Passion and the Prince (11 page)

‘I’m really sorry about last night.’ she began apologetically, but with firm dignity, sitting up in the bed and making sure that the bedclothes were very firmly wrapped around her. No way did she want Marco thinking that her behaviour was sexually inviting. He had, after all, already made it clear that he did not want her when he had left her last night.

‘My behaviour was totally … It was inappropriate. It shouldn’t have happened. And if possible I’d like you to forget that it did happen, if you can.’

Marco’s gaze narrowed. What kind of game was she playing now? Was she hoping to get him to admit that he had wanted her? Her downcast gaze and her pseudohumble words were just a pose. That ‘if you can’ was definitely a challenge to him. Did she want to humiliate him with that knowledge, mock him, telling him that he couldn’t resist her?

‘I should have thought you would be more concerned about letting your ex-lover know that you spent the night here than with expressing regrets to me. Why don’t you go and find him now?’

She opened her mouth to refute his accusation, but before she could do so the closed door between the bedroom and the suite’s sitting room opened to reveal a hotel maid, her arms piled high with immaculately folded clean towels, accompanied by an older woman, obviously of more senior status, with clipboard and pen in hand. The older woman broke off speaking to the
maid to cast with expert glance round the room, with Lily still in its bed and Marco clad only in a towel, before apologising and then making a swift exit.

Marco exhaled in grim irritation, only realising then that he had failed to use the ‘privacy’ facility for the suite the previous night.

The fact that Lily had flushed a deep pink and was looking acutely mortified and uncomfortable was lost on him as he strode across the sitting room to the suite’s door to rectify his omission, coming back towards her to demand, ‘What? Nothing to say?’

Lily took a deep breath. On the contrary, she had plenty to say—and she intended to say it.

‘I’ve tried to … to apologise for last night, but it seems that rather than accept my apology you prefer to accuse me … to suggest that Anton was …’

As hard as she was trying to behave in an adult, businesslike manner, Lily’s emotions balked at using the word ‘lover’ with regard to Anton, so great was her fear and detestation of him.

‘Was your lover and you now want to make him jealous,’ Marco insisted ‘No. The last thing I want is for Anton to come in search of me.’

‘It’s well known that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You’ve quarrelled with him and you want to make him regret that and regret the end of your relationship. You want to make him jealous. You want him to go to your room and think when you aren’t there that you’re with someone else—and you are prepared to use any means in order to do so. Isn’t that the truth?’

‘No. I would never stoop to that kind of behaviour,’ she told him, her voice trembling slightly with the force of her feelings. ‘I came here to you for one reason and one reason only, and that was because I was too afraid to stay in my own room.’

‘Why?’ When Lily looked away from him instead of answering him Marco challenged her. ‘If you’re as afraid of this Anton as you expect me to believe there must be a reason.’

There
was
no reason other than the one he had already suggested, Marco was sure, and that was why she couldn’t answer him.

He had started to turn away from her, he the victor in their exchange and she the vanquished, when she said in a low, tense voice, ‘Very well—yes, there is a reason, and it has nothing to do with me wanting Anton in my life.’ A fierce shudder racked her body. ‘Quite the opposite. But I can’t … I can’t talk about it.’

‘Why not? Surely I deserve an explanation for your behaviour?’

‘Behaviour for which I’ve already apologised.’

Lily had had enough. She could feel her self-control fraying and giving way under the pressure of her emotions. She bent her head, not wanting Marco to realise how close to the edge she was, how afraid she was that her own actions as much as her words might inadvertently give her away.

‘There’s no law that says I have to provide you with an explanation of my … of the reasons for what I did as well,’ she told him fiercely. ‘A … a compassionate man—a man who understands and accepts that other people can sometimes be vulnerable and in need—would know
that. But you aren’t that kind of man, are you? You’re the kind of man who wants to think the worst about others.’

‘I’m the kind of man who knows when he’s being lied to, if that’s what you mean,’ Marco agreed acidly, defending himself against the knowledge that he had been far more affected by Lily’s outburst than he should have been.

‘But you are
not
being lied to,’ Lily insisted. ‘Perhaps I should be the one questioning you about your motives for refusing to believe me rather than the other way around,’ she added perceptively.

Marco felt his heart thud heavily into his chest wall. His glance fell on his watch and his heart gave a surge of relief as he saw his means of escape from what had now become a very dangerous situation.

‘It’s nearly eight o’clock,’ he told her, ignoring her comment, ‘and we’re due to leave at nine.’

Seated in the privately hired hovercraft next to Marco, Lily warned herself that she was here in Italy to work, and that she must put aside the temptation to let the pressure of her secret thoughts and emotions stop her from doing that. Even though Marco’s unjust accusations had hurt her as well as angered her.

After leaving Marco’s suite earlier, she had only just made it downstairs in time for the arrival of their transport, having returned to her own suite first, to shower quickly and then change into jeans and a tee shirt, worn underneath her faithful cardigan.

They’d been driven to the first villa on Marco’s list, where they’d been given a private tour of its art
collection. After lunch at a small, elegant restaurant, where Lily had still been too wrought up by the events of the morning to do her pasta justice, they had gone on to their second villa, where Lily had discussed the loan to the trust of part of a collection of letters written to past owners of the villa by an Englishman who had stayed there in the decade following Napoleon’s defeat. The third son of a duke, the Englishman had come to the lakes for his health, and the letters had been written to a young female relation of the family on his return to England as part of his courtship of her. In addition to the letters there were also some sketches he had done for her of his home in Yorkshire.

Aidan Montgomery had died from his tuberculosis before they could marry, and as she’d inspected the documents closely Lily had wondered if the marks on them came from tears cried over the letters by the fiancée he had left behind.

It had been Marco who had noticed her concentration on the stains, and Marco too who had pointed out dryly to her, when she’d voiced her thoughts, that if Teresa d’Essliers had grieved for her fiancé that grief had not stopped her from marrying someone else within eighteen months of his death.

‘A diplomatic family marriage,’ the curator had told them. ‘Her father was a banker who enjoyed gambling with other people’s money. Her husband was one of his clients—a wealthy silk merchant who wished to improve his own social status.’

‘Will we have time to visit any of Como’s silk mills?’ Lily asked Marco now, as the hovercraft took them to
their next appointment—a villa situated at the side of the lake, with its own landing stage.

Como had been a centre for the production of silk for many centuries. Although the business was now in decline from its heyday, because of the expense of its manufacture compared with silk imported from China, it still produced many of the exclusive silks used by both interior and fashion designers.

‘Do you want to visit one?’ Marco asked her. His voice was curt as he focused on keeping as much emotional distance between them as he could.

The coldness in his voice made Lily flinch inwardly, but she refused to let him see how she felt, saying as calmly as she could, ‘I’d like to. It could help with the exhibition.’ When he looked questioningly at her, she explained, ‘One of the things we’re trying to do with the exhibition is interest a younger audience, and I feel that the more personal detail we can display, the more able they will be to relate to it. I thought that Como’s silk business would appeal to them. I have to admit that I’d also love to see something of the archives of those companies who have been producing silk for several centuries. Although it isn’t my specific field, I’ve seen some of the work that’s being done on the research and restoration to the decor of the trust’s properties, and some of those fabrics are just so beautiful.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned Como’s silk industry’s connection with the modern-day fashion industry. Surely that would have an even greater appeal to you, with your own involvement in that particular business?’

‘What do you mean? What involvement?’ Lily’s voice was sharp with anxiety.

‘I was referring to your other means of income—the photographic studio,’ Marco reminded her grimly.

Lily’s body almost sagged with relief. For one awful moment she thought that somehow Marco had guessed about her past and her father.

‘I’ve already told you,’ she defended herself, ‘I was doing a favour for … for someone.’

‘That someone being a man, I assume?’ Why was he doing this to himself? Why was he deliberately feeding his own jealousy like this? Prior to Lily coming into his life, if asked, Marco would have said and believed that he was not a man who felt jealousy. He had certainly never experienced it with any of his lovers.

But he was experiencing it now, and it galled him like a thorn sticking into his flesh that Lily should be the person to inflame his feelings to such a pitch, to such a destructive emotion. She represented so much that filled him with contempt it should have been impossible for him even to want her, never mind feel about her as he did.

‘Yes,’ Lily was forced to admit.

If only she had not agreed to help her half-brother. If only she and Marco had met for the first time at the reception and not at that wretched studio. Then what? Then he would have taken one look at her and yearned for her? Was that what she had done? Had she taken one look at him and somehow known what was to happen to her and that she would want him? A deep shudder tormented her body.

What had caused her to look like that? Marco
wondered. So … so
stricken,
somehow, as though she was having to face a terrible, inescapable truth? She was simply trying to arouse his pity, he warned himself. She was, after all, an excellent actress—as he had good cause to know.

Lily took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was a qualified professional with a job to do. She couldn’t let herself be hurt even more. All she could do was try to protect herself by pretending that nothing untoward had happened.

‘Is that the villa we’re approaching now?’ she asked Marco, in what she hoped was a calm and businesslike voice.

Marco had to bend his head to look out of the window of the hovercraft, his action bringing him far too close to her for Lily’s comfort, making her feel as though she had jumped from one uncomfortable situation into another that was every bit as uncomfortable in a different way. With him this close to her she could smell the clean tang of Marco’s soap mixed with the sensual warmth of his body. The hovercraft jolted on the movement of the water, forcing her to lean as far back as she could to avoid coming into physical contact with him. After what had already happened she couldn’t bear to have him thinking that she was tempted to take advantage of the opportunity to be close to him.

Men soon tired of women who were too vulnerable to them. They preferred the excitement and the challenge of the chase, the power of winning their trophy. When that trophy became needy and dependent they no longer wanted it. She had seen that so often with her father. She had seen it break her mother’s heart and spirit. Better not
to love at all than to be destroyed by the pain of loving someone who had grown bored and become indifferent to you.

A strand of hair had escaped from the clip Lily had used to secure it into a soft knot away from her face, and Marco had an aching urge to reach out and lift it from her skin. If he did his knuckles would graze the soft flesh of her throat and she would turn and look at him, her grey eyes dark and questioning, her lips parted for his kiss. He wanted that to happen, Marco recognised on a savage stab of brutal self-knowledge. He wanted to take her in his arms right now and hold her. He wanted to kiss her until she murmured his name against his mouth in a soft plea of arousal and need.

What was happening to him? How could he feel like this about her when everything he knew about her told him that at best he should be wary of her and at worst he should despise her? Earlier in the day, watching her as she’d talked to the curators of the two villas they had visited, listening to her as she spoke with them, he had seen a woman who was a skilled communicator, a woman who knew and loved her subject and who wore her knowledge comfortably, a woman who had been willing to listen respectfully to what the curators had to tell her even when Marco suspected she was far more knowledgeable about the collections and the history of the villas than they were themselves—a woman, therefore, to whom the feelings of others was important. And yet at the same time she was also a woman to whom the vulnerability of a foolish young man was simply something to be exploited—for money. A woman who was
selfish enough to think nothing of using other people to pursue her own desires.

‘Yes, it is the villa,’ he confirmed as the craft headed for the landing stage. ‘I’ve arranged for the car to pick us up from here after we’ve viewed the collection. I don’t think there’ll be time for us to visit a silk mill today. The Duchess will be expecting us, and like most people of her generation punctuality is important to her. She loves entertaining, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s made arrangements to that effect for this evening—probably for a dinner party. However, if you’d rather not be involved, I’ll have a word with her and tell her that you have work you want to catch up on. I expect you will have reports you want to file with the trust.’