Читать книгу The Royal House of Niroli Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 20

‘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 her.

‘Marco,’ she began tentatively, and then stopped. Unexpectedly he reached for her and took her in his arms, kissing her with such fiercely sweet passion that it made her eyes sting with tears.

Why was he doing this? Marco asked himself. He knew that it couldn’t go on. Already, deep down inside, he knew he was becoming too dependent on her, and she was becoming too important to him. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. There was no room in his life for that kind of relationship with her. He was Niroli’s future king and he intended to devote every ounce of his mental and physical energy to his country and its people. He would break down the restrictions that centuries of royal rule had placed, he would open the door for Niroli’s population to walk freely into the new century. There was no legitimate place in his life for the kind of relationship he had with Emily. He was reeling at the way he felt about her now, the intensity that was being demanded of him. It was only recently he had started to feel like this, to recognise there was within him this dangerous need to have her close, a need that went far beyond any kind of sexual desire. But such emotion could not be allowed to exist, it could not be given a name, or a place in his life.

He started to pull away from her and then stopped, smothering a savage groan before he tightened his hold on her and kissed her again.

Emily’s mouth felt soft and giving beneath his own, her body warm, and he longed to possess her and fill her and lose himself in her and know the passion of loving her.

‘Marco!’ Emily objected, somehow managing to stem her own longing and drag her mouth from beneath his. She was trembling from head to foot, afraid not of him but of herself and the intensity of her feelings, and stumbling over the words in her desperation.

‘There’s no easy way to say this, but the truth is that I should never have come here. Niroli is different from London, and my role in your life has changed. I can’t live like this, Marco, a semi-secret mistress, despised and ignored by the court, and forced to live in the shadows. I’m going back to the UK just as soon as it can be arranged. It will be best for both of us.’

She was only saying what he already knew to be true, and yet he felt as shocked as though his guts had been splintered with ice picks. She couldn’t do this! He wasn’t ready to let her go. He needed her here with him. He should, he knew, be feeling relieved, but instead he felt more as though he had suffered a mortal blow. Pain rolled over him in mind-numbing waves, crashing through him and drowning out reason, spreading its unbearable agony to every part of him. He could hardly think for it, do anything other than try somehow to survive its rapacious teeth as it savaged him and tormented him. How could this have happened? How could he be experiencing this? The thoughts and feelings that filled him were so new and unfamiliar that they made him feel as though he was suddenly a stranger to him-self. He felt like a man possessed by…by what? He shook his head, unable to allow the word pulsing in his heart to form. He had wanted it to happen, he had wanted her to leave. But not like this. He’d wanted to be the one to tell her to go. But how? That he didn’t want her here because he was afraid that she would come between him and his duty? His whole body shuddered as the pain savaged it once more.

Why didn’t Marco say something, anything? Emily worried anxiously.

What could she say without risking betraying the truth?

‘I loved the life we shared together in London, Marco. But things are different here. The time we’re sharing together is borrowed time, stolen time, perhaps,’ she told him sadly. ‘It’s better that I go now.’

Marco could feel the heavy drum of his heartbeat thudding out a requiem for their relationship as he heard the finality in her voice.

‘There’ll never be anyone else in my life like you, Marco, nor a relationship to match the one we’ve shared.’

The words felt as though they were being ripped from her like a layer of her skin, but she couldn’t hold them back; they were after all the truth, even though she knew she was a fool for having said them.

But it didn’t matter now that she was compounding that error by lifting her hand to his face, tears burning at the backs of her eyes as she felt the familiar texture that was hard with the beginnings of his beard against the softness of her palm.

‘Emily.’

He had caught hold of her hand before she could stop him, lifting it to his lips and then dropping it when he felt her tremble, to pull her bodily into his arms and then plunder her mouth with his own. Not that she made any attempt to resist him. Instead, she gave him the sweetness he was demanding whilst she clung helplessly to him.

Few people visited this part of the island, and Marco realised that an irresistible need was flooding through him to know the intimacy of sex on this wild headland. He couldn’t let her go without this one last time, a final memory he would have to make last a lifetime of days and nights once he was without her. There had been many many times when their pleasure had been more sensual and more sustained, when he had deliberately set himself the task of pleasing her. But no time had ever been more intense than this, or more emotional. Because this was the last time that finally he could give to himself what he had previously so rigidly denied, and that was the right to feel with his emotions what he was feeling with his flesh.

This was too much, Emily told herself. She just wasn’t strong enough to endure this kind of passion. It was as though Marco had wrenched away, with his clothes, the barrier she had always sensed he kept raised against her.

As they lay together on the lavender-scented turf, the sun warming their naked bodies, the kisses he lavished on her body were hot and fierce with a desire that went beyond the merely physical. As though by shared consent, neither of them spoke. What words were there to say, after all? Emily wondered, with dry-eyed hurt. Words would only be lies, or, worse, create wounds. It was better this way, that their last memory of one another was one filled with a shared but unspoken awareness of what they’d shared and what they would never have again. It seemed to Emily as she touched him that she had never loved him more. Something within her, that was maybe both lover and prospective mother, swelled her heart with bitter-sweet emotion.

They kissed and touched, their lips clinging, their bodies urgent, trying desperately to hold onto every second of their pleasure. But, like sand, it could not be held, running swiftly through their fingers instead as Emily’s cries of pleasure became soft sighs of contentment.

She would treasure her memories of this day for the rest of her life.

She smiled lazily up at Marco as he leaned over her.

‘I don’t want you to leave.’

Marco had no idea where the words had come from. No! That was lie. He knew exactly where they had come from and why. And even if he hadn’t, the heavy pounding of his heart would have told him. What on earth was he doing, when he had already decided that she must go? What had happened to him to make him want to change his mind on the strength of a few minutes of good sex? he derided himself. But it wasn’t the good sex he didn’t want to lose—it was Emily herself.

Emily wondered if anything else in her life could ever be as poignant as this. Marco had never, ever asked her for anything, never mind pleaded with her so emotionally! She so wanted to fling herself into his arms and cover his face with passionately joyful kisses as she told him there was nothing she wanted more than to be with him. But how could she?

‘Marco, I’m sorry. I can’t.’ Her voice was little more than an anguished whisper, but Marco heard it, releasing her abruptly and turning away from her. She knew how much it must have cost him to ask her to stay. Given his inbuilt sense of male arrogance and his pride, along with his background and upbringing, she could only marvel that he had.

She got to her feet and said his name unsteadily, but he was already heading back to the car.

‘Marco!’ 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 am fully prepared to take sole responsibility for my child.’

‘My child.’ Marco stopped her ruthlessly. ‘The child is my child, Emily.’

She looked at him uncertainly. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would react like this. He sounded almost as though he felt as possessive about the baby as she did herself.

‘I don’t want to discuss it any more, Marco. There’s no point. I can’t stay here now.’

The morning sun was slanting across the courtyard. The coffee Maria had brought him half an hour earlier had grown cold as Marco sat deep in thought. He was not going to let Emily leave. And he was not going to allow his child to grow up anywhere other than here on Niroli. Both were unassailable and unchangeable tenets of what he felt about his role as king-in-waiting and as the father of Emily’s expected baby. It wasn’t any longer a matter of what he did or didn’t want; it was a matter of his royal duty, to his pride, to his name and to his first-born.

It was ridiculous of Emily to suggest that their child would have benefits that his so-called legitimate children would not, folly for her to claim that he would one day thank her for denying him his royal status. Marco might have enjoyed the freedom of his time in London, but he had also never forgotten who and what he was. Having royal blood and being able to lay claim to it, even if one was born on the wrong side of the blanket, was a life-enhancing benefit that couldn’t be ignored. His son, growing up here on Niroli as his accepted child, could look forward to the best of everything and, when grown, a position of authority at his father’s court. He would be revered and respected, he would wield power and he would be on hand to support his legitimate half-sibling when finally he became King. Would he be imprisoned by his royal status, as Marco had sometimes felt he had been? No!

All of that and more could be made possible for this child, provided that Emily was prepared to see sense. She didn’t have the status of a proper royal mistress, that was true. But his grandfather, for all his faults and stubbornness, also had a strong sense of duty and family. He, too, would want his greatgrandchild to remain on Niroli. There was a way in which it could be made possible for her to stay and be elevated to a position in which she and their baby would have the respect of the people.

He swung round as he heard Emily come out into the courtyard. The sun had brushed her skin a warm gold, driving away its London pallor. She wasn’t showing any visible sign of her pregnancy yet, but there was a rich glow about her, somehow, a sense of ripeness to come. Watching her, Marco experienced a swift surge of possessive determination not to let her go. She was having his child; whether by accident and not by design, that did not alter his paternal responsibilities or that a baby of royal blood was to be born. Who other than he could tell that child about his heritage and where better a place to do that than here on Niroli?

‘I’ve just seen Maria and she’s going to bring out some fresh coffee for you.’ How domestic and comfortable that sounded, Emily thought tiredly as she sat down on the chair Marco had pulled out for her. She had hardly slept, her thoughts circling helplessly and tumultuously.

‘I’m not prepared to let you leave the island, Emily. You, and my child, are going to stay here where both of you belong. It seems to me that marriage is the best way to secure our son’s future and your position at court.’

Marriage! Emily almost dropped the glass of water she had been drinking. Marco wanted to marry her? She was shaking from head to foot with the intensity of her joy. Emotional tears filled her eyes. She put down the glass, and protested shakily, ‘Marco! You can’t mean that. How can you marry me?’

She realised immediately from his expression that something was wrong.

‘I can’t marry you,’ he told her flatly. ‘You know that. What on earth made you think that I could?’ Why did he feel this dragging weight wrapping itself around him? He couldn’t marry Emily, and he was surprised that she had thought he might. And, yet, just for a moment, seeing the joy in her eyes, he had felt… He had felt what? A reciprocal surge of joy within himself? That was ridiculous.

‘You need a husband, Emily, and a position at court. There is within European royal families a tradition whereby noblemen close to the throne marry royal mistresses. This kind of marriage is rather like a business arrangement, in that it benefits all parties and, in the eyes of the world, bestows respectability on the mistress and any children she may bear. The nobleman in question is of course rewarded for his role and—’

‘Stop it. Stop it. I have heard enough!’ Emily had pushed back her chair and got to her feet. She could hardly breathe but she struggled to speak. ‘I thought I knew you, Marco. I even felt sorry for you, because of the heavy responsibility your duty to the Crown lays upon you! But now I realise that I never really knew you. The man I thought I knew would never in a thousand years have allowed himself to become so corrupted by power and pride that he would suggest what you have just suggested to me!’

‘What I propose is a traditional solution to a uniquely royal problem,’ Marco persisted curtly. ‘You are overreacting.’ Her outburst had made him feel as though he were doing something wrong, instead of recommending a logical solution to their problem. A logical solution of the kind his grandfather would have suggested? Was the pressure of becoming King turning him into a man like his grandfathe, the kind of man he had once sworn he would never allow himself to be? His critical inner voice would not be silenced, and its contempt echoed uncomfortably inside him.

‘Am I? Take a look at yourself, Marco, and try seeing yourself through my eyes, and then repeat what you have just offered as a solution. You want to bribe another man to marry me so that—so that what? You can have your child here, conveniently legitimised by a convenient marriage between two strangers, though I’m sure that won’t stop the gossip. But what about me? Am I expected to be a dutiful bride to this noble husband you’re going to find for me? Am I supposed to submit willingly to having sex with him, bear his children, be his wife in all senses of the word?’

‘No, there will be no question of that.’ The harshness of his own immediate denial caught Marco off guard. But he couldn’t retract his words, nor deny the feeling of fierce possessiveness that had gripped him at the thought of Emily in another man’s bed.

‘What kind of man are you, Marco, if you think that I would be willing to sell myself into such an arrangement? But then I was forgetting: you aren’t a mere man, are you? You are a king! I’m not staying on the island a minute longer than I have to. Everything you’ve just said underlines all the reasons why I don’t want my son growing up here. Your proximity to the throne has corrupted you, but I don’t intend to let it corrupt my child.’

‘And I don’t intend to let you leave Niroli.’ They had been the closest of lovers, but now they were enemies locked in a battle to the bitter end for the right to decide the future of their child.