his arms and looked down at her, not quite knowing where to begin. He had never had to say sorry to anyone in his life, and now he began to recognise that it had not done him any favours. He realised that he was more than just a symbol of power, a figurehead. Inside, his heart beat the same as that of any other man. And having feelings didn’t make you weak, he realised—not if it could make you feel as alive as he felt right at that moment. Cut yourself adrift from them and you were not a complete person—and how could he rule unless he was?
‘It is me who should be begging your forgiveness,’ he said quietly. ‘For living in the Dark Ages and refusing to make this a modern marriage. For thinking that I could impose my will on you as if you were simply one of my subjects, forgetting—or choosing to ignore—the fact that you are my wife. My partner. My Millie.’
‘Oh, Gianferro!’
‘I was a tyrant!’ he whispered.
‘Not all the time.’
He smiled. ‘But some of the time?’
‘Well, yes. But then, I have my own faults and failings that I must live with and deal with.’ Shadows danced across her face, and then she looked up at him, her eyes clear and blue and questioning. ‘What will we do?’
‘We will begin again. What else can we do, cara Millie? As of today we will move forward, not back.’
Her heart felt as if it was going to burst with joy, and all the dark and terrible fantasies about what could have happened began to dissolve. Never again, she decided, was she going to take the coward’s way out—of hiding her doubts and her fears and letting them grow. From this day forward there would be the transparency of true love. From her, at least. And she was not going to ask anything of Gianferro. Not push him or manipulate him into saying anything that he didn’t mean. But she had to know something.
‘Does that mean we can still be married, then?’ she questioned shakily.
And Gianferro burst out laughing as he lifted her chin and allowed the love which blazed from her eyes to light him with its warmth. Why had she never looked at him that way before? Because she was scared to. He kissed the tip of her nose with lips which were tender. ‘Oh, yes, my love,’ he replied softly. ‘Yes, we can still be married.’
She tightened her arms around his back. ‘Kiss me.’
He grazed his lips against hers. ‘Like this?’
‘More.’
‘Like this, perhaps?’
Millie gasped. ‘Oh, yes. Yes. Just like that.’
He carried her upstairs and made love to her on the silken counterpane of some unknown bed, and it was better than anything she had ever known because now she was free to really show him how much she cared. She began to cry out in helpless wonder, and he gasped too, then bent his head to kiss her, until her cries were spent and her body had stopped shuddering in time with his.
Millie ran her fingertips down the side of his lean face, aware that her next words were going to remind him of what she had done—or failed to do—but she was never going to shrink from the difficult things in life again.
‘I’m going to chuck my Pills away—’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, that is precisely what you are not going to do, cara.’
In the moonlight, she stared at him in confusion. ‘But, Gianferro, you want an heir—’
‘So I do,’ he agreed gently. ‘But you are only twenty, Millie, and I want us to have time together first. To learn about each other. To learn to love one another.’
To learn to love. If she had heard that only hours ago it would have hurt, but Millie had done a lot of growing up in those hours. She had had to—her marriage had depended on it. And life wasn’t always like the fairy story you longed it to be. Love didn’t always strike you like a thunderbolt—though lust did! Sometimes it had its basis in all kinds of things you didn’t understand. Two people could instinctively reach out for one another on a level which would confound common sense—and that was what had happened to her and Gianferro—but after that you had to work at it.
It was like riding. You could love horses with a mad passion, but you couldn’t possibly learn to ride without being thrown off!
‘We will have a baby when it is time to have a baby,’ he said, and bent his lips to brush them over hers. ‘And in the meantime—what is it that they say?’ His eyes glittered with mischief. ‘We will have fun…practising.’
Oh, yes, she thought, as he pulled her against him once more. You can say that again.
MILLIE learned the hard way that babies were not something that could be ordered up—like strawberries on a summer menu.
She and Gianferro had a year to themselves before they ceremonially threw her Pills away while he wiped her tears of regret with soft and healing kisses. A year of exploring and learning about each other, learning how to live as husband and wife. And how to love. But that bit came more easily than either of them had expected—especially where Gianferro was concerned. It was as though, having given himself permission, he entered into loving with the true zeal of the convert. Passion had always come easily to him, and so now did love.
Millie was having formal language lessons, and she got her husband to speak to her in French and Spanish, and Alesso in Italian, and gradually she was picking up a smattering of all three.
It helped that she had nephews and nieces who were fluent in all the languages spoken on Mardivino—and she had made a big effort to befriend their mothers. Their slight diffidence towards her had quickly worn off, and once they’d seen that she wasn’t just going through the motions of friendship Ella and Lucy had welcomed her into their families with open arms. And for the first time since he had been a little boy Gianferro had begun to get to know his two brothers properly.
In fact, everything was absolutely perfect except on the baby front—because nothing had happened. After months of trying, she still wasn’t pregnant, and Millie didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t dare ask anyone else about their experiences—not even her sisters-in-law—because she didn’t want anyone else to know. It was too big a deal for everyone concerned. She wasn’t like other women. Once she went to the doctor it would be on record, and then…
But what if…?
‘Why are you frowning so?’ Gianferro asked one night, as they were getting dressed for dinner.
Millie had once made a vow to herself that she would not shirk responsibility, but she was unprepared for the pain of voicing these fears—and even more concerned about the possible consequences if they happened to be true.
‘I’m not pregnant,’ she said.
‘I’d rather guessed that.’
Her head shot up. ‘How?’ And then she saw the silent laughter in his black eyes, and blushed. ‘Gianferro—it’s not funny—what if…what if…?’
‘What
