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It was discomfiting to realise that there could be so much hidden sensuality in even the most straightforward of comments for a person whose senses and body yearned for that sensuality.
‘I’m almost ready,’ Lily managed to tell him. Almost ready to go downstairs, but completely and utterly and eagerly ready to stay right here and be made love to by him.
Stop it at once, she warned herself. She was behaving as though. As though she had forgotten everything she had ever learned—as though she had no concern whatsoever for her own future emotional security and peace of mind.
Standing up, she swept her hair back off her face, securing it with a neat band before twisting it into a sleek knot from which she pulled a few soft loose tendrils, all without needing to look in the mirror. She only realised that Marco had been watching her when she turned to see him looking at her.
‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded anxiously.
Her father had always been very critical of her mother’s appearance. As a little girl Lily had often watched her mother getting ready to go to parties, and she could remember how her father’s comments had often resulted in a row that ended up with her mother refusing to go out. Criticising the woman they purported to love was a trick used by some men to control that woman’s self-confidence and make her all the more dependent on him, and she despised herself for allowing herself to be affected by Marco’s amusement now. It was too late, though, to retract her question ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Marco answered her curtly. As though the admission was being dragged from him, he continued, ‘I was just thinking how easy you made that look.’ He paused, and then, as though the words were being spoken of their own volition rather than his, added, ‘And how very beautiful you look.’
Marco looked almost as shocked by the fact that he had paid her a compliment as she was herself. Lily swallowed hard, her own voice husky as she responded.
‘Thank you.’ His admission deserved an admission of her own from her. ‘My father would never have said that to my mother. I don’t think I ever heard him tell her she was beautiful, even though she was—’ She broke off, shaking her head.
‘Your father?’ Marco questioned, causing Lily to retreat back into her normal reticence about her background. She had said too much. She shook her head.
‘My mind was wandering, I’m afraid. Silly of me. And now we’ve only got ten minutes. I’ll leave the bedroom to you, so that you can get dressed. I can finish getting ready in the sitting room.’
She was gone before Marco could stop her to pursue the matter further, and she had been right. They did only have ten minutes left.
He joined Lily in the sitting room with three minutes to spare, looking so formidably handsome and male in a dark suit worn with a dark blue shirt with a fine white line and a toning tie that Lilly felt herself flooded with conflicting emotions. He filled her with a desire she had never expected to feel, but at the same time he also filled her with anxiety and dread because of that desire.
Lily looked like a pagan princess, Marco thought, and a shocking of the surge of possessive wanting filled him, seized him, at the sight of her in her plain black outfit adorned with that almost barbarically splendid jewellery.
There would be women here this evening who would be wearing family heirloom jewellery worth a fortune, but it would be impossible for them to outshine the dramatic simplicity of Lily’s appearance. Any man would be proud to stand at her side. And any man would ache for the evening to be over so that he could have her all to himself. Was that how he felt? Possessive and bitterly jealous because she preferred someone else?
Lily’s, ‘We’re going to be late,’ had him nodding his head and then going to open the door for her.
They reached the main salon—a large double-aspect room, decorated very much in the French Empire style in shades of rich gold and French blue, with two enormous chandeliers throwing out brilliant prisms of light—only seconds ahead of the Duchess’s guests. There was no more time than to accept a glass of chilled champagne from one of the several formally attired waiters starting to circulate around the room.
