mighty task of what lay ahead of him.
‘Oh, there was plenty of other company,’ he said easily. ‘We had friends who came to play with us when we were tiny, and then to learn to ride and swim with us.’ But the friends had been cherry-picked—the offspring of Mardivino’s aristocracy. The only times he had ever come into contact with the ordinary people of the island were when he had accompanied his father to hand out prizes, or to open a new school or library.
Millie hesitated. She wanted to know this man who was now her husband—to really know him. And she didn’t just want the answers to her questions, she wanted him to learn to confide in her. She had gone to the trouble of reading a book about Mardivino during their engagement—but the facts were just words on a page, with no real root in reality. It had all happened years and years before she had been born. She wanted to ask Gianferro a very obvious question about his childhood. Almost to get it out of the way—in case it hovered, ever-present, like a great dark cloud in the background.
‘It must have been…’ She struggled for the right word, but no word could convey the proper sympathy she felt. ‘Terrible. When your mother died.’
He hoped that the candlelight concealed the faint frown which creased his brow. Was she now going to probe? To dig at the wound caused by his mother’s death? The scar was old now, but it was deep. He had buried his grief as a way of coping at the time, and he had never resurrected it.
‘In that I was no different from any other child who loses their mother,’ he said flatly. ‘Being a prince does not protect you from pain.’
But being a prince meant that you could not show it. She suddenly understood that as clearly as if he had told her.
Millie reached her hand out to lay it on top of his. Her skin was very pale in comparison to the rich olive of his, and her wedding band was shiny bright as her fingers curved around his possessively.
But at that moment there was a knock on the door, and Gianferro couldn’t help experiencing a brief moment of relief as he withdrew his hand, welcoming this interruption to her intrusive line of questioning. Then his brows creased together in a dark frown.
‘Who is this, when I told them to leave us alone?’ he said, almost in an undertone. His frown grew deeper. ‘Come!’ he ordered, his voice stern.
It was Alesso who stood there, and Millie’s heart sank. Couldn’t he even leave them in peace on their honeymoon? But on closer inspection she saw that the handsome Italian’s face was tight with tension—an unbearable, weighty tension.
And there were no words of remonstrance from Gianferro, for he sprang immediately to his feet, his face growing pale beneath the olive skin.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ he demanded.
Something told her that this was uncharacteristic behaviour, and Millie stared at him in confusion.
But it was only when Alesso bit his lip and began to speak that the grim reality of what had happened began to dawn on her.
‘The King is dead!’
Alesso’s words were rocks that smote him like an iron fist, and Gianferro waited for a moment which seemed to go on for a lifetime. A moment for which he had spent a lifetime preparing.
‘Long live the King!’
And then Alesso dropped deeply to his knees in front of Gianferro and kissed his hand, not raising his head again until Gianferro lightly touched him on the shoulder. It was in that one single instant that the new King realised how much had changed…a lifelong friend would not be—nor could ever be—the same towards him again.
In a heartbeat, everything was different.
MILLIE felt as if someone had just picked her up and thrown her into a wind tunnel which led to a place of mystery.
Alesso bowed before her, lifted her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips.
‘My Queen,’ he said brokenly, and Millie sat motionless, as if turned to stone, looking at Gianferro in desperation. How on earth did she respond? But she might as well have been the shadow cast by one of the candles for all the notice he took of her. It wasn’t just that he didn’t seem to see her—it was almost as though she wasn’t there. She felt invisible.
But she pushed her feelings of bewilderment aside and tried to put herself in Gianferro’s place. She must not expect guidance nor trouble him for it, certainly not right now. His father had just died, and he had inherited the Kingdom. The role for which he had been preparing all his life was finally his.
She looked into his face. It was hard and cold, and something about the new bleakness in his eyes almost frightened her. What on earth did she do?
She was no stranger to bereavement—her own father had died five years ago, and although they had not been close, Millie still remembered the sensation of having had something fundamental torn away from her. And Gianferro had lost his mother, too. To be an orphan was profoundly affecting, even if it happened when you were an adult yourself.
But Millie was now his wife, his help and his emotional support, and she must reach out to him.
She moved over to him and lifted her hand to touch the rigid mask of his face.
‘Gianferro,’ she whispered. ‘I am so sorry. So very, very sorry.’
His eyes flickered towards her, her words startling him out of his sombre reverie. He hoped to God that she wasn’t about to start crying. It was not her place to cry—she had barely known the King, and it was important for her to recognise that her role now was to lead. That the people would be looking to her for guidance and she must not crumble or fail.
‘Thank you,’ he clipped out. ‘But the important thing is for the King’s work to continue. He has had a long and productive life. There will be sorrow, yes, but we must also celebrate his achievements.’ He nodded his head formally. ‘You must be a figurehead of comfort to your people,’ he said softly.
But not to you, thought Millie, as a great pang wrenched at her heart. Not to you.
‘And now we must go back to Solajoya,’ he said flatly, and Millie nodded like some obedient, mute servant.
After that everything seemed to happen with an alarming and blurred speed, and with the kind of efficiency which made her think it must have been planned. But of course it would have been. There were always provisions in place to deal with the death of a monarch, even if that monarch were young—and Gianferro’s father had been very old indeed.
It was Alesso, not Gianferro, who instructed Millie to wear black, for the new King was busy talking on the phone. Normally, a bride would not have taken black clothes with her on honeymoon, but the instructions she had been given prior to the wedding all made sense now. Gianferro had told her that Royals always travelled with mourning clothes and so she had duly packed some, never thinking in a million years that she might actually need to wear them.
The car ride back to Solajoya was fast and urgent, only slowing down to an almost walking pace when they reached the outskirts of the capital. And Millie had to
