The villa was beyond her wildest expectations—a vast mansion of a place sitting in twelve acres of luscious land with a giant pool and scented gardens, leading down to a private stretch of beach. There was an enormous bedroom which had been made ready for Ben, his own playroom—and even a sandpit and a scaled-down swimming pool which stood close to the larger one.
The estate was remote and access was virtually impossible—reached by one anonymous and dusty road, policed by burly-looking guards and surrounded by dense pine forests. Casimiro’s personal bodyguards were to be housed in their own small complex at some way from the main house, where the housekeeper and cook lived. Other staff were to travel in daily from the nearby village, as and when required.
‘They have been instructed that we want as little intervention as possible. That we want to be on our own,’ said Casimiro as he showed her around.
But Melissa found herself looking at him with sudden perception—aware of the fundamental flaw in his statement.
He had talked about wanting to spend some time on their own—but of course they would never really be on their own. Not now. Not ever. Constant surveillance came with the territory. Had that been why he had embraced his relative anonymity with such enthusiasm when she’d known him in England—the playing at being ‘ordinary’ perhaps adding an extra layer of excitement to their brief affair? Yet she could see now that it had been nothing but fantasy. A period of pretending which was a million miles away from the life he usually lived.
Dinner had been laid out for them on one of the terraces which overlooked the pool and the floodlit gardens. Beyond that was the sea—indigo-deep and occasionally moving with a little lick of white wave—and the only sound was the amplified buzz of a million cicadas.
On the balcony of their bedroom, dominated by a bed the size of a football pitch, they stood in silence for a moment before Casimiro pulled her into his arms as she had been waiting for him to do since the moment they’d arrived. And now that the moment was here, she wasn’t sure whether the sudden escalation of her heart was due to anticipation or dread—or a bit of both.
Casimiro stared down at a face which looked paperpale in the moonlight. Her eyes were like a startled fawn’s and he was suddenly aware of the magnitude of what they’d done and the tension on her face.
‘Tired?’ he questioned.
Actually, she was near worn out. Exhausted by the emotional and physical strain of the past few days and the thought of what lay ahead. But Melissa knew that this wasn’t the answer Casimiro wanted to hear—and certainly not on a night like this. It might be setting a bad precedent to such a marriage as theirs if she started it with what was euphemistically known as a ‘headache’.
Injecting her voice with enthusiasm, she smiled. ‘No, not at all.’
‘Liar,’ he retorted softly. ‘There are shadows as dark as the night-time sea beneath your eyes.’
‘Are there?’ She touched her fingertips to the delicate skin beneath her eyes. ‘To be honest, they’re probably just labouring under the weight of all this mascara they put on me.’
The absurdly inconsequential little feminine response—the detail of which would never normally have entered his radar—now made his lips curve into a smile. ‘I’d noticed,’ he said drily.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘No man likes a woman to wear too much make-up. We prefer to drift along under the illusion that beauty is effortless.’
Beauty. He had called her beautiful earlier and it was not a word that Melissa was used to hearing—well, not when it was associated with her. Was it something that he felt obliged to say now that they were married—that if he repeated it often enough he might end up believing it? She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to. She knew that it was nothing other than a marriage of convenience and she was striving for some kind of workable union, not reaching for the stars. That she’d rather have truth than diplomatic compliments he didn’t mean. But she might run the risk of sounding ungrateful if she did that, so she simply smiled.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
He found something in her voice oddly soothing—like sinking into a soft feather bed after long, uncomfortable days on horseback. His gaze drifted down to the terrace below—where the table was decked with roses and tall candles stood waiting to be lit. The staff would be discreet, he knew that. He could even imagine what they had been told. The King is on his honeymoon—so do not disturb him unnecessarily.
But suddenly Casimiro didn’t want to sit on a moonwashed terrace and be served course after course of food by shadowy figures. Was a little shared solitude too much to ask on his wedding night? ‘Hungry?’ he questioned.
‘Not…not particularly.’
‘Yet you hardly ate a thing during the wedding breakfast.’
She was both touched and surprised that he’d noticed—particularly as he’d been deep in conversation with the Italian Prime Minister for much of the meal. ‘We can eat if you’re hungry,’ she said.
He stared at her—at the floaty dress she’d changed into, in a shade of dark purple like one of those indigo shadows which sometimes drifted across the moon. At the elaborate twists of her hair—like gleaming dark snakes coiled high on her head. And some deep yearning
took hold of him—a desire for the lure of the uncomplicated past he had shared with her. When for a few brief and heady days he had been able to cast off the burden of responsibility.
‘I’m not in the least bit hungry,’ he said unsteadily. ‘At least, not for food.’ He saw her eyes widen, saw her obvious uncertainty—which was slightly bizarre under the circumstances and yet somehow completely understandable. ‘We can have champagne up here, if that’s what you’d like?’
Melissa would have welcomed the cold, fizzing taste of dry champagne and the corresponding warmth which would bubble through her veins and maybe make her relax a little. But champagne had all kinds of connotations and the main one was of celebration—and wouldn’t that seem a bit contrived after a marriage of convenience?
She didn’t want Casimiro to think she needed some kind of mild intoxication before she could bear to go to bed with him. Even though inside she felt a trembling which was like a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering around at the base of her stomach.
Lifting her hands to his shoulders, she moved her face close to his. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want a drink.’
‘What do you want?’