used a teatowel. She doubted it. Or cooked a meal for himself. Equally doubtful. Her own upbringing had been privileged, yes—but at least she and her sister had been Brownies with the local pack. She knew how to clean and how to cook, and how to produce a plate of squashy-looking cupcakes which people would buy for charity.
But not Gianferro.
With every day that passed she became more and more aware of the rarefied and very isolated world he inhabited. Getting to see him was fraught with difficulty—like trying to make an emergency appointment at the dentist. He was surrounded by aides, and one in particular—Duca Alesso Bastistella, a devastingly handsome Italian nobleman whom Lulu had confessed she could ‘fall in love with at the drop of a hat’.
Well, Millie couldn’t. Alesso was like a gatekeeper—oh, he was always smoothly charming and diplomatic, but he seemed to have almost permanent access to Gianferro, whilst denying it to everyone else.
‘We were at school together and he is my right-hand man,’ said Gianferro one day, when she questioned him on it. ‘I trust him,’ he added simply.
He made trust sound like a precious and rare commodity, and Millie wondered if it would ever be possible to befriend the powerful Alesso. Well, if she wanted to get close to her husband, she was going to have to try.
She tried not to get too down about it, but she could have counted on one hand the number of times she had been alone together with Gianferro, when he had teased her with kisses which had made her melt inside, imprinting his lips upon hers with sensual promises of the pleasures to come. Of course she understood that his father was gravely ill, and that there had to be amendments made to the Constitution because of the forthcoming wedding, but even so…
‘And anyway,’ said Lulu softly, ‘you’re off to the Cathedral in little under an hour, to make your wedding vows—so you couldn’t back out of it even if you wanted to!’
‘I know I am,’ said Millie faintly, and went to sit down. But Lulu held up her hand like a traffic policeman.
‘Be careful, or you’ll crumple your lingerie!’
‘There doesn’t seem enough of it to crumple.’
‘That’s the whole point!’ Lulu gave a foxy smile. ‘Anyway, I want to do your make-up now, so come over here and sit beside the mirror. Carefully.’
At least she had made it up with her sister. Thank heavens. But then Lulu—for all her fiery temper—had never been one to bear a grudge. Once she had accepted that the wedding was going to happen whether she liked it or not, she had accepted it with good grace. Especially when she realised that she had the chance to be a bridesmaid.
‘The only bridesmaid, I hope?’
‘Well, there will be Gianferro’s tiny niece, but you’ll be the only adult one, yes.’
Since then, Lulu had been over the moon.
‘Just think of all the people I’m going to meet!’ she had sighed.
‘But what about Ned?’ Millie had queried.
‘Ned who?’ Lulu had laughed.
For the past month, since the engagement, Millie had been living in a ‘small’ house within the Palace grounds, with Lulu and her mother on hand to chaperone her. Not that their services had been needed for that, she thought somewhat resentfully as she stared at her bare face in the mirror. Gianferro was taking restraint to the extreme—for they had barely spent a moment on their own.
But all that would change after the wedding, she thought, as Lulu began to slap some sticky moisturiser onto her cheeks. That was what honeymoons were for—proper old-fashioned honeymoons—when a couple got to know each other in all the ways that mattered.
Would she be a good wife to him? Would instinct and the books she had been poring over help guide her in the bedroom department? A nervous shiver ran down her spine, and Lulu’s hand halted in its process of dipping a damp sponge into some foundation.
‘Now what’s the matter?’
Millie bit her lip. ‘Nothing.’
‘Not worried about the sex bit, are you?’ questioned Lulu perceptively.
Millie shook her head. She couldn’t voice her fears—she just couldn’t—not to anyone, and especially not to Lulu. If she started talking about it, then she would end up feeling—not for the first time—as if her purity was the only reason Gianferro was marrying her. And besides, there were some things which should remain private.
‘Not a bit,’ she said staunchly.
Lulu smiled. ‘Pity you did all that horse-riding,’ she commented.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, isn’t there some kind of ancient ritual which demands you hang the bloodied sheet from the Palace windows?’
‘Oh, do shut up, Lulu!’ Millie closed her eyes. ‘Have you seen the papers?’
‘I thought you weren’t going to read them any more.’
‘I know I wasn’t—but there’s a certain irresistibility about it—like being told not to touch a hot plate in a restaurant—you immediately want to.’
There was nothing in the latest batch of publications which hadn’t been there from day one. She had been dubbed the ‘unaffected’ aristocrat, which she gathered was newspaper-speak for someone who didn’t know her way round a make-up bag. Or a wardrobe.
Thank heavens she had Lulu on-side—for it had been Lulu who had taken her on a grand tour of Paris’s top couturiers in a search for the Perfect Wedding Dress. The procession of garments which had been paraded in front of them had made her know what she didn’t want.
In the end Millie had bought the dress in England—all soft layers of tulle that floated like a ballerina’s petticoats, much to Lulu’s disgust.
‘It looks like a meringue!’ she had exclaimed. ‘You looked far sexier in that silk-satin sheath.’
But brides weren’t supposed to look sexy—they were supposed to look virginal and, in her case, regal. Millie knew that there were high expectations about the gown, and that it was her duty to meet them. Little girls would pore over pictures of it. They wanted a fairytale princess, and she would make sure they got one.
‘Surely that’s enough mascara?’ she ventured anxiously.
‘Can’t have enough,’ said Lulu, with one final sweep of the wand. ‘Your eyes will come out much better in the photos if you slap it on—you’ll look gorgeous.’
‘Especially to the world’s panda population,’ said Millie weakly, as she slid on the hand-made pearl-encrusted shoes and then, at last, slithered into the dress itself.
‘Oh, wow!’ said Lulu softly, as she adjusted the soft tulle veil. ‘Wow!’
Millie just stood and stared at herself in disbelief.
Was that really her?
The
