of Niroli rather than its king. But perhaps there were certain traditions that were better retained. No, Emily could not continue to be his lover, but even so he could have responded better to her arrival in his office earlier, Marco admitted. He could, for instance, have suggested that she go ahead to one of their favourite restaurants and wait there for him. It had, after all, been predictable that his grandfather would lose his temper and end their conversation so abruptly, once he realised that he wasn’t going to get everything that he wanted.
Marco toyed with the idea of calling Emily now and suggesting that she meet him for a late lunch, but then decided against it. She wasn’t the kind of woman who sulked or played silly games. But honesty compelled him to accept that some measure of compensatory behaviour on his part would be a good investment. Ridiculously in many ways, given the length of time they had been together, just thinking about her triggered that familiar sharp ache of his desire for her. He picked up the phone and rang the number of her shop.
Her assistant answered his call, telling him, ‘She isn’t here, Marco. She rang a couple of minutes ago to say that she’s going to spend the rest of the day working at the apartment. Poor Emily, she still isn’t properly over that wretched virus, is she?’
Marco made a noncommittal reply. He himself was never in anything other than the very best of health, but right now his mood was very much in need of the soothing touch that only Emily could give. She had an unexpectedly dry sense of humour, which, allied to her intelligence and acute perception, gave her the ability to make him laugh, sometimes when he least felt like doing so. Not that her sense of humour or his laughter had been very much in evidence these last few weeks, he recognised, frowning a little over this recognition. It surprised him how sharp the need he suddenly felt to be with her was. It was amazing what a bit of guilt could do, he decided as he told his PA that he, too, would be spending the afternoon working at home.
The best way to smooth over any upsets, so far as Marco was concerned, was in bed, where he knew he could quickly make Emily forget about everything other than his desire for her and hers for him…
* * *
Emily scowled as she worried over the message she had just picked up from one of her clients. The lady in question was a good customer, but Emily had still felt slightly wary when she’d been asked a while ago to take on the complete renovation of a property in Chelsea.
‘Darling, darling, Emily,’ Carla Mainwearing had trilled, ‘I am so in love with your perfect sense of style that I want you to choose everything and I am going to put the house totally in your hands.’
Knowing Carla as she did, Emily had taken this with a pinch of salt and had therefore insisted on having her work approved at every single stage. Now Carla had left her a message saying that she hated the colour Emily had chosen for the walls of the property’s pretty drawing room, and that she wanted it completely redone—at Emily’s expense. Emily recalled that Carla had previously sanctioned the colour of the paint. But discretion was called for in telling her this, so rather than phone Carla back she decided to e-mail instead. Her laptop was in the study she shared with Marco, as were her files, so she made her way there, firmly ignoring the leaden weight of her earlier disappointment at Marco’s refusal to join her for lunch.
Five minutes later, she was standing immobile in front of the study’s window, her laptop and original purpose of coming to the study forgotten, as she stared in shocked horror at the vellum envelope she was holding. Her hand, actually not just her hand but her whole body, was trembling violently, as she felt unable to move. Waves of heat followed by icy chill surged through her body and somewhere some part of her mind managed to register the fact that what she was suffering was a classic reaction to extreme shock. She could hardly see the address on the envelope now through her blurred vision, but the crest on its left-hand front corner stood out, its royal crest, followed by the address: HRH Prince Marco of Niroli…
She didn’t hear Marco’s key in the apartment door, she didn’t even hear him calling out her name. Her shock was so great that nothing could penetrate it. It encased her in a kind of bubble, which only concentrated the torment of what she was suffering and branded it on her brain so that it could never be forgotten. It was only finally pierced by the sudden opening of the study door as Marco walked in, but of course there was no way his arrival could ease her pain. Instead she gripped the envelope even tighter, her voice high and tight as she said thinly, ‘Welcome home, Your Highness. I suppose I ought to curtsey to you.’
She waited, praying that he would laugh and tell her that she had got it all wrong, that the envelope she was holding, addressing him as Prince Marco of Niroli, was some silly mistake.
CHAPTER FIVE
LIKE a tiny candle flame shivering vulnerably in the dark, her hope trembled fearfully. And then the look in Marco’s eyes extinguished it as cruelly as a hand placed callously over the face of a dying person to stem their last breath. It was over. Now, in this minute, this breath of time, they were finished. Emily knew that without the need for any words, the pain of that knowledge slamming a crippling body-blow into her. Her stomach felt as though she had plunged down a hundred floors in a high-speed lift.
‘Give that to me,’ Marco demanded, taking the envelope from her.
‘It’s too late to destroy the evidence, Marco.’ Emily told him brokenly. ‘I know the truth now. And I know how you’ve lied to me all this time, pretending to be something you aren’t, letting me think.’ She dug her teeth in her lower lip to try to force back her own pain. ‘Do you think I haven’t read the newspapers? Do you think the people of Niroli know that their prince is a liar? Or doesn’t lying matter when you’re a member of the Royal House?’ she challenged him wildly.
‘You had no right to go through my desk,’ Marco shot back at her furiously, his male loathing at being caught off guard and forced into a position in which he was in the wrong making him determined to find something he could accuse Emily of. ‘I thought we had an understanding that our private papers were our personal property and out of bounds,’ he told her savagely. ‘I trusted you…’
Emily could hardly believe what she was hearing.
‘Did you? Is that why you hid this envelope under everything else?’ she challenged him, shaking her head in answer to her own question. ‘No, you didn’t trust me, Marco, and you didn’t trust me because you knew that I couldn’t trust you. And you knew that because you are a liar, and liars don’t trust people because they know that they themselves cannot be trusted.’ She not only felt sick, she also felt as though she could hardly breathe. ‘Everything I thought I knew about you is based on lies, everything. You aren’t just Marco Fierezza, you are Prince Marco of Niroli. You yourself are a lie, Marco.…’
‘You are taking this far too personally. The reason I concealed my royal status had nothing whatsoever to do with you. It was a decision I made before I met you. My identity as plain Marco Fierezza is as real to me as though I were not a prince. It has nothing to do with you,’ he repeated.
‘How can you say that? It has everything to do with me, and if you had any shred of decency or morals you would know that. How could you lie about who you are and still live with me as intimately as we have lived together?’ she demanded brokenly. ‘How could you live with yourself, knowing that others, not just me, believed you, accepted and gave you their trust, when all the time—’
‘Stop being so ridiculously dramatic,’ Marco demanded fiercely. ‘You are making too much of the situation.’
‘Too much?’ Emily almost screamed the words at him. ‘Too much, when I have discovered that you have deceived me for the whole time we’ve been together? When did
