The Prince's Chambermaid

He frowned. ‘And how precisely would that happen, Cathy?’ he questioned drily. ‘Would someone magically step in to fill my shoes while I’m away? I am a busy man.’

With fingers which were trying not to tremble, she turned back to the mirror and pretended to fuss with her hair. She knew he was busy—that his diary was jampacked—but surely even Prince Regents were allowed a holiday sometimes?

‘Of course you’re busy.’ She swallowed. ‘You’re always busy. I’m sorry. It was a stupid assumption for me to make.’

Something in the resigned tone of her voice stayed him, and he came up behind her, his fingers slipping to her bare shoulders and beginning to massage them. ‘No, it was an easy assumption to make…but there aren’t going to be any holidays, bella—at least, not for a while.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said brightly. ‘I guess it’ll be all the better when it happens.’

Frowning, he felt the tight tension in her shoulders as he attempted to explain something of his dilemma—he who had never had to offer anyone an explanation in his life. ‘Taking over a monarchy like this is a bit like being brought in to head up a powerful organisation—except much of this I cannot delegate, because the buck stops with me. And yet because, ultimately, mine is only a substitute authority, I must run every decision past the government to ensure that I am acting in the country’s best interests. Porca miseria—but your muscles are tight, mia bella.’ Gold seared into aquamarine as their eyes locked in the looking glass. ‘Perhaps I should take you to bed and help you relax in a way which would please us both,’ he said softly.

For a moment, she allowed herself to dream. ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely?’ she whispered.

His hand slipped beneath her gown to tease a nipple between thumb and forefinger, a smile curving his lips as he felt its immediate response. ‘Mmm. It would be perfetto.’

She felt like a child who had been offered an ice cream, only to discover that the store had just closed. ‘But…but there isn’t time, is there?’ she said, jerking away from the temptation of his touch. ‘Not with forty people waiting to have dinner with us.’

Reality intruded like a cold shower—washing away the soft heat which always suffused his skin when she was near. What a distraction she was, with her pale hair and her trembling lips and that way she had of looking up at him. Swallowing down his frustration, Xaviero said something harsh and raw in Greek—in a tone she had never heard him use before—and Cathy held his gaze as she put her hairbrush down, with a hand which wasn’t quite steady.

‘Why don’t you say it in English so at least I can understand?’

His mouth hardened. ‘You don’t want to hear it.’

‘Oh, I think I do. Aren’t wives supposed to know what’s troubling their husbands, even if they’re Prince Regents?’ she questioned, her heart suddenly beginning to thump with a cold dread which made the palms of her hands grow clammy. ‘And…and something is troubling you, isn’t it, Xaviero?’

There was a split second of a pause. Because didn’t articulating something make it real? And yet if he didn’t tell someone he thought he just might explode. He shrugged, and then let out a ragged sigh. ‘I just said how much I hate this life.’

Quietly spoken, his words ripped through her:…how much I hate this life. Powerful words which laid bare a dissatisfaction she had suspected from the moment she’d arrived on the island. Was she implicated in that unhappiness? she wondered painfully. Yet how could she not be—for wasn’t she part of the whole package?

‘Anything specific?’ she questioned, in a light tone. The kind of tone she’d once used to ask people if they’d like an extra blanket or not.

‘Oh, I don’t know—everything.’ The words left his mouth with soft, explosive savagery, a torrent he’d been trying to deny for too long—even to himself. ‘I hate it all. The demands. The lack of freedom and privacy. The way that everyone wants something from you. Everybody has a damned agenda.’

‘But surely that was always the case? You’ve been royal all your life, Xaviero.’

‘Only when I had to be.’ He lifted his hand up to rake it back through the ebony hair, the light glinting off the pale gold of his crested cufflink. ‘Why do you think I went to live in New York, where I was able to live a reasonably anonymous life? Because I didn’t want to stand out. It’s why I picked the isolation of the countryside, when I decided to settle in England.’