she protested. ‘Please listen to me…’
He stopped walking and turned around. She saw his chest lift as he breathed in sharply and the sadness that filled her was not just for herself, but for both of them. She knew what she had to do, where her responsibility now lay, but how could she walk away letting him think that she hadn’t wanted to stay with him? She couldn’t, she decided frantically. Yes, she had her baby to think of and, yes, she was afraid of Marco’s reaction to the news that she was pregnant. But she loved Marco, too, and the knowledge that he wanted her enough to actually ask her to stay was too sweetly precious that she couldn’t deny its tremendous effect on her.
She still had to leave, nothing could change that, but she knew she couldn’t go away from him without telling him why it was so important that she went.
She took a deep breath; this was the most difficult thing she had ever had to do. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Marco. But I have to. You see, I’m having your child. I’m pregnant.’
What? Marco could feel her words exploding inside his skull as he battled with his own disbelief.
‘I know you told me at the beginning of our relationship that there must not be any accidents,’ Emily continued, carefully cutting into the tension of his complete silence, ‘and…and of course I understand now why you said that. The future King of Niroli’s bastard isn’t the title I want for our baby.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘The truth is, I don’t want him to have any title at all, and if there is one thing in all of this that I am grateful for, it’s that our son won’t ever have to live the kind of controlled and confined life you will have to live. What I want for him more than anything else is the kind of personal freedom that you don’t have and that you can’t give to your legitimate children. I want him to grow up in a home filled with love, where what matters most is that he finds his own sense of where his life lies and how his talents should be used. I don’t want his future to be corrupted by wealth and position. I don’t want him to have to carry the burdens I can see you carrying, Marco. I can’t give him his father, but I can give him the right to define his own life, and to me that heritage is of far more value than anything your legitimate children will inherit.’
For a few seconds, Marco was too taken aback by what she had said to speak. From the moment of his birth he had been brought up to be aware of the tremendous importance of his role and his family. The thought that someone was not awed and impressed by it was something he found hard to take in. But he could see that Emily meant what she’d said. Senses of isolation and aloneness, of having lost something he could never regain, an awareness that somehow, somewhere, he had turned his back on something precious stabbed through him. With it came the drift of painful memories: of himself as a young boy longing passionately for the freedom to be himself. He could see his father’s struggles and his mother’s anguish and, of course, his grandfather’s anger. He could also hear the echo of his own childishly piping voice stating defiantly, ‘When I am grown up and I can do what I want, I won’t be a prince!’ But with a kick like an iron-tipped boot, slowly but surely his position and its claims on him had reshaped him. He pictured two small boys, both dark-haired and sturdy, one of them grubby and laughing as he played happily with his friends. The other was sad-eyed and alone, held at a respectful distance by his peers, protected by privilege, or was he imprisoned by it?
What folly was this? Marco forced back the memories, refusing to acknowledge them any more, letting his pride take over instead. ‘You are being naïve. No one else will share your views, Emily. In fact, they will think you a fool. And, besides, being King of Niroli is about more than any of those things,’ he retaliated sharply. ‘It’s about making a difference to my people, it’s about leading them to a better future. Do you really think our son, my son, will thank you for denying him his birthright?’
‘He has no birthright here on Niroli. I am your mistress, and he will be illegitimate.’
‘He has the birthright I choose to give him.’
‘By recognising him and making him face the world as less than your children born within royal wedlock? By making him grow up in an environment where he will always be beneath them—in their eyes and, ultimately, in his own?’
‘He will be a member of the Niroli royal family, how can you think of denying him that? Do you really think he will thank you when he is old enough to know what he has lost?’
In the space of a few heated sentences, they had become opponents, Emily recognised.
‘It doesn’t matter how much we argue about our own feelings,’ she told him. ‘You are not yet King Marco, and I doubt that your grandfather would welcome the birth of an illegitimate child to a woman of such lowly status as me.’
There was just enough edge to her voice to warn Marco that, at some stage, she had learned of his grandfather’s opinion of her.
‘The fact that I am his father automatically gives him his own status,’ Marco retaliated, and then realised his words had added to Emily’s fury rather than softened it.
‘Yes, as your bastard—a royal bastard, I know. But he will still be your bastard. I won’t let him suffer that, Marco. I’m going home.’
‘Niroli is my child’s home, and this is where you and he are staying. When did you find out—about the child?’ he demanded abruptly.
‘Very recently. I had no idea…’ Emily looked away from
Marco, remembering how shocked she had been. ‘I would never have agreed to come here with you, if I’d known.’
‘So how would you have informed me that I’d become a father? Via a birth notice in The Times?’
Emily flinched as she heard the savagery in his voice. ‘That wouldn’t happen,’ she told him quietly. It had been foolish of her to give in to her urge to comfort him, because now she had created a new set of problems. Why had she told him? Because secretly she had been hoping—what? That he would sweep her up into his arms and say that he was thrilled she was expecting their child?
‘I’m sorry if I’ve given you a shock. I was stunned myself when I realised. But I didn’t want you to think I was leaving because.’ The words ‘because I don’t love you’ formed a tight knot that blocked her throat. How could she say them when she knew he didn’t want her love? ‘I wanted you to know that I have a valid reason for leaving the island,’ she amended, her voice growing firmer as she underlined, ‘a reason that matters to both of us. We already knew that one day we would have to part. The fact that I have accidentally conceived your child only makes that parting all the more essential. We both know that. I will not be your pregnant mistress, Marco.’
Emily was having his child, their child! A complex mixture of unfamiliar emotions were curling their fingers into his heart and tugging hard on it.
‘How far advanced is this pregnancy?’ he asked her brusquely.
Emily felt as though her whole body had been plunged into ice-cold water. This was what she had dreaded. An argument with him, in which he would try to demand that she terminate her pregnancy—something she had absolutely no intention of doing.
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted honestly. ‘I think that possibly it could have happened when I had that stomach bug. I remember reading somewhere that that kind of thing can neutralise the effect of the contraceptive pill. I should have thought about that at the time, but I didn’t.’ She lifted her head and told him firmly, ‘You needn’t worry about the consequences, though, Marco. I
