, and she knew it was one that Marco himself would have used—had they ever got to the stage of discussing the issue.
‘Marco didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to tell me,’ she retorted, trying to harden he
r heart against its betraying softening. ‘To him, I was just a…a…temporary bed-mate—a diversion he could enjoy, before he left me to get on with the really serious business of his life and return to Niroli.’
‘I think I know how you must be feeling,’ Jemma allowed, ‘but I did read in one article that it wasn’t until the death of his parents in an accident that Marco became the next in line to the throne. I’m sure he didn’t tell you because he assumed he would continue to live in London with you anonymously.’
‘I meant nothing to him.’
‘I can’t believe that, Emily. You always seemed so happy together, and so well suited.’
‘It’s pointless talking about it, or him, now. It’s over.’
‘Is it? I can’t help thinking that there’s a lot of unfinished business between the two of you,’ Jemma told her softly. ‘I know from what you told me that you left the apartment virtually as soon as you discovered the truth. You must have still been in shock when that happened, and my guess is that Marco must have been equally shocked, although for different reasons.’
‘Reasons like being found out, you mean, and resenting me being the one to end our relationship, not him?’ Emily asked her bitterly.
‘So, you wouldn’t be interested if he got in touch with you?’ Jemma probed quietly.
‘That isn’t going to happen.’ But she knew from the look in her assistant’s eyes that Jemma had guessed her weakness and how much a foolish, treacherous part of her still longed for him.