Emily and the Notorious Prince

by India Grey

Emily tried not to let the shock that ricocheted through her show on her face. She waited until the door had closed behind the pretty waitresses before turning to him, unable to keep the outrage from her voice. ‘No, it’s not OK! It’s impossible. I bet they think that we’re…’ She could feel a tide of colour wash into her cheeks. ‘That we’ve…’

  Utterly unmoved by her discomfort Luis was already uncovering dishes and pouring wine. ‘Just had sex?’ he suggested.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Frankly, querida , I doubt it.’ Coming towards the bed with a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and two glasses of wine Luis smiled lazily, but his eyes were cold. ‘If we had you wouldn’t be so bad tempered. Now, come and eat.’

  She watched in alarm as he swung his long legs onto the bed and leaned back against the pile of pillows. ‘B-but I’m not dressed,’ she stammered.

  ‘Believe me, you look a lot more respectable like that than in that awful cardigan.’

  She took a deep breath, determined to rise above his taunting. ‘Look, I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want—’

  But Luis cut her off, his voice suddenly edged with steel. ‘The thing is, amada , right now I’m not overly bothered about what you want. This isn’t just about you, I’m afraid. It’s about your family. Your father. He’s just lost his wife—do you really think now was a good time for him to cope with losing a daughter too?’

  Emily gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I think it was the perfect time, since he’d just gained another one to take my place.’

  Luis speared her with his gold-flecked eyes and nodded slowly. ‘I thought as much. This is about Mia, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. No, it’s not about Mia at all,’ Emily said despairingly, sinking down onto the bed, as far away from him as possible, and taking a huge mouthful of wine. As its heat stole down inside her she could feel her defences slipping, melting away like snow in the glare of the sun. After two months of bottling it all up the urge to talk was suddenly overwhelming. ‘I have nothing against Mia herself—she seems very sweet. It’s hardly her fault.’

  ‘What’s not her fault?’

  Pain knotted in Emily’s throat, making it difficult to swallow the mouthful of smoked-salmon sandwich. ‘That my father—sorry, our father—’ she corrected, her voice dripping with irony ‘—was so weak and stupid that he had a meaningless one- night stand with a woman he’d never met the night before his wedding and got her pregnant.’

  She waited. Waited for his expression of surprise at this revelation about Oscar Balfour—irreproachable pillar of the establishment.

  It didn’t come.

  ‘No,’ he agreed nonchalantly, taking another sandwich and devouring it in one bite. ‘Accidents happen. You certainly couldn’t blame Mia for the circumstances of her own conception. Anyway, what does it matter now? Oscar still married your mother and remained happily married to her for—what—twenty years?’

  She frowned, staring down at the crust of bread between her fingers, crumbling it into tiny pieces. ‘But it was based on lies,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘A good relationship can only be based on trust and truth. Love means not having secrets from someone, not having to hide anything.’

  ‘Does it really?’ he said softly, and with infinite scorn, as if what she had said was utterly facile. ‘And what if there are things the other person would be better off not knowing?’

  She lifted her head, forcing herself to look at him. ‘Better for them, or better for you?’

  He looked back at her. His eyes were narrowed, but for a fraction of a second she thought she saw something in them that was almost like uncertainty. ‘Better for you both.’

  ‘You have to trust the person enough to forgive you,’ she said, emotion turning her voice husky. ‘You have to give them a chance.’

  He turned his head away from her and looked down. A lock of hair fell down over his eyes, making him look suddenly strangely unguarded. Emily felt a painful lurching sensation in her chest.

  ‘And your father didn’t do that?’ he said tonelessly. ‘He didn’t tell her, even when Mia came?’

  Emily shook her head, not wanting to remember those dark days after Mia had shown up. Days that slipped by like sand in a bottle. ‘My father told us all to make sure she didn’t suspect a thing.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘Mia pretended to be the new housekeeper, which wasn’t a great start to her life as a Balfour, but Mum had such little time left by then.’

  Luis shrugged, leaning over to pick up the wine bottle from the bedside table. ‘There you are, then. At least he spared her the pain of finding out.’

  ‘What? So you think that makes it OK ?’ Angrily she snatched her glass away just as he was about to fill it, so that wine spilled onto her bare legs.

  A muscle jumped beneath the bronzed skin of his cheek. The room suddenly seemed very still. ‘I think it doesn’t alter the fact that your parents had a good, happy marriage,’ he said slowly.

  Emily gave a snort of low, cynical laughter. ‘Oh, right. Your definition of a happy marriage being one where you can screw around as often as you like and it doesn’t matter as long as the other person doesn’t find out? What a lucky woman the future Crown Princess of Santosa is.’

  ‘That’s different.’ As if in slow motion she watched him reach out and catch the drip of wine that was running down her shin with his thumb. ‘When I marry it’ll be a business arrangement. Love will have no part in it, and I expect the future Crown Princess of Santosa will fully understand that.’

  Emily turned to stone beneath his touch, terrified by the fire that was crackling along her nerves, like the fuse of a bomb. ‘A business arrangement?’ she rasped. ‘The terms of which will make it perfectly OK for you to sleep with whoever you like. And will she be free to do the same?’

  ‘As long as she’s discreet,’ he said softly, following the wet trail of the wine down her leg and over her ankle. ‘Jealousy is a nasty disease to which, thankfully, I’m completely immune. I’m a realist. Marriage fulfils a lot of needs—in my case practical, in your father’s case emotional. He loved Lillian, and one last fling before his wedding doesn’t alter that. It meant nothing.’

  ‘That’s the bit I don’t get,’ Emily said, forcing her mind to stay focused on the subject, and not on the sparks of pleasure his touch had ignited beneath her skin. ‘Why do it, then? Why have sex with someone if it means nothing?’

  In the soft lamp light his face was beautiful but impossible to read. Thoughtfully he slid his hand beneath her instep, turning her foot round and studying it. Emily felt it flex helplessly, her toes curling downwards as if they had a life of their own. All the nerves of her body seemed suddenly to be concentrated in that foot, making it tingle as if with pins and needles. Distantly she remembered the sensation she used to get in her feet before a performance, how it felt as if they were coming alive.

  ‘If you have to ask the question you probably wouldn’t understand the answer,’ Luis said dryly, his thumb massaging her high arch. ‘Sexual attraction isn’t something you can rationalize, or sometimes even control. It’s called being human. Oscar might be your father but he’s still just a human being.’

  ‘I know that.’ Her voice was quivering and breathless.

  ‘And yet it seems to me that you want to punish him for it.’ He ran his fingertips over the hard, shiny calluses at the base of her toes, adding softly, ‘You have the most extraordinary feet.’

  Sharply she pulled her foot from his grasp and stood, pacing over to the fireplace, desperate to get far enough away from him to think clearly—focus on the conversation they were having, not the very separate line of communication her body suddenly seemed intent on pursuing. ‘It’s not like that. I’m not punishing him. I just feel…betrayed. Everything feels like it’s falling apart…with my mother and Mia and now Zoe and that…that…stuff in the paper today. It’s like the whole family is damned or something—like some awful fairy tale where the wishes that the good fairy has given to the princess
es turn out to be curses. The money and the good looks—they’ve just brought temptations that it seems no one can resist.’

  ‘Except you.’ He had got up and followed her to where she stood. Her back was towards him but in the mirror above the fireplace their eyes met and she felt her blood heat as he smiled right into them. ‘As I recall, you resisted most forcefully last year.’

  ‘Yes.’ She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. ‘Because I want more than that.’

  He dropped his gaze, and she felt a split second of relief. But then he slid his hand beneath her hair and she stiffened again, gripped by emotions and sensations she couldn’t identify or control. Or resist.

  ‘Than what?’ He said softly, gently stroking the back of her neck.

  ‘Than quick…meaningless…sex.’ She gasped.

  ‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’ In contrast to her own voice, his was as smooth and slow and rich as sun-warmed honey.

  ‘And what makes you think I haven’t?’

  It was a desperate attempt at bravado, but in the mirror she caught a brief glimpse of the golden gleam in his eyes as he bent his head and brushed his lips against her ear. Instinctively she flinched violently away from the thousand-watt electric shock that his touch sparked through her whole body.

  He laughed softly. ‘That.’

  Trembling, breathing as heavily as if she’d just run a marathon, Emily faced him. Cheeks flaming, she pulled the collar of the robe up around her neck and raised her chin defiantly and attempted what she hoped was a scornful laugh. ‘Just because I’m not willing to fall into bed with you the moment you click your fingers.’

  Luis caught hold of the tie belt of the robe and pulled her gently towards him. ‘I see,’ he said gravely, wickedness glittering in the depths of his eyes, ‘you expect foreplay too, do you? Something like this…’

  She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could make the words come out his lips had covered hers and darkness had exploded inside her head, obliterating everything but him: the heat and closeness of his body, the scent and taste of him. She was shocked rigid, shocked into helplessness, unable to think, to respond sensibly. She should be pulling away, but all she seemed to be capable of was standing as still and stiff as Joan of Arc at the stake with the flames licking up around her….

  Devouring her.

  She was trembling uncontrollably, parting her lips beneath the firm pressure of his, opening her mouth to the gentle probing of his tongue. A whispered, shuddering sigh escaped her as he moved his mouth from hers and began to kiss a path downwards to the angle of her jaw and her earlobe, and the hand that had been resting on her hip slid across her midriff, making her quiver and gasp as the feelings that had haunted her unsettled dreams since that night at Balfour zigzagged through her again.

  He laughed softly, a warm breath that fanned her ear and spread goose bumps over her skin as he straightened up and took her chin between his fingers, tilting her face up to his so that she had no alternative but to look into his eyes.

  It was as if the sun had gone out. They were as dark and cold and empty as a moonless midnight sky.

  ‘I thought as much,’ he murmured in a voice that sent shivers down her spine. ‘Beneath that prim exterior you’re human too, Miss Balfour.’

  Emily jerked backwards, blinking dumbly, her head reeling as sense returned and she realised that she’d just walked right into the trap he’d sprung for her. ‘How could you?’ she whispered, shrinking away from him, pulling the robe around her as if it were a suit of armour. ‘You did that on purpose. You manipulated me. You made me—’

  ‘Made you? No. I merely showed you how easy it is to be led into temptation. Just remember that before you stand in judgement of others.’

  He turned and walked across the room in the direction of the French doors. Emily ducked her head, gritting her teeth against the tears of shame and fury that burned like red-hot needles behind her eyes, just willing him to be gone and leave her alone with her humiliation and her hot, shameful longing.

  ‘I wouldn’t have slept with you,’ she hissed. ‘I wouldn’t have let you go that far.’

  He reached the door to the terrace and Emily felt a chill blast of night air as he pulled it open, and caught the feral scent of damp earth and grass beneath the delicate perfume of lilacs. Pausing he looked back at her, and for a moment she caught something like despair on his face.

  ‘I wouldn’t have tried to,’ he said wearily, and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS a spectacular sunrise.

  Luis sat at the window of his suite watching the stars fade as a warm-pink blush crept tentatively into the sky from the east. He had given up on sleep and got up when it was still velvet dark, and in those dead hours it had seemed almost unimaginable that the cold and shadowed landscape before him would ever feel the sun’s warmth again.

  But gradually, inch by inch, the sleeping garden was washed with the watery rose light of the new day, softened by pearly mist. Many people would probably see it as a beautiful symbol of hope, Luis thought acidly. To him it was just another reminder that there was no let-up. No escape. Life just continued, relentlessly, whether you wanted it to or not.

  Whether you deserved it or not.

  There was a discreet knock on the door, and Tomás came in bearing coffee and a selection of newspapers.

  ‘Morning, sir. I take it you slept well?’

  Picking up yesterday’s paper from Santosa Luis kept his expression neutral and didn’t bother him with the truth. The night was over. Now he had to get through the day ahead.

  ‘Brilliantly, thank you, Tomás,’ he said blandly, scanning the headlines. ‘Now, what exciting engagements do we have to look forward to today?’

  Tomás consulted the printed itinerary on the top of his ubi quitous clipboard. ‘Well, sir, there’s nothing planned for the morning, but this afternoon you’re scheduled to make brief visits to a mother-and-toddler group in South East London, a charity that provides sports opportunities for children in the care system, and a day-care centre for elderly people.’

  ‘What fun. Talking of which, how’s my father?’

  Tomás shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I was just coming to that, sir. I spoke to his private secretary late last night and the news wasn’t terribly good, I’m afraid to say.’

  Luis looked up from the paper. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Nothing to bother you with, sir.’ Tomás’s words were intended to soothe, but the note of anxiety in his voice rather spoiled the effect. ‘The king was admitted to hospital last night because he had had a little difficulty in breathing, but his doctor assured me he was comfortable and sleeping peacefully by the time I called. But it did make me think that we should perhaps think about returning to Santosa earlier than planned. Josefina in the press office is delighted at the success of the trip and the level of positive publicity it’s generated, however—’ Tomás hesitated, pressing a finger to his lips thoughtfully before adding ‘—she feels now that it would be counter-productive for you to be away from Santosa when the His Majesty is clearly unwell.’

  Luis took a swig of coffee and set his cup carefully down on its saucer before speaking. ‘Do the public know how ill my father is?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s been reported that he has spent some time in hospital, and the press office have made a vague statement about “tests” but no official announcement has been made to the effect that the king is…’

  ‘Dying.’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’ Tomás flinched at the brutality of the word. Or at the brutality of the way Luis spoke it. ‘Josefina feels that this isn’t the right time to make that kind of statement, what with the celebrations for His Majesty’s Silver Jubilee only a matter of weeks away and everything else so…unresolved.’ He trailed off, clearing his throat and ostentatiously leafing through the sheaf of papers on his clipboard.

  Luis smiled sardonically, picking up the newspaper again
and turning to the sports pages at the back. ‘Don’t worry, Tomás. I understand what you’re saying. If the public got wind of the fact that King Marcos Fernando was about to die and pass the crown on to the notorious black sheep of the Cordoba dynasty there would be revolution on the streets of Santosa. Is that it?’

  ‘Of course not, sir,’ Tomás said, quickly and hugely unconvincingly. ‘It’s just that we need to do a little bit more work on your image before the public are ready to accept you as a successor to your father. As you know, your father is deeply loved by the people, and a twenty-five-year reign was always going to be a hard act to follow, even by…’

  He stopped abruptly.

  There was a moment of silence, and then Luis finished the sentence for him. ‘Even by Rico.’ His heavily ironic drawl was edged with a bitter edge of despair. Tossing the paper aside he got up and went to stand at the window, gazing out unseeingly over the exquisitely landscaped garden.

  The sun was up now in a sky the same colour as the swimming pool that glittered beyond the beech hedge to his right. ‘But there we have the problem, don’t we?’ he went on bleakly. ‘If even my noble brother would find it hard to please the people of Santosa, what the hell chance do I have?’

  ‘Every chance, sir.’ Tomás came to stand beside him. ‘You’ve made a great start in changing the way the public sees you. Now we just have to capitalise on that and keep up the good work so that—when the time comes— the public will see you as a caring, responsible monarch.’

  Luis laughed hollowly. ‘Great idea. And how do you propose we perform that little miracle?’

  Tomás opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment their attention was simultaneously drawn by a movement below. Emily Balfour emerged onto the terrace and walked across to the stone balustrade that separated it from the lawn beyond. She was wearing the clothes she’d arrived in last night, minus the black tights, and Luis found his gaze drawn to her bare feet. An emotion he couldn’t quite identify stirred somewhere deep inside him.