Passion and the Prince

Chapter SEVEN



LILY couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even think properly. She couldn’t do anything other than look at the Duchess in mute disbelief as she continued, ‘I’m sure you’ll like it. It has the most wonderful view over the lake. My late husband and I used to stay in it when we came to visit before my father died. When I inherited it my husband insisted that we replace the rather small double bed with something larger and more comfortable.’ The Duchess gave a fond sigh. ‘I have so many happy memories of being young here. New love—it is so special. I well remember the first time I saw my late husband. I fell in love with him the minute I set eyes on him. He, though, I’m afraid to say, did not return my feelings for a full twenty-four hours after we had met,’ she told them drolly, adding, ‘I hope that your brief stay here will give you both some memories that you too will come to cherish.’

All the time she had been talking them they had been climbing the steps. Now they had reached the top, and Lily’s heart was pounding—but not because of any exertion involved. Had she understood the Duchess correctly? Had she instructed her housekeeper that she and Marco were to share a bedroom—and a bed? Lily tried to look at Marco, but the Duchess was linked between them, beaming first at Marco and then at Lily, obviously very proud of what she had done and no doubt thinking she was doing them both a favour.

‘I have to say, Marco,’ the Duchess continued blithely, ‘I think that Lily is the perfect girl for you. You both feel so passionately about Italian art and history, and my late husband always used to say that shared interests remain a strong bond between a couple long after the first flush of romance has faded. Ah, good—here we are. Do come in and admire my ancestors, Lily. I hope I may call you Lily? After all we are practically family already, since Marco and I are distantly related.’

The villa’s hall was round, with a wonderful balustrade stairway rising exactly opposite the front door then branching off to form a round gallery landing. The design was repeated on each of the three floors, so that it was possible to look up from the ground floor and see the stained glass dome of the cupola several floors above them.


‘When the sun is overhead, the light from the stained glass makes the most magical patterns. When we were children my brother invented a game whereby we had to chase the moving pattern of a certain colour all the way up and down the stairs. He was older than me, and he always won. He should have inherited the villa, of course, but he was killed during the Second World War. He was only nineteen.’

Lily was listening to the Duchess, but at the same time she was tense with inner anxiety as she waited for Marco to explain to her that there had been a mistake and they were not a couple. Only he said nothing, and now the duchess was exclaiming, ‘Ah, here is my housekeeper, Berenice. She will show you to your room. I hope you don’t mind, but I have taken the liberty of organising a small reception here tonight. Just some old friends I know will enjoy meeting you, Lily. They all have connections with the area and its villas, so don’t be shy about asking them any questions you may have. We’ll meet again in the main salon.’

Their room.

Lily gave Marco an imploring look but still he said nothing, and continued to say nothing until they were alone in the villa’s best guest suite. Lily asked him anxiously why he had not corrected the Duchess’s misapprehension about their relationship.

‘If you had not come to my room last night we would not be in this situation.’

Marco’s uncompromising statement couldn’t be denied, but Lily still shook her head as she paced the elegant suite. Marco stood in front of one of the room’s long sash windows, his head turned so that he was half looking out across the lake and half looking back into the room.

‘I know why the Duchess thinks that we are a couple, but you could have told her the truth. You could have explained to her …’

‘I could have explained what? That you came to my room seeking to use me—either to protect you from your ex or to make him jealous? Is that really what you would have wanted me to say to her? ‘

Without giving her the chance to answer, Marco gave a dismissive shake of his head, telling her grimly, ‘Anyway, she likes you. She wouldn’t believe me.’

He didn’t have to say that he neither understand nor shared the Duchess’s feelings. The tone of his voice said it for him.

She mustn’t allow herself to feel hurt yet again, Lily warned herself. But it was too late. The pain was already flooding through her.

‘She’s a romantic,’ Marco continued. ‘She would simply think that I was trying to hide our relationship from her.’

‘We haven’t got a relationship,’ Lily told him. Tears were threatening to clog her throat.

‘The Duchess believes that we have. And not just a sexual relationship. She’s managed to convince herself that we’ve fallen in love with one another.’ The derision in Marco’s voice made Lily’s face burn. ‘If she knew you rather better, of course, she’d know that was impossible.’

Lily swallowed on the misery his caustic comment brought her.

‘No. We can’t say anything to her,’ Marco told her. ‘For her own sake. Were we to insist to her now that there isn’t a relationship it would result in either her not believing us or in her embarrassment for misjudging the situation if she does believe us. Neither of those situations is acceptable to me. It will make things easier all round if we simply accept the situation as it is. After all, we’re only here for two nights.’

‘Two nights!’ She couldn’t share a room and a bed with him for two nights, feeling the way she did about him. ‘What if sharing a room with you isn’t acceptable to me?‘ she demanded.

Marco turned round fully to look at her.

‘Do you really expect me to believe that after last night?’ he challenged her. ‘After all, you didn’t have any objection then—in fact it was what you wanted.’

Lily’s heart missed a beat. Was Marco hinting that he knew there had been a time last night when what she had wanted from him had been much more personal and intimate than merely the protection of his presence? She hoped not. It was humiliating enough that she knew how she felt about him, without the added humiliation of having to deal with the fact that he knew as well.

‘That was different,’ she defended herself, adding emotionally in her growing panic, ‘I don’t want to share a room with you.’

‘Do you think I want to share one with you?’ Marco asked her grimly. ‘You are the one who is primarily responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in, not me. I suppose I should have expected this kind of selfishness from you. After all, a woman who tries to use one man to make another jealous has to be innately selfish.’

She could tell him the truth. She could make him feel thoroughly ashamed of himself for the way he was misjudging her, Lily knew. But it was clear he only wanted to believe the worst of her, and she was not about to tell him her darkest, most painful secret only to have him coldly dismiss her as an accomplished liar.

How could she have allowed herself to become entangled—trapped—in this situation? She knew where her vulnerabilities lay. She knew where she was weak. If she’d thought more carefully and clinically about the way he had made her feel that first time she had seen him at the studio, she could have … She could have what? Walked away from the work she had been paid to come here and do when she’d recognised him at the reception? When she prided herself on her professionalism? Hardly.

‘I will not have the Duchess embarrassed or upset by you causing a dramatic fuss about something that, after all, means very little in this day and age,’ Marco warned her. ‘And who knows? If your ex gets to hear about it perhaps it will have the desired effect and bring him back—although as a man I’d have to caution you against encouraging a man to be jealous. It makes for a relationship based on distrust, and no man who values himself can or should compromise where trust is concerned. That can be very dangerous.’

‘You sound as though you’re speaking from experience.’ The words were out before Lily had time to think about what she was saying.

Their effect on Marco was immediate. What was it about her that led to him revealing things about himself to her—private, fiercely guarded things he would never normally dream of revealing to anyone. His face hardening, his voice chilling, he told her, ‘I’ve certainly got enough experience to know not to trust you.’

Lily flinched, stung by his icy words. She hadn’t lied to him, but he had made it plain that he had no intention of believing her. Had he in the past been hurt by someone—a woman he’d trusted who had lied to him—and now he refused to trust any woman? He must have cared a great deal for her, whoever she was. A very great deal. The man he was now wouldn’t let any woman close enough to do that to him. A horrible feeling of desolation sucked the strength from her. It was stupid, foolish, self-destructive of her to care because Marco had once loved someone so much.

Marco frowned. Why was Lily looking so stricken? She’d been perfectly happy to share a room—and a bed—with him when it had suited her. Now she was looking as though the very thought of doing so was destroying her, and she was obviously rejecting it—and him—in favour of another man. Any sympathy Marco might have been tempted to feel for her vanished.


‘Do you understand?’ he demanded.

Blindly Lily looked at him. He might not have any compassion for her, but obviously the Duchess’s feelings were important to him, so there must be some humanity within him somewhere—even if he seemed intent on concealing it from her.

‘Yes, I understand,’ she confirmed emotionlessly.

She understood that he loathed and despised her. She understood that there had been a woman in his life who had destroyed his ability to trust. But what she did not understand was why her silly heart persisted in aching with a need that could only destroy her. And tonight she was going to have to share a room with the cause of that need and somehow keep it hidden from him. If she could.

But what if she couldn’t?

What if, like the last time she had shared a bed with him, she let her feelings get out of control? Panic filled her.

‘We can’t share a room,’ she insisted. ‘I wouldn’t feel …’

‘What? Safe?’ Marco derided her.

Lily couldn’t look at him—dared not look at him just in case he could somehow see what she was really thinking. The truth was that she was indeed afraid that she wouldn’t feel safe. Not because she was afraid that she couldn’t trust Marco, but because she feared that she couldn’t trust herself. She certainly wasn’t prepared to admit that to him, though.

‘I’ve just told you we have no other option than to be thankful that it’s only for a couple of nights,’ Marco said, adding sardonically, ‘Allow me to play the gentleman and offer you the bed.’

He wasn’t going to be persuaded or argued into changing his mind about the suite, she could tell. And in reality what legitimacy did she actually have to keep on trying to insist that he did so? She liked the Duchess herself, and knew that Marco’s comment about her potential embarrassment was justified. She was going to have to accept the fact that, despite her misgivings and her fears they would be sharing the suite, she acknowledged.

‘You have the bed this time,’ Lily muttered. ‘I’d rather have the sofa in the sitting room.’

A brief knock on the door had Marco going over to open it to admit the housekeeper, escorting a young man who was carrying their luggage.

‘If there’s anything you require for the evening, just dial ten on the telephone on the desk,’ she told them.

It was Marco who tipped the young man, whilst Lily was still looking round for her handbag, his gesture winning him an approving look from the housekeeper before the two of them exited the room.

‘We’ve got just over an hour before we’re due downstairs for the Duchess’s reception. Since the suite seems only to have one bathroom, you can use it first if you wish,’ he offered distantly, without looking at her.

Lily nodded her head. She wanted to wash her hair, and although it was easy to dry and style it would take her longer to get ready than it would Marco, so it made sense for her to use the bathroom first.

Even so, she didn’t linger under the shower, washing her hair and herself as quickly as she could before pulling on one of the luxurious bathrobes provided for their use. She’d taken her small case into the bathroom with her, hanging up her black jersey skirt to make sure it wasn’t creased, and was just straightening up, having removed clean underwear from her case, when there was a sharp knock on the door.

Still holding her undies, she opened the door.

‘I just wanted to check that you don’t need anything ironed,’ Marco told her.

‘No. My skirt is jersey,’ Lily replied, half gesturing towards the sliver of matt black fabric hanging on the glass door of the shower area, not realising until Marco bent down to retrieve them that her briefs had slipped out of her grasp.

Pink cheeked with embarrassment, Lily took them from him when he handed them to her, balling the nude fabric in her hand as she did so. Why, when she preferred and always wore plain, smooth underwear, was she suddenly now wishing that what Marco had retrieved for her had been something far more sensual? A pretty, feminine wisp of silk and lace, perhaps—the kind of underwear worn by the kind of women she imagined Marco preferred. Beautifully, sexually confident and alluring women for whom it was second nature to dress their bodies in provocative sexy undies.

‘I’ll be finished in here in five minutes,’ she told Marco, pointedly looking at the door.

Nodding his head, he stepped back so that she could close it.

Why had Lily been so embarrassed about him seeing her underwear, Marco wondered as he waited for the bathroom. It was illogical, given what he knew about her. Illogical and out of character for any woman of her age, never mind the kind of woman she was. Another act? If so, why? It wasn’t something she could use to bait her ex.

Against his will Marco recognised that something about her reaction, coupled with the plain neatness of that pair of nude briefs she had tried to conceal in her hand, had challenged his assessment of her. Why? And why should he care if it had? He cared because somehow she had activated a rebellion within him he hadn’t previously known could possibly exist—a dangerous, unwanted rebellion that wanted to overthrow the laws he had laid down about refusing to give people the benefit of the doubt, about distrusting them instead of trusting them. That rebellion was now allowing emotion to get a foothold within him. That rebellion was now constantly challenging his logic and experience. It was urging him to break his own rules. And, worse, it had joined forces with his natural male desire, and together they were trying to undermine the fortifications that protected him. Together they provoked and taunted his beliefs—beliefs he knew to be true. Together they whispered to him that it wouldn’t hurt to allow himself to enjoy the pleasure that intimacy with Lily would bring.

He must not allow them any freedom.

‘The bathroom’s free now. I’ll finish getting dressed in the sitting room.’ Lily took care not to look directly at Marco as she hurried past him with her case and her skirt, her body firmly wrapped up in its bathrobe. In a household as well organised as this one was she was pretty sure there would be a hairdryer in one of the dressing table drawers, but right now, whilst Marco was safely out of the way in the bathroom, the first thing she intended to do was get dressed.

The smooth line of her long skirt and the boat-necked top she was wearing with it proved the sartorial wisdom of her smooth nude underwear, Lily tried to comfort herself five minutes later, as she studied her reflection critically in the full-length bedroom mirror. With just this kind of event in mind she had brought with her two very definite pieces of statement jewellery—a wide collar of beaten silver that lay perfectly against her collarbone, and a silver cuff that went with it. She had come across them in Florence, when she had been there on business. She had fallen in love with the jewellery on sight, and she hadn’t been surprised when the young girl who had made it had told her that she had been inspired by an exhibition of Saxon jewellery she had seen in England.

Lily found a hairdryer, as she had expected, in one of the dressing table drawers, turning her head upside down so that she could blow her hair dry quickly from the roots. She had just finished doing so when Marco walked back into the bedroom, wearing a towelling robe.

Lily could feel her skin overheating again. Why? She was no stranger to the naked male body in all its artistic forms, and Marco was far from naked. The naked male body, perhaps, but not this male body. Not Marco’s male body. It was ridiculous for her to feel so oddly breathless and aware of him. She had spent last night in his bed, after all. This was different, though. This sharing of a room whilst they got ready together was a very specific intimacy that was doing things to her senses and her emotions that filled her with an aching emotional yearning. For intimacy with a man—any man? For the kind of relationship with a man that provided that intimacy? Or for that intimacy and that relationship only with Marco?


The hairdryer slipped out of her grasp and fell to the floor. As she reached for it so did Marco, their hands touching. For a second neither of them moved. If they were really a couple, and really intimate, instead of removing his hand from hers Marco might have removed the hairdryer instead, before going on to take her in his arms. A bolt of shocked delight jolted through her body, causing her hand to shake as she struggled to grip the hairdryer.

‘We’ve got fifteen minutes,’ Marco told her, his breath warm against her forehead as he bent towards her. His words caused her to jerk upright, her eyes widening, before logic warned her that he was simply reminding her of when they needed to be downstairs—not suggesting to her that they had fifteen minutes in which to attempt to quench the sensual desire that had started to pulse inside her, conjured up into life out of nowhere by her own thoughts.

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.

Introduced by the Duchess to a dozen or more of her guests within as many minutes Lily was soon struggling to keep a mental note of their names. However, she wished that all she had to bear was that awkward confusion when the Duchess called Marco over to join them and then began introducing them virtually as a couple.

Since he obviously already knew some of the guests Lily expected Marco to do something to correct this error, but he did nothing about it at all, instead staying at her side whilst the Duchess beamed with obvious pride in having ‘outed’ their relationship. He was obviously very fond of the Duchess, and determined not to embarrass her by revealing the truth in public, Lily recognised. Whilst she could understand that, it certainly didn’t make her position any less difficult to bear. Having Marco behave as though they were indeed a couple, having him standing so close to her, adopting a protective manner towards her that she knew was fictitious, brought her to a sharply keen knife-edge of painful awareness of just how much the inner vulnerable core of her longed to have the right to this kind of closeness with him.

Of course he was sophisticated and urbane enough to carry off their supposed relationship with cool self-confidence. He was that kind of man—totally at home in his surroundings and totally in control of himself. And of her? She had known him for less than a handful of days but in that time he had changed not just her beliefs about what she wanted out of life, but her perception of herself as well.

When she was confronted by the feelings aching through her now she came face to face with a part of herself she had thought locked away for ever. Somehow, though, despite it being pushed away, ignored by her and denied, Marco had the power to bring it to life within her. There was no point, though, in indulging in hopeless, self-destructive daydreams and fantasies. Lily knew that loving Marco was dangerous for her and could only bring her misery and pain.

‘You need a fresh glass of champagne. That one’s gone flat, by the looks of it.’

Marco was holding out a fresh glass to her and smiling as he did so. A faked smile, of course—how could it not be?—but her heart couldn’t help yearning and wondering what it would be like to have Marco really smile at her like that, with a smile that was full of tenderness and more than a hint of sensual promise of the pleasure that would be theirs once they were on their own. A lover’s smile, in other words.


Her hand trembled as she reached for the glass he was holding out to her. To disguise her vulnerability she took a quick sip of it, almost choking on the bubbly liquid in shock when she felt a hand on her arm and heard a familiar female voice exclaim, ‘Lily—little Lily! Darling girl, you look so like your dear mother. I’d have recognised you anywhere. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. I had to ask Carolina to bring me over.’

Somehow Lily managed to smile back at the elegant mature woman now standing with the Duchess, smiling at her.

‘I could hardly believe it myself.’ The Duchess laughed. ‘There I was, telling one of my closest friends about Marco’s lovely new girlfriend and the exhibition she is organising, and when I pointed you out what should Melanie say but that she recognised you? She knew you as a little girl but lost touch with you.’

Lily was acutely conscious of Marco standing next to her, listening to everything that was being said. If there was anything that could cause her even more emotional distress and dread than recognising how vulnerable she was to Marco then it was this. Someone from her past with its memories that she had fought so hard to leave behind her.

Marco could see how shocked Lily was. Shocked in a way that suggested she had been dealt some kind of almost physical blow. She was trying hard not to show it, but he had heard her indrawn agonised breath and seen the colour leaving her face. Why? Because the Duchess’s friend had known her as a little girl? Why?

She was trapped, Lily thought helplessly. She couldn’t simply turn and run away, no matter how tempted she was to do just that. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Marco hadn’t been with her. She would still have felt shocked. She would still have felt the pain that seeing Melanie had brought her. But that pain would have been much easier to bear without Marco’s presence.

And now, instead of running somewhere to hide, she had to smile as though she meant it and say with as much composure as she could to the woman standing with the Duchess, ‘Melanie, how lovely to see you again.’

Melanie Trinders had been a close friend of her mother. They had modelled together, and Melanie had been a regular visitor to their home.

Lily had tried to sound cool and slightly remote, but her attempt to put some emotional distance between them had no effect whatsoever on her mother’s old friend. Lily was immediately embraced—wrapped, in fact—in the warmth of expensive cashmere and even more expensive scent, and subjected to a fond continental exchange of kisses before being held at arm’s length by the elegant and still beautiful late middle-aged woman dressed in a scarlet designer dress that fitted her model-svelte figure like a glove.

‘To think that when you invited Harry and me here tonight I had no idea that your guest of honour was going to be my dear Petra’s daughter. And such a clever and beautiful daughter. Petra would have been so proud of you, Lily. Proud of you and happy for you,’ she emphasised, giving Marco a meaningful look before turning back to Lily. ‘Emotional happiness was always so important to your mother. I could never understand what she meant about the importance of love until I met my Harry.’

Smiling at the Duchess, she told her friend, ‘Carolina, this is such a wonderful coincidence. Lily’s mother was one of my closest friends. We modelled together.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘A lifetime ago now. Petra was younger than me, and such a lovely girl.’

Melanie turned back to Lily, still holding her hands. ‘Lily, you are the image of her. I remember when you were born. Your father was still furious with your mother for having a baby. He didn’t even go to see her when she was in hospital—just as though he had nothing at all to do with your arrival into the world. He bullied her dreadfully to lose weight, of course, so that she could go back to modelling.’

‘Your mother was a model?’ Marco demanded, his mistrust and suspicion returning along with his angry contempt. If Lily’s mother had been a model that meant she would have even more cause to know just what could happen to the unwary—and yet she had still tried to inveigle his nephew into it. The loathing he felt for the kind of people who had brought about Olivia’s destruction surged through Marco’s veins.

‘Not just a model, but the model of her time—just as Lily’s father was the photographer of his generation. I’m not surprised to hear from Carolina that you use photography in your own work, Lily. I can still remember watching you playing in your father’s studio as a little girl. Even then you preferred taking photographs rather than being in them. Your father was a genius with the camera and a wonderful success in the fashion world.’ She looked at Marco. ‘Given your relationship with Lily, though, I’m sure that she will have told you that whilst her father was brilliantly successful as a photographer he was a disastrous husband and father. I understand his second marriage broke up as well, Lily?’

Melanie had obviously taken Marco’s fixed concentration on what she was saying as a sign that he wanted to hear more, Lily decided miserably. Because without waiting for Lily to answer she continued, ‘I can remember going into the studio and seeing Lily playing there on the floor. You were such a sweet-natured, pretty child, Lily, and you could have been the perfect child model. No wonder Anton wanted all those pictures of you.’

Champagne nearly spilled from Lily’s glass as she made a sudden rejecting movement she couldn’t control. Her hand was trembling uncontrollably, her stomach heaving with sick dread, and she looked towards the door, desperate to escape.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, Marco was forced to recognise, and the rebellion within him rose up and totally overwhelmed the weakened force of his determination to remain distant from Lily. It was that rebellion and not he himself that had him moving towards her, putting himself between her and the others to shield her, taking hold of her arm to steady her, taking charge and obliterating any resistance. Lily looked numbly at him, like a hunted, tormented creature in fear for its life, caught in a car’s headlights.

‘Anton liked photographing her, then, did he?’ the rebellion in him asked conversationally, mercilessly silencing what he thought of as his real self when it tried to protest that it didn’t want to get involved.

‘Oh, yes,’ Melanie agreed. ‘He always said she had real model potential …’

Lily struggled to subdue the sound of protest and anguish rising in her throat. She looked ill, Marco recognised. Bruised and defeated and agonised.

‘I was so sorry when I heard about your mother’s death, Lily,’ Melanie added in a much more sombre voice. ‘Such a dreadfully sad thing to happen.’

‘She was never able to come to terms with her divorce from my father,’ Lily responded in a strained voice, somehow managing to drag herself back from the edge of the dark, greedy chasm of fear that had opened up at her feet.

The other woman patted her arm and then excused herself, explaining, ‘I must go—my husband will be looking for me. Stay in touch, Lily darling.’

The Duchess too had moved away to talk to another guest, leaving Lily alone with Marco in their own little pool of silence.

Marco was still looking at her, even though he had now released her arm, and Lily could imagine what he was thinking. Draining her glass, she turned to him and spoke in an empty voice.


‘My mother committed suicide—drink and prescription drugs. Oh, yes,’ she added fiercely when he didn’t speak, ‘I do know what the modelling business can do to those who are too vulnerable for its cruelty. I’ve experienced it at first hand. That’s why …’

Without waiting to see what his response was she stepped past him and walked away, her head held high and half blinded by the tears she knew she dared not shed. She didn’t stop in her headlong flight until she realised that she’d lost her way and was in a small ante-room, thankfully all on her own. She wanted fresh air—fresh air and privacy—and the self-indulgence of crying for a mother and a childhood that were long gone. But she wasn’t here to indulge herself, she reminded herself sharply. She was here to work. But the floodgates had been opened and there was no holding back the memories now.