The Countess pushed her gently down onto a chair. ‘Won’t you tell us how it happened, darling?’
Millie knew that she owed her family some kind of explanation—but where to begin? And how much would Gianferro be happy for her to reveal?
Already she was aware of the great gulf between her and the rest of the world—one which was widening by the second. She was to be the future King’s bride, and with that came responsibility—and distance. Gianferro was not a man like other men—she could not gossip about what he’d said to her. There could be no blushing disclosures of how he had asked her to marry him. But there again, thought Millie, with a touch of regret, it was not the kind of proposal which would go down in history as one of the most romantic. No, for Gianferro it was a purely practical arrangement. She understood that was the way it had to be.
There had been a series of meetings—carefully arranged and discreetly choreographed. Silent, purring cars had been dispatched to collect her from train stations, whisking her away to various houses—safe houses, she believed they were called—where Gianferro would be waiting for her. The armed guards and the protection officers had been kept very much in the background—like crumbs swept away before the guests arrived.
Their hosts had often been strangers to her, but she had known one of the couples fairly well. She remembered the hostess looking her up and down, unable to hide her expression of faint surprise. Yet Millie knew that those meetings would not be spoken of. Not even to her mother—not to anyone—because Gianferro would have demanded total confidentiality and because the stakes were too high. What stakes? she asked herself, but it was a question she did not dare answer, just in case she was hopelessly off the mark.
There had been small lunch parties, when she’d been gently quizzed on her attitude to politics and art—what she thought of the women’s movement. Her responses had come over as quite lukewarm—even to her own ears—and it had made Millie realise how insular her life was, how little she really thought about—other than her horses.
I am being tested, she’d thought suddenly. But for what?
Yet she had known, deep down, just what was expected of her—and exactly how to behave—for in a way hadn’t she been brought up to do exactly this?
One day she’d been chattering her way through a tour of some magnificent gardens—properly showing interest in all the trees and shrubs. She’d seen their host nodding, and Gianferro’s look of satisfaction as she recognised the bud of a rare Persian rose. She’d felt as if she was jumping through hoops.
Afterwards, it should have been a treat to be shown the magnificent Andalusian horses which were stabled there, but for the first time in her life she had found she wanted to be elsewhere, not here—no matter how magnificent the breed. Alone with the tall, brooding man who was still such a stranger to her. The man who had occupied every second of her waking hours—and the dreaming ones, too—ever since he had blazed into her life with all the force of some dark and dazzling meteor. She had shot him a glance, but his intention had been focused firmly on the horses.
His manner was so formal towards her—there had been no repeat of that wild intimacy which had taken place in the stables that rainy afternoon. She found herself aching for him to take her into his arms again, but the longer it became, the more impossible seemed the very idea that the whole thing had ever happened. As if she had merely imagined it. Her increased exposure to him had only served to emphasise how gorgeous he was—yet he seemed more remote, and Millie’s confusion grew at the same rate as her longing for him.
She had smoothed her hand over the gleaming roan flesh of a horse. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ she questioned tentatively.
‘Not bad,’ he murmured.
‘Not bad?’ laughed their host. ‘This is the horse of Kings—and this particular mare will breed you future champions! She is yours, Gianferro!’
‘You are too generous!’ he protested.
‘Yours,’ emphasised the host softly.
‘Thank you.’ Gianferro inclined his head, acknowledging the honour, but knowing that no gift came without expectation. It had happened all his life, but now it was with increasing regularity, as the time for his accession to the throne grew ever closer. These gifts were the blocks which people used to build relationships with a future monarch, just as they were willing to make their houses over to his requirements. They wanted to feel that they were close to him, but he knew that no one could ever really be close to him. Not even his wife. For to be a king was essentially to be alone.
He glanced over at Millie and saw their host gave a small smile as he correctly interpreted Gianferro’s wishes. ‘Perhaps you would both care to see the library? Before lunch is served.’
To Millie’s relief they were left alone—completely alone—and, frustrated with this no-man’s land in which she found herself, she ran across the room into his arms, unable to stop herself.
She heard his breath quicken as he bent his head to kiss her, yet she sensed his restraint as she pressed her body closer to his. But she didn’t care. Her senses had been awoken and she was greedy for his touch. For a moment she felt as though she had hit a button straight to paradise, as his mouth moved with such sweet intimacy over hers, but when she gave a little moan of delight he disentangled her—rather like someone restraining a sweet but rather over-eager puppy.
She turned bewildered blue eyes up to him. ‘You don’t want me any more?’
Gianferro frowned and quelled the desire deep inside him. How sweetly passionate she was! He was unused to such unfeigned enthusiasm, but he recognised that it was a double-edged sword. He must remember that there was a downside to her innocence, and he was going to have to teach her to school and to temper her desire. She must learn that he would always be the initiator of intimacy—unless in the privacy of the bedroom.
‘You know I want you,’ he murmured softly. ‘But not here, and not now. Come and talk to me, Millie.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I feel out of my depth, and I don’t know what is happening to me.’
‘Don’t you?’ He took her by the shoulders and his eyes were fierce and black and burning. ‘Have you not guessed why you are here?’
Millie shook her head. ‘Not really.’
It was time. He drew a deep breath and his voice was both silken and yet commanding. ‘You know that something was forged between us that day in the stable? Something I had not expected?’
‘Nor wanted?’ she guessed painfully.
The dark eyes became hooded. She must learn that introspection was an indulgence which brought with it only pain and no solution.
‘What I want is an irrelevance—it is what I need which is at stake, and that was never in any doubt,’ he said firmly. ‘I have found what it is I am looking for.’
She felt as though she was poised on the edge of a precipice, staring down into a swirl of dark clouds, so that nothing before her was clear. But Millie’s instincts were sound—and the most astonishing one was welling up inside her, even if she didn’t quite dare to believe in it. She hesitated before she dared to voice it. ‘Which is?’
‘You,’ he said quietly. ‘I am going to marry you.’
She
