The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

‘It’s nearly eight o’clock,’ he told her, ignoring her comment, ‘and we’re due to leave at nine.’

      Seated in the privately hired hovercraft next to Marco, Lily warned herself that she was here in Italy to work, and that she must put aside the temptation to let the pressure of her secret thoughts and emotions stop her from doing that. Even though Marco’s unjust accusations had hurt her as well as angered her.

       After leaving Marco’s suite earlier, she had only just made it downstairs in time for the arrival of their transport, having returned to her own suite first, to shower quickly and then change into jeans and a tee shirt, worn underneath her faithful cardigan.

       They’d been driven to the first villa on Marco’s list, where they’d been given a private tour of its art collection. After lunch at a small, elegant restaurant, where Lily had still been too wrought up by the events of the morning to do her pasta justice, they had gone on to their second villa, where Lily had discussed the loan to the trust of part of a collection of letters written to past owners of the villa by an Englishman who had stayed there in the decade following Napoleon’s defeat. The third son of a duke, the Englishman had come to the lakes for his health, and the letters had been written to a young female relation of the family on his return to England as part of his courtship of her. In addition to the letters there were also some sketches he had done for her of his home in Yorkshire.

       Aidan Montgomery had died from his tuberculosis before they could marry, and as she’d inspected the documents closely Lily had wondered if the marks on them came from tears cried over the letters by the fiancée he had left behind.

       It had been Marco who had noticed her concentration on the stains, and Marco too who had pointed out dryly to her, when she’d voiced her thoughts, that if Teresa d’Essliers had grieved for her fiancé that grief had not stopped her from marrying someone else within eighteen months of his death.

       ‘A diplomatic family marriage,’ the curator had told them. ‘Her father was a banker who enjoyed gambling with other people’s money. Her husband was one of his clients—a wealthy silk merchant who wished to improve his own social status.’

       ‘Will we have time to visit any of Como’s silk mills?’ Lily asked Marco now, as the hovercraft took them to their next appointment—a villa situated at the side of the lake, with its own landing stage.

       Como had been a centre for the production of silk for many centuries. Although the business was now in decline from its heyday, because of the expense of its manufacture compared with silk imported from China, it still produced many of the exclusive silks used by both interior and fashion designers.

       ‘Do you want to visit one?’ Marco asked her. His voice was curt as he focused on keeping as much emotional distance between them as he could.

       The coldness in his voice made Lily flinch inwardly, but she refused to let him see how she felt, saying as calmly as she could, ‘I’d like to. It could help with the exhibition.’ When he looked questioningly at her, she explained, ‘One of the things we’re trying to do with the exhibition is interest a younger audience, and I feel that the more personal detail we can display, the more able they will be to relate to it. I thought that Como’s silk business would appeal to them. I have to admit that I’d also love to see something of the archives of those companies who have been producing silk for several centuries. Although it isn’t my specific field, I’ve seen some of the work that’s being done on the research and restoration to the decor of the trust’s properties, and some of those fabrics are just so beautiful.’

       ‘I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned Como’s silk industry’s connection with the modern-day fashion industry. Surely that would have an even greater appeal to you, with your own involvement in that particular business?’

       ‘What do you mean? What involvement?’ Lily’s voice was sharp with anxiety.

       ‘I was referring to your other means of income—the photographic studio,’ Marco reminded her grimly.

       Lily’s body almost sagged with relief. For one awful moment she thought that somehow Marco had guessed about her past and her father.

       ‘I’ve already told you,’ she defended herself, ‘I was doing a favour for…for someone.’

       ‘That someone being a man, I assume?’ Why was he doing this to himself? Why was he deliberately feeding his own jealousy like this? Prior to Lily coming into his life, if asked, Marco would have said and believed that he was not a man who felt jealousy. He had certainly never experienced it with any of his lovers.

       But he was experiencing it now, and it galled him like a thorn sticking into his flesh that Lily should be the person to inflame his feelings to such a pitch, to such a destructive emotion. She represented so much that filled him with contempt it should have been impossible for him even to want her, never mind feel about her as he did.

       ‘Yes,’ Lily was forced to admit.

       If only she had not agreed to help her half-brother. If only she and Marco had met for the first time at the reception and not at that wretched studio. Then what? Then he would have taken one look at her and yearned for her? Was that what she had done? Had she taken one look at him and somehow known what was to happen to her and that she would want him? A deep shudder tormented her body.

       What had caused her to look like that? Marco wondered. So…so stricken, somehow, as though she was having to face a terrible, inescapable truth? She was simply trying to arouse his pity, he warned himself. She was, after all, an excellent actress—as he had good cause to know.

       Lily took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was a qualified professional with a job to do. She couldn’t let herself be hurt even more. All she could do was try to protect herself by pretending that nothing untoward had happened.

       ‘Is that the villa we’re approaching now?’ she asked Marco, in what she hoped was a calm and businesslike voice.

       Marco had to bend his head to look out of the window of the hovercraft, his action bringing him far too close to her for Lily’s comfort, making her feel as though she had jumped from one uncomfortable situation into another that was every bit as uncomfortable in a different way. With him this close to her she could smell the clean tang of Marco’s soap mixed with the sensual warmth of his body. The hovercraft jolted on the movement of the water, forcing her to lean as far back as she could to avoid coming into physical contact with him. After what had already happened she couldn’t bear to have him thinking that she was tempted to take advantage of the opportunity to be close to him.

       Men soon tired of women who were too vulnerable to them. They preferred the excitement and the challenge of the chase, the power of winning their trophy. When that trophy became needy and dependent they no longer wanted it. She had seen that so often with her father. She had seen it break her mother’s heart and spirit. Better not to love at all than to be destroyed by the pain of loving someone who had grown bored and become indifferent to you.

       A strand of hair had escaped from the clip Lily had used to secure it into a soft knot away from her face, and Marco had an aching urge to reach out and lift it from her skin. If he did his knuckles would graze the soft flesh of her throat and she would turn and look at him, her grey eyes dark and questioning, her lips parted for his kiss. He wanted that to happen, Marco recognised on a savage stab of brutal self-knowledge. He wanted to take her in his arms right now and hold her. He wanted to kiss her until she murmured his name against his mouth in a soft plea of arousal and need.

       What was happening to him? How could he feel like this about her when everything he knew about her told him that at best he should be wary of her and at worst he should despise her? Earlier in the day, watching her as she’d talked to the curators of the two villas they had visited, listening to her as she spoke with them, he had seen a woman who was a skilled communicator, a woman who knew and loved her subject and who wore her knowledge comfortably, a woman who had been willing to listen respectfully to what the curators had to tell her even when Marco suspected she was far more knowledgeable about the collections and the history of the villas than they were themselves—a