but he had been struck by Lulu’s self-assurance and her outstanding beauty.
‘I think I know you, don’t I?’ she had questioned cheekily as he bent to kiss her hand. ‘Didn’t you stay in my house once—years ago?’
‘A long time ago.’ He frowned. ‘You were in pigtails and ribbons at the time, I believe,’ he remembered.
‘Oh. How very unflattering!’
But that long-ago meeting provided a certain kind of security, a bedrock which was vital to a man in his position. She was no stranger with hidden motives; he knew her background. The match would be approved by everyone concerned.
After that they had met several times—at parties which Gianferro knew had been laid on specifically for just that purpose. Sometimes he wondered: if he snapped his fingers and demanded the moon be brought to him on a plate, would a team of astronauts be dispatched from Mardivino to try and procure it for him?
Throughout their covertly watched conversations there had been an unspoken understanding of both their needs and wants. He wanted a wife who would provide him with an heir, and she wanted to be a princess. It was the dream of many an aristocratic English girl. As easy as that.
Today, after lunch, he was going to request that their courtship become formal. And if that invisible line was crossed there would be no going back. There would be subtle machinations behind the scenes in Mardivino and England as marriage plans were brokered, as he intended they would be.
In a few short hours he would no longer be free.
Gianferro allowed himself a brief, hard smile. No longer free? Since when had freedom ever been on the agenda of his life? Crown Princes could be blessed with looks and riches and power, but the liberties which most men took for granted could never be theirs.
He glanced at his watch. Lunch was not for another hour, and he was feeling restless. He had no desire to go downstairs and engage in the necessary small talk which was so much a part and parcel of his life as a prince.
He slipped out of the room and moved with silent stealth along one of the long, echoing corridors until at last he was outside, breathing in the glorious English spring air like a man who had been drowning.
The breeze was soft and scented, and yellow and cream daffodils waved their frilly crowns. The trees were daubed with the candy-floss pinks and whites of blossom, and beneath them were planted circles of bluebells, magically blue and, like the blossom, heartbreakingly brief in their flowering.
Taking the less obvious path, Gianferro moved away from the formal gardens, his long stride taking him towards the fields and hedgerows which formed part of the huge estate.
In the distance he could hear the muffled sound of a horse’s hooves as it galloped towards him, and in that brief, yearning moment he wished himself astride his own mount—riding relentlessly along the empty Mardivinian shore until he had worn himself and his horse out.
He watched as a palomino horse streaked across the field, and his eyes narrowed in disbelief as he saw that the rider was about to make it jump the hedge.
He held his breath. Too high. Too fast. Too…
Instinct made him want to cry out for the horse to stop, but instinct also prevented him, for he knew that to startle it could be more dangerous still.
But then the rider urged the mount on, and it was one of those perfect moments that sometimes you witnessed in life, never to be recaptured. With a gravity-defying movement, the horse rose in a perfect, gleaming arc. For a split-second it seemed to hover in mid-air before clearing the obstacle with only a whisper to spare, and Gianferro slowly expelled the breath he had been holding, acknowledging with reluctant admiration the rider’s bravery, and daring, and…
Stupidity!
Gianferro was himself talented enough a horseman to have considered taking it up as a career, had it not been for the accident of birth which had made him a prince, and he found himself tracing the deepened grooves of the hoof-marks towards the stables.
Perhaps he would advise the boy that there was a difference between courage and folly—and then perhaps afterwards he might ask him if he would like to ride out for him in Mardivino!
The scent of the stables was earthy, and he could hear nothing other than the snorts of a horse and the sound of a voice.
A woman’s voice—soft and bell-like—as it murmured the kind of things that women always murmured to their horses.
‘You darling thing! You clever thing!’
Gianferro froze.
Had a woman been riding the palomino?
With autocratic disregard, he strode into the tack-room and saw the slight but unmistakably feminine form of a girl—a girl!—feeding the horse a peppermint.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ he demanded.
Millie turned her head and her blood ran first hot, then cold, and then hot again.
She knew who he was, of course. Millie had often been accused of having her head in the clouds—but even she had realised that they had a prince staying with them. And that her sister Lulu was determined to marry him.
The place had been swarming with protection officers and armed guards, and she had heard her mother complaining mildly that the two girls who had been drafted in from the village to help had done very little in the way of work—the place was so filled with testosterone!
Millie had managed to get out of meeting the Prince at dinner last night, by pleading a headache—wanting to escape what she was sure would be a cringe-making occasion, while her sister paraded herself as though she was on a market stall and he the highest bidder—but now here he was, and this time there was no escaping him.
Yet he was not as she had thought he would be.
He did not look a bit like a prince, in his close-fitting trousers and a shirt which was undoubtedly silk, but casually unbuttoned at the neck to reveal a sprinkling of crisp dark hair. He was as strong and as muscular as any of the stableboys, with his hair as gleaming black as her riding boots. But blacker still were his eyes, and they were sparking out hot accusation at her.
‘Did you hear me?’ he grated. ‘I asked whether you were crazy.’
‘I heard you.’
Her voice was so low that he had to strain his ears to hear. He could see that she had been sweating—saw the way the thin shirt she wore clung to her small, high breasts—and unexpectedly a pulse leapt in his groin. There was no deference in her voice, either—didn’t she know who he was?
‘And are you? Crazy?’
Millie shrugged. She had spent a lifetime being told that she rode too fearlessly. ‘That rather depends on your point of view, I suppose.’
He saw that her eyes were large and as blue as the flowers which circled the trees, and that her skin was the clearest he had ever seen—untouched by make-up and yet lit with the natural glow of exercise and youth. He found himself wondering what colour was the hair which lay beneath the constricting hat she wore, and now his heart began to pound in a way which made his head spin.
‘You ride very well,’ he acceded, and without thinking he took another step closer.
Millie only just stopped herself from shrinking away, but his proximity was making her feel almost light-headed. Dizzy. He was as strong as the grooms, yes, but he was something more, too—something she had never before encountered. When Lulu had spoken about ‘her’ Prince she had made him sound like nothing more than a title…she certainly hadn’t mentioned that he had such a dangerous swagger about him, nor such an unashamedly masculine air, which was now making her heart crash against her ribcage. She stared into his dark eyes and tried to concentrate.
‘Thank you.’
‘Though whoever taught you to take risks like that should be shot,’ he added darkly.