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It was the second courtyard, which Marcos bedroom overlooked, that was her favourite, though. With giant terracotta pots filled with shrubs, palms and flowers
and a loggia that ran along one wall, it was the perfect spot to sit and enjoy the peaceful sound of its central marble fountain.
Standing in it now Emily couldn't help thinking what a wonderful holiday home the villa would make for a family. It had room to spare for three generations; with no effort at all she could see them enjoying the refurbished villas luxurious comfort: the grandparents, retired but still very active, enjoying the company of their great-grandchildren, the kids themselves exuberant, and energetic, the sound of their laughter mingling with that of the fountain; the girls olive-skinned, pretty and dainty, the boys strongly built with their fathers dark hair and shrewd gaze, the baby laughing and gurgling as Marco held him whilst the woman who was their mother and Marcos wife—Nirolis queen—stood watching them.
Don't do this to yourself, an inner voice warned Emily. Don't go there. Don't think about it, or her don't imagine what it would be like to be that woman. In reality, the home she had been busily mentally creating was not that of a king and a queen. It was the home of a couple who loved one another and their children, a home for the kind of family she admitted she had yearned for during her teenage years when she had lived with her grandfather. The kind of home that represented the life.
The future, she wished desperately she would be sharing with Marco, right down to the five children. The warmth of the sun spilling into the courtyard filled it with the scent of the lavender that grew there, and Emily knew that, for the rest of her life, she would equate its scent with the pain seeping slowly through her as she acknowledged the impossibility of her dreams. If this were a fantasy, then she could magic away all those things that stood between her and Marco, and imagine a happy ending, a scenario in which he discovered that she loved him and immediately declared his own love for her. But this was real life and there was no way that was going to happen.
One day—maybe—there would be a man with whom she could find some sense of peace, a man who would give her children they could love together and cherish. But that man could not and would not be Marco, and those dark-haired girls and boys she had seen so clearly with her minds eye that gorgeous baby, were the children that another woman would bear for him.
And poor things, their lives would be burdened by the weight of their royal inheritance, just as Marco’s was and that was something Emily knew she could not endure to inflict on her own babies. For them she wanted love and security and the freedom to grow into individuals, instead of being forced into the mould of royal heirs.
It was just as well that Marco had no intentions of wanting to make her his wife, on two counts. Emily told herself determinedly as she battled with her sadness, because the revealing nature of her recent thoughts had shown her what her true feelings were about Marcos royal blood. Plus, of course, as he had already told her it was not permissible for him to marry a divorced woman.
The sound of crockery rattling on a tray and the smell of coffee brought her back to the present as Maria came into the courtyard carrying a tray of coffee for her which she put on a table shaded from the heat of the sun by an elegant parchment-coloured sun umbrella.
Thanking her with a smile. Emily decided that she might as well start work. Within half an hour, she was deeply engrossed in the notes she was making, having moved the coffee-pot out of the way. Although she hadn't felt nauseous this morning, the smell of the coffee had reminded her that her stomach was still queasy and not truly back to normal.
An hour later, when Marco drove into the outer courtyard Emily was still hard at work. After leaving the palace he had been to the airport where the generators had already been unloaded. He had already made a list of those villages up in the mountains most in need of their own source of power and whilst in London he had spoken with the islands police chief and the biggest road haulier to arrange for the transport of the generators. However, whilst he had been at the airport, he had received a message from the police chief to say he had received instructions from the palace that the generators were not to be moved.
It had taken all of Marcos considerable negotiating skills, and the cool reminder that he was Niroli’s future king, to persuade the police chief to change his mind and go against what he described to Marco almost fearfully as orders from the palace.
Because of this Marco had decided to drive into the mountains himself to make sure that the generators were delivered safely. If his grandfather thought he could outmanoeuvre him then he was going to have to learn the hard way that it was just not going to happen.
