Читать книгу The Royal Wedding Collection - Jules Bennett, Robyn Donald - Страница 20

MILLIE stared out of the window at the familiar green landscape softened by water—a mixture of the steady rain which fell and the tears which were filling her eyes.

‘It all looks exactly the same,’ she said brokenly. ‘Nothing changes.’

‘But you’ve changed,’ said Lulu, from behind her. ‘You’re almost unrecognisable.’

‘Am I?’ Millie turned round, her sense of surprise momentarily eclipsing the terrible pain she had felt since setting foot back in her old family home. ‘But my hair is the same and my face is the same. The clothes are more expensive, and I may have lost a little weight—but that’s about all.’

‘Maybe the profound experience of marrying and becoming a queen almost simultaneously has altered you more than you realised? Oh, Millie—don’t! Please don’t start crying again!’

But Millie couldn’t help it. She had bottled her feelings up—not wanting the servants to see her giving in to emotion—that had been one lesson which Gianferro had taught her so well. But once away from the closed environment of the Palace which had become her home the tears had begun to fall in earnest, and now they were splashing down onto her cashmere sweater, which she hugged close to her, like an animal seeking comfort.

‘I just don’t understand what the problem is.’ Lulu stared at her in confusion. ‘You didn’t bother telling him you were on the Pill—is it really such a big deal?’ she asked.

Millie bit her lip. She had thought that coming here might help put everything in perspective, but in a way it had only emphasised the gravity of what she had done. It was more than simply not telling her husband something—it was the severing of a trust which he gave to very few people.

But he suspected you, she reminded herself. He told you that himself. So he did not trust you at all.

‘I just don’t know what to do!’ she whispered.

‘Well, stop crying, for a start! Just calm down and take a deep breath.’ Lulu’s face was very fierce. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

‘But what if it’s the end of my marriage?’ questioned Millie shakily.

Lulu’s eyes narrowed. ‘Would that bother you?’

Millie scrubbed at her eyes with her fingers. ‘Of course it would bother me!’

‘Because you like being Queen?’

‘No, you idiot—because I love him! How dare you suggest a thing like that?’

Lulu went quiet for a moment. ‘Well, thank God for that. I just had to be sure, that’s all. Sure you knew what you were fighting for.’

Millie turned her head to look at the rainwashed lawn. ‘Maybe Gianferro doesn’t want to be fought for. Maybe he’s decided that it’s over.’

‘You’re going to give in that easily? Whatever happened to the Millie who would never give up? Who got back on her horse again and again—no matter how many times she had fallen off?’

Millie listened to Lulu in silence and realised that her sister was right. That even if he had decided he didn’t want her any more, she had to give it another chance. She had to. She would fight with every fibre of her being if that was what it took.

‘I’m going to have to go back to Mardivino and sort it out,’ she said slowly. ‘Because he’s certainly showing no sign of coming to England to find me.’

Lulu raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, come on!’ she chided. ‘How can he? What? Hop on a plane and arrive here unannounced? He’s the King, Millie—and kings just don’t do that kind of thing!’

He could, Millie thought—could have done it if he had wanted to. Because he had the power at his fingertips to do almost anything he wanted. The point was that he didn’t want to—and who on earth could blame him?

She felt the cold, curling fingers of pain clamping themselves around her heart, but to stay in a state of confused ignorance would never help her heart to heal. Her marriage might be over, and the sooner she learned the truth about it, the better. And Lulu was right…Why should she give up when nothing in the world had ever been so worth fighting for as this man was?

Millie had travelled on a scheduled flight, but after a week in England with no word at all from Gianferro she was feeling tired and vulnerable. She couldn’t face the thought of returning to Mardivino by the same route—with the VIP representatives fussing and hovering round her at the airport, the inevitable lurking paparazzo photographer lurking around to snatch a photo of the young Queen.

She had not anticipated how greedy the press would be for images of her—or how carefully she would need to plan her wardrobe for travelling. One hint of a loose-fitting top and it would be announced to the world that she was pregnant. Millie bit her lip. How ironic.

She phoned the Palace, but Gianferro and Alesso were not there.

Eventually Millie got through to Alesso on his cell-phone. ‘Is Gianferro there?’ she asked him quietly.

‘He is touring the new hospital.’

‘I see. Well, I want to come home…’ For a second she was aware that she no longer considered England as her home—it should have been a small victory of her newly married life, but it tasted bitterly of defeat. ‘Can you arrange for the King’s flight to be sent for me, Alesso?’

‘Yes, of course, Your Majesty.’

‘And Alesso? Will you tell him I rang?’ she said quietly and then her voice softened. ‘And that I shall see him tomorrow evening.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

While Millie’s lady-in-waiting packed for her, she and Lulu wandered down to the stables, and as they stood looking down at a brand-new foal Millie was overcome with a powerful wave of nostalgia for how things used to be—when life had seemed a whole lot simpler.

‘Do you miss England?’ asked Lulu suddenly, when they had walked back through the fields, splashing through the boggy puddles in their Wellington boots. The sun had emerged from behind a cloud and its brightness was drying all the leaves on the branches, like washing hung on a line.

Millie closed her eyes and breathed in the very Englishness of the air. Her senses could transport her back to other times and other places, and never more so than now, when her senses were so keenly alert. But nothing did stay the same—it might look the same on the outside, but the people who flitted in and out were growing and changing all the time. ‘Sometimes.’

‘But not the weather?’ joked Lulu.

‘No, not the weather.’ Millie smiled.

‘What, then?’

‘Oh, the freedom. Yes, the freedom, mainly—being able to do what you want without consulting a diary or a secretary. Being able to wander off without men in bulky jackets never being very far away from you. But that’s life as a Royal—and I knew that when I married Gianferro.’

But in a way she had known it only on a purely intellectual level—she had been unprepared for the reality of almost complete loss of freedom. She had floundered in her new life, like a little squirming fish thrown into a mighty swirling ocean. And instead of turning to her husband for help and support she had pushed him away—driven a wedge between them with her stubbornness and the secret she had nursed.

Was it too late to try and get close to him again?

The private jet skated onto the runway at Solajoya airport the following day and Millie stared out of the window, hoping and praying for the sight of her husband come to meet her—but there was no sign of him.

Not even Alesso was there—just a couple of officials who Millie did not know terribly well. She had not wanted a fuss, but she had expected some kind of welcome—no matter how lukewarm. But this felt like…like what? As if she was being marginalised? As if a very definite message was being sent out to her?

Her feelings of insecurity grew all the way to the Palace, and once there things were no better, for there was no sign of the King. No note. Nothing.

Nothing.

Millie kicked the shoes off her aching feet and looked around the empty suite of rooms. Nor were there any flowers on the tables. The shutters were drawn as if nobody lived there any more, and she moved forward to open them so that golden sunlight poured like honey into the room, leaving her dazzled and confused as she turned to her dresser.

‘Has there been any word on when the King might return, Flavia?’

‘No, Your Majesty.’

She picked up the phone. Gianferro was not answering his mobile, but then he rarely did. It was Alesso that she got through to. As usual.

‘You had a good flight, Your Majesty?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, yes,’ answered Millie impatiently. ‘Where are you?’

‘In Soloroca—it is the anniversary of the opening of the Juan Lopez Gallery, remember?’

‘Is Gianferro not there with you?’

‘Unfortunately, no. He has taken the Spanish officials sailing.’

Millie scowled at her reflection in the mirror. ‘And what time is he expected back at the Palace tonight?’

There was an almost infinitesimal pause. ‘There is a reception which is not scheduled to end until late, Your Majesty. The King gave the instruction that he may be delayed and that you are not to wait up for him.’

There were a million things she wanted to say, but she could not. Alesso knew as well as she did that the King could leave any reception at any damned time he pleased—if he did not do so, it was because he had chosen not to. His wife had been away for over a week and he wasn’t even going to bother to see her until the next day. Which told her in no uncertain terms just how much he cared.

Millie felt her heart plummet, as if someone had dropped it from the top of a very high building. She knew that so much in Royal life was never stated, that things were ‘understood’. It saved embarrassment—and presumably little could be more embarrassing than having to tell your young wife that their brief marriage was over.

But was she going to sit back and accept that?

Millie stared at herself in the mirror and her scowl became a look of fierce determination, her blue eyes glinting and her chin held high. For sure she had made a mistake—but wasn’t everybody allowed one mistake without it having such an irrevocable effect on their lives?

But she knew her husband’s Achilles’ heel—anything which threatened his strong sense of duty would be just that. He would not want his marriage to fail for the sake of his people—no matter what his personal feelings for her.

And Millie did not want her marriage to fail either—though her reasons were fundamentally different. So was she going to fight for him? To show him what he meant to her? That she loved him with a love that burned deep in her breast like an eternal flame?

Yes, she was!

The first thing she did was strip off all her travelling clothes and shower, soaping her body and her hair as if her life depended on it and then rubbing rich scented lotion into her skin afterwards, so that she was perfumed and gleaming. The faint golden colour she had acquired since living on the island made her eyes look very blue, and her hair was paler than it had been for a long time.

She chose her lingerie carefully, and a simple dress of lemon silk, and caught her hair back in a French twist—weaving into it a ribbon the colour of buttercups.

The next bit was the tricky part. She had to persuade her bodyguard to let her drive a car, unaccompanied and unannounced. She saw the furrowed lines of worry which creased his brow and sought to reassure him.

‘I don’t mean completely on my own! You can follow me,’ she told him. ‘I want to surprise my husband,’ she finished, and gave him a smile which was tinged with genuine pleading.

And of course she got her way—short of refusing the Queen’s command, what alternative did the bodyguard have? Millie rarely used the full power of her title, but this time it was vital.

If the purpose of the drive hadn’t been so crucial to her future happiness then she might even have embraced the feeling of freedom and exhilaration as the zippy little car began to ascend the mountain roads outside the capital.

This was the kind of thing she never did—it was always a big chauffeur-driven limousine with the Royal crest on the front which conveyed her to and from her Royal engagements. But this felt…

Normal.

Ordinary.

All those things Gianferro had reminded her that she no longer was, nor ever would be again.

Maybe not. But the feelings she had were the same as those experienced by ordinary people, weren’t they?

And right now the overwhelming one was fear. That it might be too late. That she had messed it up.

Licking at lips so dry they felt like parchment, Millie drove upwards. At least the way was well signposted. Gianferro had told her that the road to Soloroca had once been little more than a track, and the village itself had been rundown and desolate—but that had been before the works of the great artist Juan Lopez had been housed there, and now people came from all over the world to view them, bringing prosperity to the mountains of Mardivino.

She waited until she was on the outskirts of the village and then she telephoned Alesso.

‘I’m here,’ she said.

‘Here, Your Majesty?’

‘Just down the road, in fact.’ Millie drew a deep breath. ‘Alesso, I want the way cleared for me to come to the reception, but I do not wish Gianferro to know. I want to surprise him, so please don’t tell him.’

‘But, Your Majesty—’

‘Please, Alesso.’

There was a pause. ‘Very well, Your Majesty.’

It was a mark of how much Royal life had seeped into her unconscious that her first thought had been to clear it with her husband’s aide. For, while many would recognise her as the Queen, others might have considered her to be an impostor—there could have been an almighty fuss, and then the crucial element of surprise would have been lost.

And she wanted to see Gianferro’s first instinctive reaction to her. Oh, he was a master at keeping his face poker-straight and expressionless, but surely his eyes would give some kind of reaction. Even if there was the tiniest bit of pleasure lurking in their black depths, then surely that was enough to build on?

And if there was no pleasure? What then?

Millie quickly smoothed her hair and straightened her back. She was not going to project an outcome.

Her way might have been prepared by Alesso—for all the guards bowed as if they had been expecting her—but that did not mean there were not curious eyes in the room. Older, predatory married women, who were always in evidence around the King, were fixing her with unwelcome eyes. Millie knew that many of them were just itching to step into her shoes. To provide the King with the physical comfort a man of his appetite needed—with no questions asked and no demands made.

Did he still want his foolish young wife? Millie wondered, her eyes searching the high-domed white room whose walls were lined with the vibrant paintings of Lopez.

And then she saw him.

He was wearing a dark suit and looked both cool and formal. As usual, all heads were bent obsequiously towards him as people listened, and Millie knew that if he made a joke—however weak—people would fall about laughing. Because when you were King people told you what they thought you wanted to hear.

She knew then that her attempt at reconciliation must go no further than was necessary—for if she capitulated too much he would never respect her again.

He might be King, and she Queen, but the tussles within their marriage were not Royal ones—and unless they could find some real human ground on which to thrash them out then it would not be a marriage worth continuing with anyway.

Gianferro was listening to the Spanish Ambassador praising Mardivino’s attitude to the arts when he became aware of a slight buzz in the room. His eyes narrowed as he saw heads turning in the direction of the door.

But he was already in the room! Who in the world could possibly be entering and capturing more attention than he could?

And then he saw her.

Her eyes were like a summer’s sky and her hair as pale and gleaming as moonlight. She wore a yellow dress which made her look cool and composed, but he could see that her mouth was set and tense, though it wavered in a tentative attempt at a smile as she began to walk towards him.

Now the faces were turned towards him, watching for his reaction, the way they always did. They would be wondering what the Queen was doing here, for she was not expected—and members of the Royal family did not simply turn up out of the blue.

What the hell was she thinking of? he wondered angrily.

She moved towards him and the purely physical reaction which she always provoked in him kicked in—with a force and power which momentarily took his breath away. But then he remembered the ugly scene which had caused her departure, and he felt the faint flickering of a muscle at his cheek.

She came right up to him, her cheeks flushed and her eyelids dropping down to conceal the sapphire glitter of her eyes.

‘Your Majesty,’ she said, very softly.

And, breaking protocol for the first time in his life, Gianferro bent his mouth to her ear.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he breathed.