by Penny Jordan
‘Marco?’ She reached out her hand into the darkness and to the other side of the bed, but encountered only emptiness.
She had been so tired when they had arrived that she had gone straight to bed, in the room to which Marco had taken her, leaving him to explain the situation to the couple who looked after the villa for him. She suspected she must have fallen asleep within seconds of her head reaching the pillow. She had assumed though, after what he had said to her, that he would be joining her in it. She hadn’t had the energy to argue, even if she had wanted to.
The door to the room’s en suite bathroom opened. A mixture of relief and sexual tension filled her as she watched Marco walk towards her. He always slept naked and there was enough light coming in through the window to reveal the outline of his body. Her memory did the rest, filling in the shadow-cloaked detail with such powerfully loving strokes that she trembled.
‘So, you’re awake,’ she heard him murmur as she lifted her head from the pillow to watch his approach.
‘Yes.’ Her response was little more than a terse, exhaled breath, an indication of her impatience at herself at being unable to tear her gaze from his magnificent physique.
‘But still tired?’ Marco was standing at the side of the bed now, leaning down towards her.
‘A little. But not too tired,’ she whispered daringly. She had known all along, of course, that this would be the outcome of being with him again. How could it not be when you had a man as sexually irresistible as Marco and a woman as desperately in love as she was?
They looked at one another through the semi-darkness; night sounds rustled through the room, mingling with the accelerated sound of their breathing. The darkness had become a velvet embrace, its softness pressing in on them like an intimate caress, stroking shared sensual memories over their minds.
The sudden fiercely intense surge of his own desire caught Marco off guard, as it threatened his self-control. He knew that he had missed their sex, but he hadn’t been prepared for this raw, aching hunger that was now consuming him.
Emily’s skin smelled of his own shower gel in a way that made him frown as his senses searched eagerly for the familiar night-warm, intimate scent that was hers and hers alone, and which he was only recognising now how much he had missed. She moved, dislodging the bedclothes, and his chest muscles contracted under the pressure of the pounding thud of his heartbeat. His pulse had started to race and he recognised that the ache of need for her, which had begun here in this bed the first night he had spent in it without her, had turned feral and taken away his control.
‘Emily.’
The way he said her name turned Emily’s insides to liquid heat. He and this yearning beating up through her body were impossible to resist. She sat up in the bed, giving in to her love, pressing her lips to his bare shoulder, closing her eyes with delight as she breathed him into her. She ran the tip of her tongue along his collar-bone, feeling the responsive clench of his muscles and the reverberation of his low groan of pleasure. When he arched his neck, she kissed her way along it, caressing the swell of his Adam’s apple, whilst his muscles now corded in mute recognition of his arousal. And his desire fed her own, intoxicating her, empowering her, encouraging her to make their intimacy a slow, sweetly erotic dance spiced with sudden moments of breathless intensity.
It felt good to keep their need on a tight knife-edge, refusing to let him touch her until he couldn’t be refused any more, and then giving herself over completely to the touch of his hands and his mouth, crying out her need as he finally covered her and moved into her. But it was his own cry of mingled triumph and release that took them both over the edge, to the sweet place that lay beyond it.
Several minutes later, rolling away from Emily, Marco lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for his heartbeat to steady, willing himself not to think about what his body had just told him about the intensity of his need for Emily.
If the way in which Marco was rejecting her in the aftermath of the intimacy they had just shared was hurting her, then it served her right for coming here, Emily told herself. She must take her pain and hold onto it, use it to remind herself what the reality of being here with Marco meant. It would do her good to see him in his true role, in his true habitat, because it would show her surely that the man she loved simply did not exist any more, and once she knew that her unwanted love would die. How could it not do so?
CHAPTER NINE
KING GIORGIO wagged a reproving finger. ‘Is it not enough that you have deliberately attempted to undermine the authority of the Crown—an authority which is soon to be your own—with these generators you have brought to Niroli, without this added flouting of my command to end your association with this…this floozy? You know perfectly well that there are channels and protocols to be followed when a member of the royal family takes a mistress. It is unthinkable that you should have brought back with you to Niroli a woman who is a common nothing, and who never can and never will be accepted here at court!’
‘You mean, I take it, that I could take my pick from the married women amongst the island’s nobility? Her husband would of course be instructed to do his duty and give up his wife to royal pleasure and, in due course, both would be appropriately rewarded—the husband with an important government position, the wife with the title of Royal Mistress and a few expensive baubles.’ Marco shook his head. ‘I have no intention of adorning some poor courtier with a pair of horns so that I can sleep with his wife.’
‘You cannot expect me to believe that you, a prince of Niroli, can be content with a woman who is a nothing—’
‘Emily is far from being nothing, and the truth is that you insult her by comparing her with the blue-blooded nonentities you seem to think are so superior to her. There is no comparison. Emily is their superior in every way.’ The immediate and heated ferocity of his defence of Emily and his anger against his grandfather had taken hold of Marco before he could think logically about what he was saying. His immediate impulse had been to protect her, and that alone was enough to cause him to wonder at his uncharacteristic behaviour. And yet, even though for practical and diplomatic reasons he knew if he could not bring himself to recall his statement, then at least he should temper it a little. But he couldn’t do it. Why not? Was it because by bringing Emily here to Niroli he now felt a far greater sense of responsibility towards her than he had done in London?
His grandfather didn’t give him time to ponder. Instead the king pushed his chair back from the table and eased himself up, before demanding regally, ‘Do you really think that I am deceived by any of this, Marco? Do you think I don’t realise that you have brought those generators and this woman here to Niroli expressly to anger and insult me? You may think that you can win the hearts of my people by giving them access to the technological toys you believe they crave, and that they will accept your mistress, but you are wrong. It is true that there are elements of rebellion and disaffection amongst the mountain-dwellers, the Viallis who will give you their allegiance and sell you their loyalty for the price of a handful of silver, but they are nothing. The hearts of the rest of the Nirolian population lie here with me. They, like me, know that on Niroli the old ways are the best ways, and they will show you in no uncertain terms how they feel about your attempts to win round the Viallis.’
‘No, Grandfather, it is you who is wrong,’ Marco answered him curtly. ‘You may wish to stick with the old ways as you call them, enforcing ignorance and poverty on people, refusing to allow them to make their own choices about the way they want to live, treating them as children. You try to rule them through fear and power, and some of them rightfully resent that, as I would do in their places. I have brought back the generators because your people, our people, need them, and I have brought Emily back because I need her.’ It wasn’t what he had planned to say, and it certainly wasn’t what he had been thinking when he had walked into this confrontation, but as soon as he had said the words Marco recognised that they contain
ed a truth that had previously been hidden from him. Or had it been deliberately ignored and denied by him? He had known that he wanted Emily; that he desired her and that he could make use of her presence here to underline his independence to his grandfather, but needing her…that was something else again, and it made Marco stiffen warily, ready to defend himself from what he recognised was his own vulnerability.
‘The woman is a commoner, and commoners do not understand what it is to be royal. They cause problems that a woman born into the nobility would never cause.’
‘You’re speaking from experience?’ Marco taunted his grandfather, watching as the older man’s face turned a dangerously purple hue.
‘You dare to suggest that I would so demean myself?’
Marco looked at him.
‘Whilst Emily is here on Niroli she will be treated with respect and courtesy, she will be received at court and she will be treated in every way like the most highly born of royal mistresses,’ he told his grandfather evenly. ‘I have a long memory and those who do otherwise will be pursued and punished.’
He had spoken loudly enough for everyone else in the chamber to hear him, knowing that the courtiers would know as well as he did that he would soon be in a position to reprimand those who defied him now.
Before this he had never had any intention of bringing Emily to court, but he did not intend to tell his grandfather that. How dared the old man suggest that Emily was somehow less worthwhile as a person than some Nirolian nobleman’s wife? He’d back Emily any day if it came to having to prove herself as a person. She possessed intelligence, compassion, wit and kindness, and her natural sweetness was like manna from heaven after the falseness of the courtiers and their wives. He had seen the pleased looks that some of the flunkies had exchanged when his grandfather had flown into a rage over the generators. Of course, they couldn’t be expected to like the fact that there were going to be changes, but they were going to have to accept them, Marco decided grimly. Just as they were going to have to accept Emily. He was striding out of the audience chamber before he recognised how much more strongly he felt about protecting Emily than he had actually known.
Emily stared at her watch in disbelief. It was closer to lunchtime than breakfast! How could she have slept so late? The sensual after-ache of the night’s pleasure gave her a hint of a reason for her prolonged sleep.
Marco! She sat up in bed and then saw the note he had left for her propped up on the bedside table. She picked it up and read it quickly.
He was going to the palace to see his grandfather, he had written, and since he didn’t know when he would be back, he had given Maria instructions to provide her with everything she might need, and had also explained to her that Emily was going to be organising the interior renovation of the villa.
‘If you feel up to it, by all means feel free to have a good look around,’ he had written, ‘but don’t overdo things.’
There was no mention of last night, but then there was hardly likely to be, was there? What had she been hoping for? A love letter? But Marco didn’t love her, did he? The starkness of that reality wasn’t something she was ready to think about right now, Emily admitted. It was too soon after the traumatic recent see-sawing of her emotions from the depths of despair to the unsteady fragile happiness of Marco’s appearance at the shop and their intimacy last night.
But she would have to think about it at some stage, she warned herself. After all, nothing had changed, except that she now knew what living without him felt like. She mustn’t let herself forget that all this was nothing more than a small extra interlude of grace; a chance to store up some extra memories for the future.
It wouldn’t do her any good to dwell on such depressing thoughts, Emily told herself. Instead, she would get up and then keep herself occupied with an inspection of the villa.
If Maria was curious about her relationship with Marco, she hid it well, Emily decided, an hour later, when she had finished a late breakfast of fresh fruit and homemade rolls, which Maria had offered her when she had come downstairs. She had eaten her light meal sitting in the warm sunlight of a second inner courtyard, and was now ready to explore the villa, which she managed to convey with halting Italian and hand-gestures to Maria, who beamed in response and nodded her head enthusiastically.
Emily had no idea when the villa had first been built, but it was obviously very old and had been constructed at a time when the needs of a household were very different from the requirements of the twenty-first century. In addition to the dark kitchen Maria showed her, there was a positive warren of passages and small rooms, providing what Emily assumed must have been the domestic service area of the house. To suit the needs of a modern family, these would have to be integrated into a much larger, lighter and more modern kitchen, with a dining area, and possibly a family room, opening out onto the courtyard.
The main doors to the villa opened into a square hallway, flanked by two good sized salons, although the décor was old-fashioned and dark.
The bedrooms either already had their own bathrooms or were large enough to accommodate en suites, although only the room Marco was using was equipped with relatively recent sanitary-ware.
On the top floor of the villa, there were more rooms and, by the time she had finished going round the ground and first floors, Emily was beginning to feel tired. But her tiredness wasn’t stopping her from feeling excited at the prospect of taking on such a challenging but ultimately worthwhile project. The attic floor alone was large enough to convert into two self-contained units that could provide either semiseparate accommodation for older teenagers, staff quarters, or simply a bolt-hole and working area away from the hubbub of everyday family life. The courtyards to the villa were a real delight, or at least they had the potential to be. There were three of them, and the smaller one could easily be adapted to contain a swimming pool.
It was the second courtyard, which Marco’s bedroom overlooked, that was her favourite, though. With giant terracotta pots filled with shrubs, palms and flowers and a loggia that ran along one wall, it was the perfect spot to sit and enjoy the peaceful sound of its central marble fountain.
Standing in it now, Emily couldn’t help thinking what a wonderful holiday home the villa would make for a family. It had room to spare for three generations; with no effort at all she could see them enjoying the refurbished villa’s luxurious comfort: the grandparents, retired but still very active, enjoying the company of their great-grandchildren, the kids themselves exuberant, and energetic, the sound of their laughter mingling with that of the fountain; the girls olive-skinned, pretty and dainty, the boys strongly built with their father’s dark hair and shrewd gaze, the baby laughing and gurgling as Marco held him, whilst the woman who was their mother and Marco’s wife—Niroli’s queen—stood watching them.
Don’t do this to yourself, an inner voice warned Emily. Don’t go there. Don’t think about it, or her; don’t imagine what it would be like to be that woman. In reality, the home she had been busily mentally creating was not that of a king and a queen. It was the home of a couple who loved one another and their children, a home for the kind of family she admitted she had yearned for during her teenage years when she had lived with her grandfather. The kind of home that represented the life, the future, she wished desperately she would be sharing with Marco, right down to the five children. The warmth of the sun spilling into the courtyard filled it with the scent of the lavender that grew there, and Emily knew that, for the rest of her life, she would equate its scent with the pain seeping slowly through her as she acknowledged the impossibility of her dreams. If this were a fantasy, then she could magic away all those things that stood between her and Marco, and imagine a happy ending, a scenario in which he discovered that she loved him and immediately declared his own love for her. But this was real life and there was no way that was going to happen.
One day—maybe—there would be a man with whom she could find some sense of peace, a man who would give her chi
ldren they could love together and cherish. But that man could not and would not be Marco, and those dark-haired girls and boys she had seen so clearly with her mind’s eye, that gorgeous baby, were the children that another woman would bear for him.
And, poor things, their lives would be burdened by the weight of their royal inheritance, just as Marco’s was, and that was something Emily knew she could not endure to inflict on her own babies. For them she wanted love and security and the freedom to grow into individuals, instead of being forced into the mould of royal heirs.
It was just as well that Marco had no intentions of wanting to make her his wife, on two counts, Emily told herself determinedly as she battled with her sadness, because the revealing nature of her recent thoughts had shown her what her true feelings were about Marco’s royal blood. Plus, of course, as he had already told her, it was not permissible for him to marry a divorced woman.
The sound of crockery rattling on a tray and the smell of coffee brought her back to the present as Maria came into the courtyard carrying a tray of coffee for her, which she put on a table shaded from the heat of the sun by an elegant parchment-coloured sun umbrella.
Thanking her with a smile, Emily decided that she might as well start work.
Within half an hour, she was deeply engrossed in the notes she was making, having moved the coffee-pot out of the way. Although she hadn’t felt nauseous this morning, the smell of the coffee had reminded her that her stomach was still queasy and not truly back to normal.
An hour later, when Marco drove into the outer courtyard, Emily was still hard at work. After leaving the palace he had been to the airport where the generators had already been unloaded. He had already made a list of those villages up in the mountains most in need of their own source of power and whilst in London he had spoken with the island’s police chief and the biggest road haulier to arrange for the transport of the generators. However, whilst he had been at the airport, he had received a message from the police chief to say he had received instructions from the palace that the generators were not to be moved.