He was looking at her from between narrowed lashes and she knew she had to strike now. Before she had the chance to change her mind and cling to him and beg him to never let her go.
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ she questioned quietly, her voice low and unsteady. ‘Because I would have to be pretty stupid not to realise why you just told me you loved me. You don’t love me, Luc. You’ve fallen in love with your daughter, yes—and I’m over the moon about that. But this isn’t like going to the supermarket—which you’ve probably never done. We don’t come as a two-for-one deal! And you can’t smooth-talk me into staying on Mardovia just because you’ve trotted out the conditional emotional clause which most women are brainless enough to fall for!’
He went very still, his powerful body seeming to become the whole dark focus of the room. ‘You think I told you I loved you because I have an ulterior motive?’ he questioned slowly.
‘I don’t think it—I know it!’
He flinched and nodded his head. ‘I had no idea you thought quite so badly of me, Lisa.’
Something in the quiet dignity of his words made Lisa’s heart contract with pain, but she couldn’t retract her accusation now—and why should she? He was trying to manipulate her in every which way and she wouldn’t let him. She couldn’t afford to let him. Because she’d crumble if he hurt her, and she never crumbled.
‘I don’t think badly of you,’ she said. ‘I think you’re a great dad and that’s what’s making you say all this stuff. But you don’t have to pretend in order to make things work. I want things to be...amicable between us, Luc.’
‘Amicable?’ he bit out before slowly nodding his head, and in that moment Lisa saw a cold acceptance settle over his features. ‘Very well. If that’s what you want, then that’s what you’ll get.’ There was a pause. ‘When exactly do you want to leave?’
* * *
Lisa and Rose’s journey was scheduled for the end of the week. She was to fly back to London with Rose and Almeera and two protection officers, who would move into a section of Luc’s large London house, which would now be her home. The idea of two of Luc’s henchmen spying on her filled her with dread and Lisa tried to assert her independence.
‘I don’t need two protection officers,’ she told Luc.
‘You may not, but my daughter does.’
Lisa licked her lips. ‘So I’m trapped any which way?’
He shrugged. ‘Trapped or protected—it all depends how you look at it. And now, if you’ve quite finished, there are things I’d like to do while Rose is still in residence, and today I’d like to take her into Vallemar to meet some friends.’
Lisa told herself she didn’t want to be parted from her baby and that was why she asked the question. ‘Can’t I come?’
‘Why?’ he questioned coolly. ‘These are people you are unlikely to see in the future—so why bother getting to know them? No point in complicating an already complicated situation.’
So Lisa was forced to watch as Luc, Rose and Almeera were driven away in one of the palace limousines while she stayed put. She paced the gardens, unable to settle until they returned—with an exquisite selection of tiny Parisian couture dresses for Rose, from someone called Michele—and Lisa could do nothing about the sudden jealous pounding of her heart. But she didn’t dare ask Luc who Michele was. Even she could recognise that she didn’t have the right to do that.
At last, after a final sleepless night, it was time to leave. Lisa stood awkwardly in the main entrance of the palace, feeling small and very isolated as she prepared to say goodbye to Luc. Already in the car with Almeera, Rose was buckled into her baby seat—but now there was nothing but a terrible sense of impending doom as Lisa looked up into the stony features of her royal husband.
‘Well,’ she said, her bright voice sounding cracked. ‘I guess this is it. And you’ll...you’ll be over to London next week?’
‘I’ll be over whenever I damned well please and I shall come and go as I please,’ he said, his blue eyes glittering out a warning. ‘So don’t think you can move some freeloader into my house while I’m away, because I will not tolerate it.’
Don’t rise to it, thought Lisa. Don’t leave with the memory of angry words between you. She nodded instead. ‘I have no intention of doing that, which I suspect you already know. So...goodbye, Luc. I’ll... I’ll be seeing you.’
And suddenly his cold mask seemed to dissolve to reveal the etching of anger and pain which lay behind. Did he realise she had witnessed it? Was that why he reached out and gripped her arms, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh, as if wanting to reassert the control he had momentarily lost?
‘Better have something other than a tame goodbye to remember me by, dear wife,’ he said. ‘Don’t you agree?’
And before she could raise any objection, his lips were pressing down on hers in a punishing kiss which was all about possession and nothing whatsoever to do with affection. But it worked. Oh, how quickly it worked. It had her opening her lips beneath the seeking pressure of his and gasping softly as she felt the tip of his tongue sliding over hers. She swayed slightly and as his big hands steadied her she could feel the clamour of her suddenly hungry body as it demanded more. Touch me, she thought silently, wishing that they were somewhere less public, though pretty sure none of the servants were around. Just touch me.
But just as suddenly he terminated the kiss—stepping away from her, the triumph darkening his eyes not quite managing to hide his contempt, so that she could hardly bear to look at him. As she stumbled out of the door towards the car she could feel his gaze burning into her back.
Rose was sleeping and Almeera was sitting in the front beside the driver as the car headed towards the airfield, and all Lisa could think about was Luc. Raw pain ripped through her. She found herself wishing that it could all have been different. Wishing he’d meant it when he told her that he loved her.
They were almost at the airfield when her thoughts jarred and then jammed—the way CDs used to get stuck if there was a fault on the disc and started repeating the same piece of music over and over again. She creased her brow as she tried to work out what it was which was bothering her.
She found herself remembering what he’d told her about his upbringing and the women paid to look after him after his mother’s death. His words had moved her, despite the flat and matter-of-fact way in which he’d delivered them—as if he were reading from the minutes of a boring meeting. But you would have needed a heart of stone not to be affected by the thought of the lonely little boy growing up alone in a palace, with nobody but a grieving father and a series of strict governesses for company.
Had those governesses ever told him they loved him? Held him tightly in their arms and hugged him and kissed his little head? She bit her lip. Of course not—because that hadn’t been in their job description. They had been there to serve. To drum in his duty to his country. A duty he must be reminded of whenever he saw the Wheeler portraits of Louisa De Lacy, whose love affair with his ancestor had almost destroyed the Mardovian dynasty. But it had not. The principality had survived and today it was strong—and powerful.
Yet despite all his wealth and power, Luc had not fought her for his daughter’s custody, had he? With his access to the world’s finest lawyers she sensed he had the ability to do that—and to win—so why hadn’t he?
What did that say about him as a man? That he could be understanding, yes. Magnanimous, compassionate and kind. Or even that he cared more about her happiness and Rose’s than about his own.
That he loved her?
She stared out of the car window and thought about how closed up he could seem. About the courage it must have taken for him to come out and say something like that. The way his voice had cracked with emotion as he’d spoken—and she knew then that he would never have said it if he didn’t mean it. He had even told her that, once. Yet she had just batted his words back to him as if they’d been of no consequence, hadn’t she? She had turned away from him,
too frightened and so entrenched in her own prejudices to believe him.
For how could either of them know about the giving and receiving of love if neither of them had ever witnessed it?
‘Stop the car!’ she yelled, before recovering herself slightly and leaning forward to speak to the driver. ‘Please. Can you take us back to the palace?’
Lisa’s heart was racing during a drive back which seemed to take much longer than the outward journey, and she couldn’t stop thinking that maybe it was already too late. What if he’d gone out, or refused to see her, or...?
But there were a million variations on ‘what if’ and she tried to push them from her mind as they drove up the mountain road with the beautiful blue bay glittering far below.
Leaving Almeera to bring Rose inside, Lisa went rushing into the palace, knowing that she should be walking calmly in a manner befitting a princess—even if she was an estranged one—but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was about to ask one of the footmen where she could find the Prince when she saw Luc’s rather terrifying new aide, Serge, coming from the direction of one of the smaller anterooms.
‘I need to see the Prince,’ she blurted out.
Serge’s face remained impassive. ‘The Prince has left strict instructions that under no circumstances is he to be disturbed.’
Had her departure already robbed her of any small vestige of power her royal status might once have given her? Stubbornly, Lisa shook her head and sped noiselessly in the direction she’d seen Serge walking from.
With shaking fingers she opened doors. The first room was empty, as was the second, but in the third Luc stood alone by the window, his body tense and his shoulders hunched as he stared out.
Behind her Lisa could hear rapid footsteps and she turned round to see that the Russian had almost caught her up.
‘Your Highness...’ Serge began.
‘Leave us, Serge,’ said Luc, without turning round.
Lisa’s heart was pounding but she waited until the aide had retreated and closed the door behind him before she risked saying anything.
‘Luc,’ she said breathlessly, but all the things she’d been meaning to say just died in her throat as nerves overcame her.
He turned around then, very slowly, and she was shocked by the ravaged expression on his face—at the deep sense of sorrow which seemed to envelop him, like a dark cloud. His sapphire eyes were icy-cold and she’d never seen someone look quite so unwelcoming.
‘Where’s Rose?’ he demanded.
‘Almeera’s just bringing her in. I needed...’ she swallowed ‘...to speak to you.’
‘Haven’t we said everything which needs to be said, Lisa? Haven’t we completely exhausted the subject?’
‘No,’ she said, knowing that she needed the courage to reach into her frightened heart, despite the forbidding look on his face. ‘We haven’t.’
But clearly he wasn’t about to help her. ‘What do you want?’ he questioned impatiently, as if she were a servant who had neglected to remove one of the plates.
‘I want to tell you,’ she whispered, before drawing in a deep breath, ‘how very stupid I’ve been. And to try to tell you why.’
‘I’m not interested in your explanations,’ he snapped.
‘I want to explain,’ she continued, with a sudden feeling of calm and certainty, which she sensed was her only lifeline, ‘that I was scared when you told me you loved me. Scared you didn’t mean it. Scared I’d get hurt—’
‘And you’ve spent your whole life avoiding getting hurt, haven’t you, Lisa?’ he finished slowly, as if he had just worked it out for himself. ‘You learnt a bitter lesson at your mother’s knee that love could destroy you.’
‘Yes. Yes! Those feelings aren’t always logical, but that doesn’t make them any less valid. That’s why I finished with you the first time.’ She stared down at her shiny gold wedding band, before lifting her gaze to his. ‘Oh, I knew there was no future in it—you told me that right from the start—but that wasn’t why. Because who wouldn’t have wanted to prolong every wonderful second of what we had? It was because I had started to fall in love with you and I knew that was a mistake. You didn’t want love. Not from me. You told me you didn’t want anything from me. I tried to forget you—I tried so very hard—and then when you walked into the shop that day, I realised nothing had changed.’ She shrugged. ‘Not a single thing. I still wanted you.’
‘And I still wanted you,’ he said. ‘Even though everything about it was wrong and even though I tried to resist you, in the end I couldn’t.’
‘Maybe you just can’t resist sex when it’s offered to you on a plate.’
‘Oh, but I can,’ he assured her softly. ‘I hadn’t—haven’t—had sex with anyone else since my relationship with you first ended.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Nobody?’
‘Nobody.’
‘But why? I mean, why not? There must have been plenty of opportunities to bed all kinds of women.’
Luc rubbed his thumb over his lips, realising that you could say words of love and mean them, but that was only the beginning. Because you needed to go deeper than that. To be prepared to show another person every part of you—to draw aside the curtain of mystique and admit that inside even he could be vulnerable.
‘Initially I convinced myself that I needed a time of celibacy before settling down with Sophie, but that wasn’t the real reason.’ He shook his head and shrugged. ‘Because the truth was that I just didn’t want anyone else but you, Lisa. I don’t know how and I don’t know why—but you’re the woman who has made me feel stuff I didn’t even realise existed. The only one. And I want—’
‘No,’ she rushed in, as if eager to show him her own vulnerability. ‘Let me tell you what I want, Luc. I want to be a real wife to you, in every sense of the word. I want to live here or anywhere, just so long as it’s with you and Rose. I’d like to have more children, if you would. And I’d like to be the best princess I can possibly be. I want time to love you and to show you all the stuff I’ve never dared show you before. So what have you got to say to that, Luciano Gabriel Leonidas? Will you take me on?’
He could feel the powerful beat of his heart as he pulled her into his arms, but for the first time in his adult life he realised that his cheeks were wet with tears. And so were hers. He dried them with his lips and then bent his head so his mouth met hers. ‘I’ll take you on any time you like,’ he said unsteadily, just before he kissed her. ‘Because I love you.’
EPILOGUE
‘IS SHE ASLEEP?’
‘Flat out.’ Lisa walked into their bedroom, pulling the elastic band from her hair and letting her curls tumble free. Luc was lying on top of the bed, reading. His eyes slitted as he watched her and he put the book down and smiled.
Lisa smiled back as her heart gave an unsteady thunder as she looked at her beloved husband. The light from the sunset was bathing everything in rose gold as it flooded in through the open windows—turning his naked body into a gilded statue. He really was magnificent, she thought hungrily, enjoying the way that the glowing light highlighted the hard muscle and silken flesh of his physique. She looked into his eyes, thinking how very quickly time passed and how important it was to treasure every single moment.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that their daughter was already two years old and probably the most sophisticated little jet-setter of all her peers. But everyone said that Princess Rose had the sweetest and sunniest nature in the world and her besotted parents tended to agree with them.
She wiped her still-damp hands down over her dress. ‘Your daughter seems to think that bath time was made for fun,’ she observed, with a smile.
‘Just like her mother.’ Luc’s eyes gleamed. ‘I think you and I might share a shower in a little while, but I have other plans for you first.’
‘Oh? What plans?’
‘Well, you are looking a little overdressed compared to me.’ A lazy gesture of his hand lingered fractio
nally over his hardening body and he slanted her a complicit smile. ‘So why don’t you take off your dress and come over here?’
‘That sounds like a very sensible idea to me,’ she murmured, shivering a little with anticipation as she pulled the dress over her head and joined him on the bed.
He unclipped the rose-black lace of her bra and bent his mouth to the puckered point of her nipple, giving it a luxurious lick, before raising his eyes to hers. ‘Looking forward to tomorrow?’
‘I can’t wait.’
He smiled. ‘Then I guess we’d better do something to help pass the time as satisfactorily as possible. Don’t you?’
Lisa stroked her toes against his foot as he slithered her panties down. Tomorrow the three of them were joining Brittany, Jason and Tamsin for a week-long break on the quieter southwestern shores of Mardovia—a sprawling idyll of a royal retreat, well away from all the servants and protocol of the main palace. It was one of the few places where they could be totally free, but Lisa accepted that the occasional loss of freedom was the price to be paid for the honour of ruling this ancient island alongside her husband. And she was happy to pay it, because she had worked hard to ensure her smooth transition into palace life and all its expectations.
Early on she’d recognised that maintaining a business in England while trying to settle into her new role was probably not sustainable in the long term—though Luc had told her that if she wanted to continue, then somehow they would make it happen. But being a full-time designer did not fit in with being a full-time princess and mother—and a part-time designer was never going to make waves. So she sold the label and the few pangs of regret she experienced soon passed.
Luc had invested in and commandeered the building of a new Art and Fashion School, which was named after her, and she had been taken aback and humbled by this gesture of his love. She was proud and honoured to be the patron of the state-of-the-art institution and planned to give monthly lectures on design, as well as making sure Mardovia became a hub for fashion innovation. There was a lot of young talent on this island, she realised—and she was going to make sure that every Mardovian child’s talent would be fulfilled.
Crowned for the Prince's Heir Page 14
