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‘Emily?'
To her shock Marco had placed his hand flat against her belly. Fearfully she turned to look at him. Had he, by some intuitive means, actually guessed?
‘You're looking so much better than you did when you first arrived here.' she heard him tell her. Niroli's sunshine has done you good.'
Shakily Emily released her pent-up breath. He hadn't guessed; it was just her own anxiety that was making her think that he must have done.
‘I don't think anyone wouldn't enjoy it. I know I haven't seen much of the island...'
Today, we're going to see as much of it as we can.' Marco told her as he started the car and my royal duties will just have to wait.'
Whatever else the future held for Marco's child, she was glad that it wouldn't be the dark shadow of duty that fell across Marco's life. Emily decided emotionally. The little boy might have to grow up not knowing his father, but he would be free of the burden Marco carried, and she was passionately grateful for that. Though, at the same time, almost overwhelmed by the intensity of her love for Marco, she reflected as he turned the car off the main road into a much narrower lane that ran close to the high, rocky coastline where cliffs plunged down into the sea.
‘This was one of my favourite places when I was a boy.' Marco confided as he stopped the car.
Emily could understand why. There was an elemental wildness about it; in some ways, the landscape matched the man.
‘Come on let's get out of the car.'
Emily wasn't sure she wanted to. The height of the cliffs gave her an uncomfortable feeling of vertigo. But she could see that Marco was determined and she didn't want to have to explain to him how she felt.
I used to come here and gaze out to sea and promise myself that one day I'd get away from here and from my grandfather. But of course, even then I knew that ultimately I would have to come back.' Marco confessed, once they were standing a few feet back from the edge of the cliff-top. He bent down and picked up a handful of the thin, stony soil that lay at the roots of the weather-beaten gorse bushes that grew in such abundance along this part of the coast, and flung it as far out to sea as he could.
Watching him Emily knew that this was a re-enactment of something he had done many times as a boy—as a way of releasing the anger inside him? It was an emotion he had partially dissipated by leaving the island and making a life for himself. But it would never really leave him so long as he and his grandfather struggled for supremacy one over the other. And whilst they were embroiled in that struggle, others would suffer. She could not allow her child to be one of them...
All of a sudden it hit her: she had to tell Marco that she intended to leave. She couldn't stop herself from reaching out to touch him and placed her hand on his bare forearm. Immediately he turned towards her.
‘Marco.’ she began tentatively, and then stopped. Unexpectedly he reached for her and took her in his arms, kissing her with such fiercely sweet passion that it made her eyes sting with tears.
Why was he doing this? Marco asked himself. He knew that it couldn't go on. Already, deep down inside, he knew he was becoming too dependent on her, and she was becoming too important to him. That couldn't be allowed to happen. There was no room in his life for that kind of relationship with her. He was Niroli's future king and he intended to devote every ounce of his mental and physical energy to his country and its people.
He would break down the restrictions that centuries of royal rule had placed, he would open the door for Niroli's population to walk freely into the new century. There was no legitimate place in his life for the kind of relationship he had with Emily. He was reeling at the way he felt about her now the intensity that was being demanded of him. It was only recently he had started to feel like this, to recognise there was within him this dangerous need to have her close, a need that went far beyond any kind of sexual desire. But such emotion could not be allowed to exist, it could not be given a name, or a place in his life.
He started to pull away from her and then stopped, smothering a savage groan before he tightened his hold on her and kissed her again.
Emilys mouth felt soft and giving beneath his own, her body warm, and he longed to possess her and fill her and lose himself in her and know the passion of loving her.
‘Marco! Emily objected, somehow managing to stem her own longing and drag her mouth from beneath his. She was trembling from head to foot, afraid not of him but of herself and the intensity of her feelings, and stumbling over the words in her desperation.
‘There's no easy way to say this, but the truth is that I should never have come here. Niroli is different from London, and my role in your life has changed. I can’t live like this. Marco, a semi-secret mistress, despised and ignored by the court, and forced to live in the shadows. I'm going back to the UK just as soon as it can be arranged. It will be best for both of us.’
