Loe raamatut: «The Royal Wedding Collection»

CHAPTER ONE

GIANFERRO had always chosen his mistresses well.

He looked for beauty and intelligence, but above all for discretion—for obvious reasons. Since the age of seventeen there had never been any shortage of willing candidates for this unofficial and unacknowledged place in his life, but that would have surprised no one. For even if you discounted the restless black eyes in the coldly handsome face, and his hard, lean body, there was not a woman alive who would not long to become a mistress to the Prince.

Especially a prince who would one day be King of Mardivino—the heavenly Mediterranean island over which his family had ruled since the thirteenth century. A prince who owned palaces and planes and fast cars, as well as a string of world-class racehorses. Untold wealth was at Gianferro’s fingertips—and who could blame women if all they wished was for him to stroke those fingertips over their bodies?

But now his quest was different, and daunting—even for him. Before him lay possibly the most important decision he would ever make. He could put off the inevitable no longer. It was not a mistress he sought, but a bride.

And his choice must be the right choice.

His two brothers were now married and had produced children of their own—and therein lay the danger. There was one way and one way only to ensure that his bloodline inherited the crown of Mardivino.

He must marry.

His heart was heavy as he glanced around the bedroom he had been given when he’d arrived yesterday. It was very different from the architecture of his own Rainbow Palace, but it was still a very beautiful room indeed. He looked around him. Yes, a very English room.

The huge windows were composed of mullions and transoms and diamond panes which caught and reflected the light from many different angles, so that it resembled an interior as airy as a birdcage. But—his mouth twisted into an ironic smile—a cage from which he was unlikely to break free.

Caius Hall, an exquisite sixteenth-century house, was home to the de Vere sisters—the elder of whom he was intending to marry. Lady Lucinda de Vere—affectionately known as Lulu—was everything that he could want in a woman. Her blood was as pure as his, and she added blonde and beautiful into the bargain.

Their families had known each other for years—both fathers had studied together at university and had stayed in touch, though meetings had inevitably become fleeting and infrequent over time. Gianferro had even spent a holiday here once, but the two girls had been young then—indeed, one had been just a baby.

And then, late last year, he had met the older daughter at a polo match. It had not been by chance—but brokered by a mutual family friend who had thought it high time he meet someone ‘suitable’. Almost without thinking, Gianferro had put his defences up, but he had been struck by Lulu’s self-assurance and her outstanding beauty.

‘I think I know you, don’t I?’ she had questioned cheekily as he bent to kiss her hand. ‘Didn’t you stay in my house once—years ago?’

‘A long time ago.’ He frowned. ‘You were in pigtails and ribbons at the time, I believe,’ he remembered.

‘Oh. How very unflattering!’

But that long-ago meeting provided a certain kind of security, a bedrock which was vital to a man in his position. She was no stranger with hidden motives; he knew her background. The match would be approved by everyone concerned.

After that they had met several times—at parties which Gianferro knew had been laid on specifically for just that purpose. Sometimes he wondered: if he snapped his fingers and demanded the moon be brought to him on a plate, would a team of astronauts be dispatched from Mardivino to try and procure it for him?

Throughout their covertly watched conversations there had been an unspoken understanding of both their needs and wants. He wanted a wife who would provide him with an heir, and she wanted to be a princess. It was the dream of many an aristocratic English girl. As easy as that.

Today, after lunch, he was going to request that their courtship become formal. And if that invisible line was crossed there would be no going back. There would be subtle machinations behind the scenes in Mardivino and England as marriage plans were brokered, as he intended they would be.

In a few short hours he would no longer be free.

Gianferro allowed himself a brief, hard smile. No longer free? Since when had freedom ever been on the agenda of his life? Crown Princes could be blessed with looks and riches and power, but the liberties which most men took for granted could never be theirs.

He glanced at his watch. Lunch was not for another hour, and he was feeling restless. He had no desire to go downstairs and engage in the necessary small talk which was so much a part and parcel of his life as a prince.

He slipped out of the room and moved with silent stealth along one of the long, echoing corridors until at last he was outside, breathing in the glorious English spring air like a man who had been drowning.

The breeze was soft and scented, and yellow and cream daffodils waved their frilly crowns. The trees were daubed with the candy-floss pinks and whites of blossom, and beneath them were planted circles of bluebells, magically blue and, like the blossom, heartbreakingly brief in their flowering.

Taking the less obvious path, Gianferro moved away from the formal gardens, his long stride taking him towards the fields and hedgerows which formed part of the huge estate.

In the distance he could hear the muffled sound of a horse’s hooves as it galloped towards him, and in that brief, yearning moment he wished himself astride his own mount—riding relentlessly along the empty Mardivinian shore until he had worn himself and his horse out.

He watched as a palomino horse streaked across the field, and his eyes narrowed in disbelief as he saw that the rider was about to make it jump the hedge.

He held his breath. Too high. Too fast. Too…

Instinct made him want to cry out for the horse to stop, but instinct also prevented him, for he knew that to startle it could be more dangerous still.

But then the rider urged the mount on, and it was one of those perfect moments that sometimes you witnessed in life, never to be recaptured. With a gravity-defying movement, the horse rose in a perfect, gleaming arc. For a split-second it seemed to hover in mid-air before clearing the obstacle with only a whisper to spare, and Gianferro slowly expelled the breath he had been holding, acknowledging with reluctant admiration the rider’s bravery, and daring, and…

Stupidity!

Gianferro was himself talented enough a horseman to have considered taking it up as a career, had it not been for the accident of birth which had made him a prince, and he found himself tracing the deepened grooves of the hoof-marks towards the stables.

Perhaps he would advise the boy that there was a difference between courage and folly—and then perhaps afterwards he might ask him if he would like to ride out for him in Mardivino!

The scent of the stables was earthy, and he could hear nothing other than the snorts of a horse and the sound of a voice.

A woman’s voice—soft and bell-like—as it murmured the kind of things that women always murmured to their horses.

‘You darling thing! You clever thing!’

Gianferro froze.

Had a woman been riding the palomino?

With autocratic disregard, he strode into the tack-room and saw the slight but unmistakably feminine form of a girl—a girl!—feeding the horse a peppermint.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ he demanded.

Millie turned her head and her blood ran first hot, then cold, and then hot again.

She knew who he was, of course. Millie had often been accused of having her head in the clouds—but even she had realised that they had a prince staying with them. And that her sister Lulu was determined to marry him.

The place had been swarming with protection officers and armed guards, and she had heard her mother complaining mildly that the two girls who had been drafted in from the village to help had done very little in the way of work—the place was so filled with testosterone!

Millie had managed to get out of meeting the Prince at dinner last night, by pleading a headache—wanting to escape what she was sure would be a cringe-making occasion, while her sister paraded herself as though she was on a market stall and he the highest bidder—but now here he was, and this time there was no escaping him.

Yet he was not as she had thought he would be.

He did not look a bit like a prince, in his close-fitting trousers and a shirt which was undoubtedly silk, but casually unbuttoned at the neck to reveal a sprinkling of crisp dark hair. He was as strong and as muscular as any of the stableboys, with his hair as gleaming black as her riding boots. But blacker still were his eyes, and they were sparking out hot accusation at her.

‘Did you hear me?’ he grated. ‘I asked whether you were crazy.’

‘I heard you.’

Her voice was so low that he had to strain his ears to hear. He could see that she had been sweating—saw the way the thin shirt she wore clung to her small, high breasts—and unexpectedly a pulse leapt in his groin. There was no deference in her voice, either—didn’t she know who he was?

‘And are you? Crazy?’

Millie shrugged. She had spent a lifetime being told that she rode too fearlessly. ‘That rather depends on your point of view, I suppose.’

He saw that her eyes were large and as blue as the flowers which circled the trees, and that her skin was the clearest he had ever seen—untouched by make-up and yet lit with the natural glow of exercise and youth. He found himself wondering what colour was the hair which lay beneath the constricting hat she wore, and now his heart began to pound in a way which made his head spin.

‘You ride very well,’ he acceded, and without thinking he took another step closer.

Millie only just stopped herself from shrinking away, but his proximity was making her feel almost light-headed. Dizzy. He was as strong as the grooms, yes, but he was something more, too—something she had never before encountered. When Lulu had spoken about ‘her’ Prince she had made him sound like nothing more than a title…she certainly hadn’t mentioned that he had such a dangerous swagger about him, nor such an unashamedly masculine air, which was now making her heart crash against her ribcage. She stared into his dark eyes and tried to concentrate.

‘Thank you.’

‘Though whoever taught you to take risks like that should be shot,’ he added darkly.

Millie blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You’ll kill yourself if you carry on like that,’ he said flatly. ‘That jump was sheer folly.’

‘But I did it! And with room to spare!’

‘And one day you might just not.’

‘Oh, you can’t live your life thinking like that!’ said Millie airily. ‘Wrapped up in cotton wool and worrying about what might happen. Timidity isn’t living—it’s existing.’

Something about her unaffectedness made him feel almost wistful. As did the sentiment. How long since he had allowed himself the luxury of thinking that way? ‘That’s because you’re young,’ he said, almost sadly.

‘While you’re a grand old man, I suppose!’ she teased.

He laughed, and then stilled, the laughter dying on his lips, and something crept into the enclosed space of the stable—something intangible, which crackled in the air like the sound of the fresh, hot flames of a new fire bursting into life.

And as they stared at each other, another debilitating wave of weakness passed over her. Millie was brave and fearless on horseback, but now she prickled with a feeling very like fear, and the sweat cooled on her skin, making her clammy and shivery. As if she had suddenly caught a fever.

‘I’d better finish up here,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Who are you?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘One of the grooms?’

Some self-protective instinct made her unsure what to say. If he thought she was just one of the hands he would be out of here like a shot. And I will be safe, she thought. Safe from that dark, dangerous look and that unashamedly sexual aura which seemed to shimmer off his olive skin.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

For a moment a cold, hard gleam entered his eyes—a sense of the condemned man being offered one final meal before his fate was sealed. Her lips were curved, slightly open, and he could see the moist pinkness of her mouth. He longed to kiss her as he had never kissed a woman before, nor ever would again.

And Millie saw it all played out in that one, lingering look. She was almost completely innocent of men, but she had observed enough of nature to know what passed between the sexes. She knew exactly what was going on in the mind of the Prince, and for a moment her heart went out to her sister. What if he turned out to be the kind of man who played away? Serially unfaithful—just as their own father had been?

But Lulu would handle it; she always did. She had had men eating out of her hand for years, and why should this man be any different? But this man was different—and not just because he was a prince. He was…

Millie swallowed.

He was fantasy come true—virile and strong and masculine—even she could sense that. And women would always gravitate towards him, in the way that a mare always went for the most robust of the stallions. Her feelings did a rapid turnaround, and for a moment Millie almost envied her sister.

She stared for a second at the arrogant thrust of his hips and found herself blushing—terrified that he might be able to guess what she had been thinking. ‘I…I’d better go,’ she stammered.

He laughed again, but this time the laugh was regretful, and tinged with something else which he couldn’t identify. ‘Yes, run along, little girl,’ he said softly.

‘But I’m nineteen!’ she defended, stung.

‘Better run along anyway,’ came the silky response.

She stared into the dark glitter of his eyes and did exactly what he said—rushing from the stable as if he was chasing her, out into the spring day which had been transformed by the mercurial April weather. Where before there had been bright sunshine now the clouds had suddenly split open, and rain was cascading down. But at least the droplets cooled her hectic colour and flushed cheeks as she dazedly made her way back to the Hall.

Wet through, she leaned against the wall of the kitchen-garden as she steadied her breathing. But her mouth felt as dry as summer dust, and her heart was still pounding as if it wanted to burst out of her chest.

She felt as if she was a cauldron, and he had reached inside and stirred up all her feelings, so that she was left feeling not like Millie at all, but some trembling stranger to herself.

And she still had lunch to get through.