LITMIR.BIZ

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about afterwards, Millie? Huh? Once we had been…intimate? Couldn’t you have told me then?’

      She knew that it would muddy the waters still further to tell him that intimacy had been a long time in coming for her that only recently had she really felt they had finally reached it.

      ‘You frightened me with your autocratic assurance that we should have a child straight away,’ she admitted. ‘I felt as though I would shrink for ever into the shadows if I did.’

      ‘Oh, what is the point in all this?’ he bit out impatiently. ‘We could go round and round in circles for ever, and in the meantime I could use my time more usefully.’

      ‘More usefully?’ she echoed in disbelief.

      He wanted to hurt her as badly as she had hurt him, and he lashed out now as only he could. Nothing so coarse as personal insults, but words dipped in the icy and distancing substance of Court protocol. ‘If you will excuse me, Millie—I have matters which require my attention.’

      ‘You still don’t understand, do you?’ she questioned slowly.

      He gave her a look of imperial disdain and Millie almost shrank. ‘Are you trying to suggest that I’m missing the point?’ He raised his dark brows. ‘Perhaps it was less a fear of pregnancy itself which was the problem—but concern about the identity of the father.’

      ‘What?’

      He shrugged. ‘It is possible that your tutor’s insinuations about the extent of your relationship were based on truth rather than fantasy.’

      ‘Now you’re just being ridiculous!’

      ‘You think so?’ He shook his head and raised his eyebrows in autocratic query. ‘Everything suddenly looks very different when you discover that your partner has been living a lie. Tell me, Millie—did you imagine me to be such a tyrant that I would insist on you carrying a baby if the idea was so abhorrent to you?’

      ‘N-no—but I didn’t think you’d understand my fears.’

      ‘Just your long-term deceit?’ He shook his head as he opened the door. ‘In that case, my dear—you have been a fool.’

      Her head and her thoughts were spinning. Nothing seemed coherent or real any more, and the look of contempt in his black eyes told her that even if she did manage to explain how she had felt at the time he probably wouldn’t believe her. He didn’t want to believe her.

      ‘Where are you going?’ she asked him miserably.

      ‘Out.’

      ‘And when are you coming back?’

      ‘I have no idea,’ he snapped. ‘And even if I did—it is none of your business.’

      ‘Gianferro—please don’t do this—please don’t shut me out.’

      His dark eyes were incredulous as they looked at her. ‘How do you…you…have the nerve to say that to me, Millie?’

      It was like when you dropped a leaf into a fast-flowing river as a child, and the current carried it far, far away, and you didn’t know where—that was what was happening to them now. Her actions had prompted it, and he didn’t want to fight it.

      She wanted to ask him—was a person not allowed to make one mistake? But that might sound like begging, and in her heart she knew that he would despise that, too. If he wasn’t going to forgive her, then she couldn’t force him—but maybe if she put some space between them it might help him to try. Give him a chance for him to see how he really felt. And a chance for her, too, to come to terms with the fact that he might not want her any more.

      ‘You once suggested that I might like to take a trip back to England?’ she said slowly.

      ‘Homesick, are you, Millie?’ he scorned softly.

      His attitude swung it. She was already isolated by her position and her age—but before she had always had the support of her husband. If he now withdrew it, she would be left with nothing.

      Nothing.

      ‘A little,’ she agreed, wanting to save face and not to finish with a blazing row which would leave a bitter memory. ‘Would that be possible?’

      Her gaze was very steady as she looked at him. Was half of her praying that he would change his mind? Try to talk her out of it or come with her?

      He stared at her. Outwardly she looked just as beautiful as when he had first met her—with her long blonde hair and blue eyes, and her skin which was as soft as silk-satin. But she had changed—he saw that now, as if for the first time.

      She wore the air of a sexually confident woman, and he had liberated that in her. He had made her into his perfect lover, and supposedly his perfect wife as well—only now he had discovered that it had all been an elaborate sham. The girl of such simple tastes had gone for ever and he had been instrumental in making her that way. She had grown up.

      And even if he could bring himself to forgive her—didn’t her actions speak about more than simply the fear of having children? In a way, hadn’t part of her been rejecting Royal life—because she had been in no position to reject it before, not until she had actually been exposed to it? And was that not her prerogative? Far better she did it when there was no child to complicate things even further?

      But he was unprepared for the dark torrent of pain which swept over him. He was relieved when it passed and was replaced by the emptiness he was so familiar with. In a way he felt comfortable with that. He knew where he was with that feeling, for it had been with him all his life.

      He stared at her as if he was looking at her for the first time. Or maybe the last. ‘I will speak to Alesso about arranging a flight as soon as possible,’ he said.

      The anger had left his voice and been replaced with a kind of bleakness, and in a way that was much, much worse.

      The last thing Millie saw before the door closed behind him were his shoulders, which had unconsciously girded themselves to face the prying eyes of the world outside, and she was left staring after him through a blur of tears, utterly heartbroken at what she had done to him.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      MILLIE stared out of the window at the familiar green landscape softened by water—a mixture of the steady rain which fell and the tears which were filling her eyes.

      ‘It all looks exactly the same,’ she said brokenly. ‘Nothing changes.’

      ‘But you’ve changed,’ said Lulu, from behind her. ‘You’re almost unrecognisable.’

      ‘Am I?’ Millie turned round, her sense of surprise momentarily eclipsing the terrible pain she had felt since setting foot back in her old family home. ‘But my hair is the same and my face is the same. The clothes are more expensive, and I may have lost a little weight—but that’s about all.’

      ‘Maybe the profound experience of marrying and becoming a queen almost simultaneously has altered you more than you realised? Oh, Millie—don’t! Please don’t start crying again!’

      But Millie couldn’t help it. She had bottled her feelings up—not wanting the servants to see her giving in to emotion—that had been one lesson which Gianferro had taught her so well. But once away from the closed environment of the Palace which had become her home the tears had begun to fall in earnest, and now they were splashing down onto her cashmere sweater, which she hugged close to her, like an animal seeking comfort.

      ‘I just don’t understand what the problem is.’ Lulu stared at her in confusion. ‘You didn’t bother telling him you were on the Pill—is it really such a big deal?’ she asked.

      Millie bit her lip. She had thought that coming here might help put everything in perspective, but

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