were his ideas—in public at least.’ She could see from Marco’s expression that he wasn’t willing to take on board what she was saying. It seemed to her that he and his grandfather were two very proud and stubborn men and that neither was prepared to give in to the other.
‘You haven’t seen anything of the island yet,’ he told her abruptly. ‘We’ll remedy that tomorrow.’ For Emily’s benefit, or for his own, because he needed to put some distance between himself and his grandfather?
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘ARE you sure you’ve got time to do this?’ Emily queried as Marco held open the door of the car for her before they set off to see something of the island. The morning sunshine cast sharp patterns on the worn flagstones of the courtyard and Emily was glad of the welcome coolness of the air-conditioned car. Hadn’t she read somewhere that pregnancy increased the blood flow and made one feel warmer? Pregnancy. She ached to be able to share her joy with Marco and yet, at the same time, she was also afraid of his reaction. If he should try to pressure her into having a termination it would break her heart, but, logically, what else could he do? Even if he was prepared to understand and accept that she wanted to have this baby and bring it up alone, she suspected that his grandfather would be totally opposed to the idea. The old king would surely put pressure on Marco to deal with her. She didn’t want to put Marco in that position and she wanted to keep her child as far away as possible from what increasingly she felt was a very negative kind of environment. The Nirolian royal family might be the richest in the world, but so far as Emily was concerned they seemed to be as dysfunctional as they were wealthy. Money wasn’t important to her, so long as she had enough for her needs. She wanted her child to grow up confident that he or she was rich in love rather than money. What she wanted, she admitted, was for her child to be raised somewhere very far away from Niroli and without the burden of being a royal bastard. So what was she going to do? Return to London without telling Marco she was having his child?
That was certainly her easiest option, Emily felt. But did she have the strength to do it? Could she walk away from Marco without telling him? She loved her child enough already to do whatever she had to do to protect him or her, including leaving the man she adored; she knew that, almost without having to think about it. However, did she also love Marco enough to spare him the necessity of having to take on board prospective fatherhood and the problems that would cause for him? Was she strong enough to deny her instinctive longing to share her news with him, even though she knew he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, share her growing joy at the prospect of having his baby?
It was an extraordinarily wonderful gift that fate was giving her: a child, and not just any child, but the seed of the man she loved. She could picture him now; somehow Emily already knew that her baby would be a boy. He would have Marco’s features and perhaps a little of his arrogance. He would look at her with Marco’s eyes and she would melt with love for him and the man who had fathered him. And, later, when he was old enough to demand his father’s name? She would deal with that when it happened. For now, what concerned her most was her baby’s health and whether she could leave Niroli without Marco suspecting anything. So how was she going to do that? She couldn’t just tell him she didn’t want him any more. He would never believe her.
Perhaps he would believe her if she told him she wasn’t comfortable with her role in his life. She wasn’t even his formally recognised mistress, and she felt it could reflect on her business reputation. Marco’s own pride meant that he would be able to identify with that. Last night, when they had made love, he hadn’t questioned the way she had encouraged him to gentle his possession of her, holding her breath a little, caught as she was between her maternal anxiety for her baby and the intense physical desire he always aroused in her. But Marco was a skilled and a sensual lover, who knew every single one of her body’s responses and how to invoke them. There was no way he wouldn’t soon notice a new desire on her part to make his penetration of her less intense.
A small, sad semi-smile touched her lips. Marco didn’t know it yet, but the sightseeing journey they were taking together today could well be the last they would make together. Now she was destined to set out on a new path, which she would share with this gift he had given her.
‘Seat belt,’ Marco reminded her. He reached across to secure the belt for her, before she could stop him. Immediately Emily breathed in, protectively. There was no bump of any kind to betray her, but still she felt a sharp clutch of anxiety for the vulnerability of her child. It would be like this for the rest of her life, she recognised. No matter that one day this baby she had conceived so unintentionally would be an adult; as a mother she would always be fiercely protective. Though, of course, there would be many things she could not protect her child from, foremost amongst which would be the pain of knowing his father hadn’t wanted him.
‘Emily?’
To her shock, Marco had placed his hand flat against her belly. Fearfully she turned to look at him. Had he, by some intuitive means, actually guessed?
‘You’re looking so much better than you did when you first arrived here,’ she heard him tell her. ‘Niroli’s sunshine has done you good.’
Shakily, Emily released her pent-up breath. He hadn’t guessed; it was just her own anxiety that was making her think that he must have done.
‘I don’t think anyone wouldn’t enjoy it. I know I haven’t seen much of the island…’
‘Today, we’re going to see as much of it as we can,’ Marco told her as he started the car, ‘and my royal duties will just have to wait.’
Whatever else the future held for Marco’s child, she was glad that it wouldn’t be the dark shadow of duty that fell across Marco’s life, Emily decided emotionally. The little boy might have to grow up not knowing his father, but he would be free of the burden Marco carried, and she was passionately grateful for that. Though, at the same time, almost overwhelmed by the intensity of her love for Marco, she reflected as he turned the car off the main road into a much narrower lane that ran close to the high, rocky coastline where cliffs plunged down into the sea.
‘This was one of my favourite places when I was a boy,’ Marco confided as he stopped the car.
Emily could understand why. There was an elemental wildness about it; in some ways, the landscape matched the man.
‘Come on, let’s get out of the car.’
Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to. The height of the cliffs gave her an uncomfortable feeling of vertigo. But she could see that Marco was determined and she didn’t want to have to explain to him how she felt.
‘I used to come here and gaze out to sea, and promise myself that one day I’d get away from here and from my grandfather. But, of course, even then I knew that ultimately I would have to come back,’ Marco confessed, once they were standing a few feet back from the edge of the cliff-top. He bent down and picked up a handful of the thin, stony soil that lay at the roots of the weather-beaten gorse bushes that grew in such abundance along this part of the coast, and flung it as far out to sea as he could.
Watching him, Emily knew that this was a re-enactment of something he had done many times as a boy—as a way of releasing the anger inside him? It was an emotion he had partially dissipated by leaving the island and making a life for himself. But it would never really leave him so long as he and his grandfather struggled for supremacy one over the other. And whilst they were embroiled in that struggle, others would suffer. She could not allow her child to be one of them.
All of a sudden it hit her: she had to tell Marco that she intended to leave. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch him and placed her hand on his bare forearm. Immediately he turned towards
