LITMIR.BIZ

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returned the receptionist’s smile. ‘I don’t have an appointment, but I was wondering if it was possible to have a treatment?’

      ‘Since it isn’t the height of the tourist season yet, we should be able to fit you in. What kind of treatment would you like? We specialise here in using natural substances, especially the island’s own volcanic mud. It’s very therapeutic, especially when we use it in conjunction with our specially designed massage treatments.

      ‘Here’s a list of the treatments we offer, and a medical questionnaire.’ The girl smiled again. ‘The owner of the spa takes her responsibility to our clients very seriously, and I should point out to you that some of the more vigorous massages are not suitable for women who are pregnant.’

      Pregnant! Emily almost laughed. Well, she certainly wasn’t. And then suddenly it hit her, her brain mentally registering the facts and assembling them: her sickness, her aching breasts, her growing waist. A wave of sickening shock and disbelief thundered through her, and she could hear the receptionist asking her anxiously if she was all right.

      ‘I’m…fine…’ she lied.

      But of course she wasn’t. She was anything but. How could she be ‘fine', when the reason for the sickness she’d been suffering these last few weeks, and the fact that, oddly, her waist seemed to have expanded making her clothes feel tight, had suddenly been made blindingly obvious to her?

      Was she right? Was she pregnant? She did some hasty mental calculations, whilst her heart banged anxiously against her ribs.

      She needed very badly to sit down, but not here. Not anywhere where the truth might out and there could be any hint of a threat to her unborn child. It had only been seconds, minutes at the most, since she had realised the reality, but already she knew that there was nothing she would not do to protect the new life growing inside her. She would allow nothing or no one to imperil her child’s safety and right to life!

      Emily stared at her own reflection in the bedroom mirror and tried not to panic. There was little to show that she was pregnant as yet, apart from that slight thickening of her waist, but how much longer would she have before Marco became suspicious? She couldn’t afford to be still here on Niroli by then. Her throat went dry. Inside her head she could hear Marco’s voice telling her, at the very beginning of their relationship, that there would be no accidents, and what he expected her to do if one occurred.

      Of course, what he had meant and not said was that he didn’t want any royal bastards.

      But there was no way she could destroy her child. She would rather destroy herself.

      However, logically, Emily knew that, even if Marco had not made it plain he did not want her to have his child, there would be no place here on Niroli for the future king’s pregnant mistress, or his illegitimate baby! What on earth was she going to do? She had never felt more alone.

      ‘And now the village elder says that his orders have been ignored, and that the generator-shed has been broken into and the generator itself stolen. You see what you have done, what trouble you have caused by your interference?’

      Marco forced himself to count slowly to ten before responding to his grandfather’s angry but also triumphant accusations.

      ‘You say that Rafael gave orders that the shed housing the generator was to be boarded up for the safety of the villagers. What is that supposed to mean?’

      One of his grandfather’s aides bent his head close to the Royal Ear and murmured something in it.

      ‘The peace of the village was being destroyed—by the noise of the generator and various electrical appliances. Several villagers had complained to him that it had put their hens off laying and stopped their cows producing milk.’

      Marco didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘And because of that he stopped the villagers using the generator?’ he demanded incredulously. ‘No wonder they decided to ignore him!’

      ‘Rafael says that he has long had concerns about the rebellious Vialli tendencies amongst this group of young men. Now that they have stolen the generator and are refusing to say where it is, he has had no other option but to order that they are punished.’

       ‘What?’

      ‘Furthermore, Rafael has told me his village is on the verge of anarchy, and that it will spread to other villages in the mountains.’

      ‘This is crazy,’ Marco told his grandfather. ‘If anyone should be locked up, it’s Rafael with his prehistoric views. Grandfather, you must see how foolish it was for him to have done this,’ Marco implored. His grandfather was after all an educated, astute and wily man, whilst Rafael was a simple peasant.

      ‘What I see is that you are the cause of this trouble with your reckless refusal to obey my commands.’

      Marco didn’t trust himself to stay and listen to any more, in case it provoked him into open warfare with his grandfather and his outdated ideas. Giving King Giorgio a small, formal half-bow, he then turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

      In the corridors dust motes danced on the warm afternoon air. Emily would be back at the villa by now. An image of her slid into his head: she would be sitting in the shade, and when she saw him walking towards her she would look up at him and give him that welcoming smile. She would also look cool and calm, and just seeing her would take the edge off his own frustration. Right now, he admitted, he would give anything to share his experiences of the morning with her. Emily, with her understanding and her sympathetic ear—he needed both of those very badly.

      He paused. There it was again, that word, ‘need'. It suddenly struck him how very alone he would be feeling right now if Emily hadn’t been here on Niroli with him. It was only since bringing her to the island that he had recognised how good she was with people, and at problem-solving, and how much it meant to him to have the safety valve of being able to talk openly to her about the situation with his grandfather. Increasingly he was beginning to feel that he didn’t want her to leave either the island or his bed. But whilst he might flout the royal rules for the benefit of his people, where his personal life was concerned he couldn’t do the same and succeed. The only way he could keep Emily on the island was by elevating her to the position of Royal Mistress, and to do that he would have to procure a suitably noble husband for her, one who understood the way in which these things were done. Whilst he knew he would be able to find such a husband, he also knew that Emily would refuse point-blank to enter that kind of marriage and, besides. Besides what? He didn’t want her to have a husband…

      He had no time to delve into the inner workings of his mind at the moment, he reminded himself; nor could he go back to the villa—and Emily—no matter how much he wanted to do so. First he must go up to Rafael’s village and deal with the situation there before it got any worse. And what about his growing dependence on Emily? When was he going to deal with that—before it got worse?

      ‘Emily.’

      She tensed as she heard Marco call out her name as he came out into the sheltered inner courtyard, where she was seated in the shade, one hand lying protectively against her stomach as she tried to come to terms with everything.

      It was early evening and she could hear the sharp edge of something unfamiliar in his voice. What was it? Not tiredness or irritation, and certainly not anxiety, but somehow a something that made her heart ache for him, above and beyond her own pain and fear for herself and their child. Was it always going to be like this? Was she always going to have this instinctive need to give him the best of her love? How could she do so now?

      ‘I would have been back earlier,’ Marco told her, ‘but I had to go up to Rafael’s village to put an end to some trouble brewing there, as my grandfather informed me with great delight earlier.’

      ‘What kind of trouble?’ Emily asked anxiously.

      Marco sat down next to her. She could smell the dusty heat of the day on him, but under it she was, as always, acutely conscious of the scent that was so sensually him. However, this evening,

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