The Royal Wedding Collection. Robyn Donald

She blinked in astonishment.

      ‘Is that such a surprising thing to want to know about?’

      She didn’t want to say yes. To tell him that when you had an especially beautiful older sister very few people were interested in her. But he began to ask her about her childhood, and seemed genuinely to want to hear about it, and Millie began to relax, to open up. That strange and rather fraught encounter of earlier melted away as she began to tell him about the strictures of her life at the all-girls boarding school she had attended and about the jokes they had played on the nuns. And when his dark eyes narrowed and he began to laugh Millie felt as though she had achieved something rather special.

      Until she realised that the whole table had grown silent, and that everyone was looking at them—her mother in surprise and Lulu with undisguised irritation.

      ‘What would you like to do this afternoon, Gianferro?’ questioned her mother.

      He saw Lulu raise her eyebrows at him.

      ‘I will tell you what I would like to do,’ he said softly. ‘I should like to go and look at your horses.’

      Lulu grimaced. ‘The horses?’

      ‘But, yes,’ he murmured. ‘I have many fine mounts in Mardivino, and I should like to see if you have anything here to equal them.’

      ‘Oh, I think you’ll find that we do!’ laughed one of the men.

      From the centre of the table Lulu waved a perfectly manicured hand, first towards the window and then against her shell-pink couture gown. ‘But it’s raining!’

      ‘I like the rain,’ he said softly.

      Lulu tapped her fingernail against the polished wood. ‘Well, if you want to get soaking wet, that’s fine by me—but don’t expect me to join you!’

      There was an infinitesimal silence. He could read in her eyes that she now fully expected him to capitulate, to say that he had changed his mind and would see the horses another time, but he would never do that. Never. Never would he bend his will to a woman!

      ‘As you wish,’ he said crisply.

      His displeasure was almost tangible, and Millie saw her mother’s stricken face as her lunch party threatened to deteriorate. She licked her lips nervously. ‘I could show the Prince the horses, if you like?’

      Her mother gave her a grateful smile, which only added to Millie’s growing sense of discomfort. And guilt. ‘Oh, darling—would you?’

      Gianferro smiled. ‘How very kind of you, Millie. Thank you.’

      The easy atmosphere had evaporated and now the tension was back. Her heart beating hard against her ribs, Millie pushed her chair back, hating him for the way he was behaving and hating herself just as much, without quite knowing why.

      ‘Come on, then,’ she said ungraciously, and was rewarded with a slight narrowing of his eyes.

      ‘But you’ll need to change!’ objected her mother.

      ‘Oh, I’m okay—a little bit of rain never hurt anyone,’ said Millie firmly.

      Lulu gave an edgy laugh. ‘Millie won’t care if she gets soaked to the skin—she’s such a tomboy!’

      It was the kind of taunt which had haunted her down the years, but Millie didn’t feel a bit like a tomboy as Gianferro followed her and the room fell silent. Inexplicably—and uncomfortably—she had never felt more of a woman in her life.

      At the east entrance, she opened the door. Beyond the rain was an almost solid sheet of grey.

      She turned to him. ‘You can’t honestly want to go out in that?’

      ‘Yes. I do.’

      She grabbed a waterproof from the hook and half threw it at him before pulling on one herself. ‘Come on, then.’

      Perversely, he liked the ungracious gesture, and the angry look she sparked at him as he pulled on the battered old coat, with its smell of horses and leather. He stepped outside and felt the rain in his hair and on his cheeks. It was coming down so fast that when he opened his mouth it rushed in—knocking all the breath out of him.

      ‘We’ll have to run!’ said Millie, but suddenly she felt a strange sense of excitement. The dull, formal lunch had become something else. He wanted to see her beloved horses, and this was where she felt at home. But it is more than just that, Millie, and you know it is. She shook her head, as if she could shake away the troublesome thoughts. ‘Come on!’

      Laughing with a sudden recklessness which was alien to him, he ran behind her, dodging puddles and watching as the mud splattered droplets up her pale silk-covered legs. Tights? he wondered. Probably. She was too gauche and unworldly to pull on a pair of stockings. What was he doing here, and why was he allowing this to happen? This was craziness. Madness. He should stop it right now.

      Yet all the time a feeling was growing deep inside him, a sense of the irrevocable about to happen, as though his fate was about to be sealed in a way in which he had least expected.

      By the time they reached the stables Millie’s hair was plastered to her skull, and she turned to him, brushing cold droplets of rain away from her skin as if they were tears, not knowing and not caring what was the right thing to say any more.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell my mother we’d already met today?’

      ‘You know why.’

      ‘No, I don’t.’

      ‘Yes, you do. Just as you know what is going to happen next.’

      She shook her head, trying to quell the glow of excitement, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. ‘You’re talking in riddles!’

      ‘Why did you agree to bring me here, Millie?’ he questioned silkily.

      ‘Because you…because you wanted to look at the horses, didn’t you?’

      In any other woman it would have been a coy question, but Gianferro knew she meant it. ‘No. You know very well what I wanted. What I want. What you want, too—if you can dare to admit it to yourself.’

      Her eyes were like saucers as she saw the expression on his face and read the sensual intent there, so dark and so powerfully irresistible that she shook her head, willing it to go away even while she prayed it never would. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No. We mustn’t!’

      ‘But we have to—you know we do,’ he whispered. ‘For you will die unless we do.’ And so will I.

      ‘Gianferro!’

      He pulled her into his arms and tumbled her down beneath him onto the spiky bed of a bale of hay, pushing back a strand of hair from her rain-wet face. For one long moment he stared down at her, ignoring the bewilderment in her eyes, before blotting out the world with the heady pressure of his kiss.

      For Millie it was like jumping the highest jump in the world—she’d never felt such a heady blend of excitement and fear before. She could feel the muscular strength of his body, and his hands cupping her face, his lips grazing over hers.

      ‘Oh!’ It was a broken plea, a request for something she wasn’t aware she wanted, and as she made it he opened her lips with the seeking brush of his tongue. She gasped as it flicked inside her mouth. Fireworks exploded inside her head and she began to ache as she gripped onto him, drowning in the sweetness of it all, her body seeming to take on a life of its own as it pushed itself against the hard sinews of his. Dimly, she was aware of the heavy flowering of her breasts, and their sweet, prickling ache made her want him closer still.

      With a terse exclamation he pulled himself away from her, his breathing ragged and unsteady as he stared into the sultry protest of her slick lips.

      ‘Why did you stop?’ she questioned, in a honeyed voice which sounded like a stranger’s.

      ‘Why?’