The Future King's Bride

‘But you’ll need to change!’ objected her mother.

‘Oh, I’m okay—a little bit of rain never hurt anyone,’ said Millie firmly.

Lulu gave an edgy laugh. ‘Millie won’t care if she gets soaked to the skin—she’s such a tomboy!’

It was the kind of taunt which had haunted her down the years, but Millie didn’t feel a bit like a tomboy as Gianferro followed her and the room fell silent. Inexplicably—and uncomfortably—she had never felt more of a woman in her life.

At the east entrance, she opened the door. Beyond the rain was an almost solid sheet of grey.

She turned to him. ‘You can’t honestly want to go out in that?’

‘Yes. I do.’

She grabbed a waterproof from the hook and half threw it at him before pulling on one herself. ‘Come on, then.’

Perversely, he liked the ungracious gesture, and the angry look she sparked at him as he pulled on the battered old coat, with its smell of horses and leather. He stepped outside and felt the rain in his hair and on his cheeks. It was coming down so fast that when he opened his mouth it rushed in—knocking all the breath out of him.

‘We’ll have to run!’ said Millie, but suddenly she felt a strange sense of excitement. The dull, formal lunch had become something else. He wanted to see her beloved horses, and this was where she felt at home. But it is more than just that, Millie, and you know it is. She shook her head, as if she could shake away the troublesome thoughts. ‘Come on!’

Laughing with a sudden recklessness which was alien to him, he ran behind her, dodging puddles and watching as the mud splattered droplets up her pale silk-covered legs. Tights? he wondered. Probably. She was too gauche and unworldly to pull on a pair of stockings. What was he doing here, and why was he allowing this to happen? This was craziness. Madness. He should stop it right now.

Yet all the time a feeling was growing deep inside him, a sense of the irrevocable about to happen, as though his fate was about to be sealed in a way in which he had least expected.

By the time they reached the stables Millie’s hair was plastered to her skull, and she turned to him, brushing cold droplets of rain away from her skin as if they were tears, not knowing and not caring what was the right thing to say any more.

‘Why didn’t you tell my mother we’d already met today?’

‘You know why.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do. Just as you know what is going to happen next.’

She shook her head, trying to quell the glow of excitement, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. ‘You’re talking in riddles!’

‘Why did you agree to bring me here, Millie?’ he questioned silkily.

‘Because you…because you wanted to look at the horses, didn’t you?’

In any other woman it would have been a coy question, but Gianferro knew she meant it. ‘No. You know very well what I wanted. What I want. What you want, too—if you can dare to admit it to yourself.’

Her eyes were like saucers as she saw the expression on his face and read the sensual intent there, so dark and so powerfully irresistible that she shook her head, willing it to go away even while she prayed it never would. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No. We mustn’t!’

‘But we have to—you know we do,’ he whispered. ‘For you will die unless we do.’ And so will I.

‘Gianferro!’

He pulled her into his arms and tumbled her down beneath him onto the spiky bed of a bale of hay, pushing back a strand of hair from her rain-wet face. For one long moment he stared down at her, ignoring the bewilderment in her eyes, before blotting out the world with the heady pressure of his kiss.

For Millie it was like jumping the highest jump in the world—she’d never felt such a heady blend of excitement and fear before. She could feel the muscular strength of his body, and his hands cupping her face, his lips grazing over hers.

‘Oh!’ It was a broken plea, a request for something she wasn’t aware she wanted, and as she made it he opened her lips with the seeking brush of his tongue. She gasped as it flicked inside her mouth. Fireworks exploded inside her head and she began to ache as she gripped onto him, drowning in the sweetness of it all, her body seeming to take on a life of its own as it pushed itself against the hard sinews of his. Dimly, she was aware of the heavy flowering of her breasts, and their sweet, prickling ache made her want him closer still.

With a terse exclamation he pulled himself away from her, his breathing ragged and unsteady as he stared into the sultry protest of her slick lips.

‘Why did you stop?’ she questioned, in a honeyed voice which sounded like a stranger’s.

‘Why?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Why do you think?’ And then he read the uncertainty and the hunger in her big blue eyes and relented, his dark brows knitting together. ‘Have you ever kissed a man before, Millie?’

She stared at him. So he had guessed! ‘Not…not like that.’

The dark brows were elevated in lazy question. ‘And what way is that?’

She wanted to say With your tongue, but she couldn’t. It made it sound so anatomical. As if what had just happened had been all about experimentation, and it had not been about that at all—more a great whooshing feeling which had swept her away and made her feel like…like…

She shook her head, as if that could make the mixed-up feelings go away. ‘Nothing.’

A sense of triumph began to bubble up inside him as he acknowledged just how inexperienced she was, and he pulled her back into his arms. ‘You kiss very beautifully,’ he said softly. ‘Very hard and very passionately.’ He traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his finger and they trembled beneath his touch. ‘But there are other ways to kiss a man too, and I shall show you them all. I shall teach you well, dear Millie.’

His words seemed to bring her to her senses, and she pulled herself away from him. He did not stop her. What the hell was he suggesting? What had he lured her into, and why had she let him? Distractedly, she tugged strands of hay from her hair and cast them down on the stable floor as she stared at him.

‘You won’t do anything of the sort!’ she spat out, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘What kind of man do you think you are?’ And what kind of woman was she? ‘You’re going to marry my sister!’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘I am not.’

‘You are! You are!’ she cried desperately. ‘You know you are!’

‘I cannot marry her,’ he said flatly, and he reached out and captured her chin, turning her face towards his to imprison her in the ebony spotlight of his gaze, melting her with its intensity. ‘And we both know why that is.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4c55b798-6de5-5df7-9c3a-a800bd888662)

‘I’M GOING to marry Gianferro.’

Lulu paused in the act of brushing her hair. ‘Are you out of your tiny?’

Millie swallowed, but the words had to be said, no matter what the reaction. ‘I’m sorry.’

The eyes which were reflected in the dressing-table mirror narrowed, and then Lulu whirled round. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Gianferro, and I…we are to be married.’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

Millie shook her head. The right thing to say now would be, I wish I was, but that wouldn’t have been true. And she had decided that she could not shirk the truth. Lulu was going to be hurt—through no fault of her own—and it was Millie’s duty to stand there and take the flak. ‘No. I’m not joking.’

For a second Lulu’s mouth twisted, and then she said, in the same voice she used to use when she told Millie that men didn’t like girls who smelt faintly of manure, ‘Millie—you may have decided to develop a crush on that cold-hearted bastard, but it really isn’t a good idea to start living in fantasy land. If you come out with bizarre statements like that then people are bound to get to hear. And people will laugh.’

‘She means it, Lulu,’ said a voice at the door, and both sisters turned round to see their mother standing there.