Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Dutiful Wife
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

HIS TOUCH SO SENSUALLY knowing and skilled, so male and powerfully demanding, sent excitement and desire spearing through her, leaping like wildfire from nerve ending to nerve ending, tightening the cord of longing he aroused in her until nothing else mattered other than his possession of her: swift and hot and now. It was always like this, his first single stroke of pleasure answering and inciting the desire for him within her that was as much a part of her as her breathing.

She’d known this would happen when she’d slid her naked body into the warm silky water of their private pool, with only the stars and the moon above them in the tropical night sky there to witness their erotic intimacy. She swam away from him, tormenting herself by her denial perhaps even more than she was tormenting him, and her gasp of hot sweet pleasure when he caught up with her, swimming with her and then under her, to suckle fiercely on her nipples, was accompanied by a shudder of wild pleasure. His hand slid between her legs, covering her sex as he kicked out, the strong movement of his body carrying them both through the water. Hunger and need pierced her in lava-hot waves that surged through her and set her body moving to the same rhythm as the caress of his fingers. She moaned softly, reaching for him, filled with the wildness that wanting him brought her.

They had reached the edge of the pool. Dizzy with desire, she let him lift her out and carry her to a wide poolside lounger with a mattress and towelling cover. He lay her there, her body soft and boneless, open to his gaze and his touch.

His gaze and then his hand stroked her naked body, cupping her breast. Her heart lurched into her ribs, the muscles in her stomach tightening with the same need that had brought her nipples into such an erect ache of eager longing. His gaze registered the sensual message of her taut nipples but his hand stroked on to cup her hipbone. Automatically her legs opened, the sweet wet heat of her desire pulsing through her. He bent his head, his thick, dark, still-wet hair sending droplets of cool water falling onto her desire-heated skin. His tongue-tip circled her navel, drawing deliberately delicate patterns against her flesh, drawing from her an agonised gasp of his name.

‘Saul. My love. My only for ever love.’

She was possessed, engulfed, burning up in the need he had aroused.

He looked up at her and she gave a small helpless moan, her body arching up to his, to him, a sensual sacrifice.

She saw his chest lift and then fall, and then he was holding her, kissing her, entering her. She cried out her pleasure to him, wrapping herself around him, moving with him, until their bodies took hold of their desire and their pleasure, carrying them swiftly to the summit of their arousal and then beyond that summit to the shared free-fall into release and satisfaction.

She’d closed her eyes, but now she opened them to find him smiling down at her, a possessive, tender, loving male smile.

‘Happy anniversary, Mrs. Parenti,’ he said softly.

Giselle smiled back at her husband, happiness filling her. She was so lucky. Their life together was perfect, the burden of guilt she had carried for so long a dragon slain by his fight to free her from it. There was no need in this moment of bliss and harmony for her to torment herself with the memory of that other truth she had withheld from him. It had no power over her now, no relevance in the wonderful life they shared—a life of fulfilling artistic ambition for her, working as she did as chief architect on Saul’s worldwide luxury hotel developments, whilst the love they shared had created a private world of happiness for the two of them that neither needed nor wanted anyone else within its magic protective circle. They themselves were all they needed. Theirs was not a marriage that would ever include children. That had been the promise and the commitment they had made to one another when they had married twelve months ago. That was the foundation on which their marriage and with it her complete trust in Saul was built.

For both of them the causes of their determination to be childless lay in their own childhood and were understood and accepted by both of them. Just as Saul had healed so much of the pain of her childhood, with his love for her and his acceptance of her as she was, so Giselle had helped Saul to make his peace with his past—and more especially with the mother he believed had cared more for the orphans of the disasters of the world than she had for him.

It had been a very special and poignant moment for both of them when they had opened the first of what they planned to be a worldwide structure of teaching orphanages that incorporated both a home and a school in Saul’s late mother’s name.

Financed by Saul, designed by Giselle herself and built by Saul’s company, the orphanages were to be Saul’s gift of peace and acceptance to his late mother.

Their lovemaking the night after the official opening had been so emotionally and physically intense that the memory of it still brought tears to Giselle’s eyes.

Theirs had not been an easy path to happiness and commitment. Both of them had fought hard against the fierce tide of desire for one another that had pulled them from their protected comfort zone into a combat zone in which they had both fought desperately against their feelings for one another, clinging to the wreckage of the security of their old beliefs. It had been Saul who had made the first move and reached out to her, and she, fathoms deep in love with him by that stage, had given in to her longing for him. After all, she had learned by then that Saul did not want children either.

As a billionaire businessman who thrived on the cut and thrust of competition, Saul had made a vow not to have children who, like him, would have to be left behind whilst he travelled the world. Unlike his cousin Aldo, the ruler of the small European state their family had ruled for countless generations, Saul did not have to marry and produce a legitimate heir.

And so she had put aside the principles by which she had lived as an adult—namely that she would never allow herself to fall in love, because she did not want children and she did not want to deprive any man she might love of the right to have those children. She had already, after all, broken the first vow she had made to herself in loving Saul, and he had promised her that she was all and everything he wanted and needed. But even on their wedding day she had felt the shadow of her past chilling her happiness. Guilt was such a heavy burden to bear. A solitary and lonely burden too. Giselle shivered despite the velvet warmth of the tropical night.

Saul smiled at her, getting up off the lounger and picking up the bathrobe she had discarded earlier to wrap it tenderly around her. He must have noticed her small involuntary shiver and, so typical of him, moved to protect her. She always cherished these special moments in the aftermath of their lovemaking, and the last thing she wanted was for them to be overshadowed by the shadows of her past. Surely now fate had released her from the burden of her guilt? Surely now she did not need to remember that she was still held hostage to a part of her past about which Saul knew nothing? There was no need for her to exhume the raw and rotting corpse of her guilt. The cause of it did not matter any longer. She was safe—protected by Saul’s love and by the life they shared that meant so much to them both.

‘Hungry?’ Saul asked.

Giselle looked up at him. He had the physique and the good looks of a Greek god, the courage of a Roman warrior, the mind of a master tactician allied to that of a Greek philosopher, and a social conscience that came from true altruism. She loved him with a passion and an intensity that filled her senses and her emotions. He was her world—a world he created and made safe with his love for her.

She nodded her head in answer to his question.

Their personal butler had arranged for a delicious supper to be delivered to their villa shortly after their arrival on this private tropical island that was home to a luxurious and exclusive development in which Saul had a financial interest, but then Giselle’s appetite had been for her husband. They’d spent three days of the previous week apart, whilst Saul visited a new site he was thinking of buying and Giselle had gone to the Yorkshire Dales to spend some time with the great-aunt who had brought her up after the deaths of her parents and her baby brother. Three days without Saul had been three days and three nights too long.

Now, though, she was hungry for food, so she raised herself up on tiptoe to kiss Saul lovingly before he reached for his own discarded robe. The night air around them was languid with soft heat and the sounds of the tropics, and the fine gauzy layers of beige and black silk curtains they had to step through added a romantic intimacy to their suite. The decor of the villa was both modern and sensual, a palette of toning, layered off-whites and soft beiges and taupes, broken up here and there with the subtle use of pieces of black furniture. Woven rugs in creams and off-whites softened the stark modernity of the granite floors.

A covered chilled trolley held their supper of hors d’oeuvres, mouthwateringly exotic salads, shellfish dishes and fresh fruit. A bottle of champagne rested in a bucket of ice.

‘To us,’ Saul toasted them after he had opened the champagne and filled their glasses.

‘To us,’ Giselle agreed, laughing and shaking her head in mock complaint when Saul put down his glass to hand feed her one of the elegantly arranged hors d’oeuvres.

Saul had the most beautifully male hands she had ever seen. Leonardo, she was sure, would have wanted to paint their image and Michelangelo to sculpt it. The familiar sight of their tanned sensual strength made her body tighten with pleasure.

He had fed her like this the first night of their honeymoon, teasing and tantalising her with tiny delicious morsels of food, until her hunger for them and for him had had her licking the savour of them from his fingers, just as he had later licked the juice of the fruit they had shared from her naked skin.

They had been married a year, and he could still excite and arouse her as swiftly and overwhelmingly as he had done when she had first known him. The fierce intensity of her desire was as fresh and consuming as it had been the first time he had made love to her, but now there was an added depth to their intimacy that came not just from their shared love but from her trust in him and her belief that he would always keep her safe. Safe enough to give herself to him without restraint, knowing that she could trust him utterly and completely.

‘I want it always to be like this for us, Saul,’ she told him passionately.

‘It always will be,’ Saul assured her. ‘How could it not?’

Giselle shivered again, casting a glance toward the movement of the silk curtains as though half afraid of some unknown presence concealed by them. ‘Don’t tempt fate,’ she begged him.

Saul laughed and teased her. ‘I think it would be far more enjoyable to tempt you instead.’

They might already have made love, but their desire for one another was to Giselle like a pure clear spring of life-giving water, always there to fill and then refill the pitcher of their shared intimacy. It was the final few minutes she had spent with her great-aunt before leaving for London and the conversation they had exchanged then that was casting the unwanted shadow over her happiness now and making her feel vulnerable. She loved her great-aunt, and she knew that she loved her—just as she knew that her great-aunt’s parting words to her had been meant to please her.

‘It is wonderful to see you so happy, Giselle,’ her great-aunt had said. ‘There was a time when I worried that you would deny yourself the happiness of loving and being loved in return, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me to see you so loved and so loving. I am proud of you, my dear, for all that you have had to overcome. When I asked you on your wedding day if you had told Saul everything I was so relieved, I can admit to you now, when you said that you had.’

Giselle had smiled and kissed her great-aunt but, like a thorn in soft flesh, her guilt had festered inside her as she drove home to London. It hadn’t been necessary to tell Saul the ‘everything’ her great-aunt had referred to; there had been no point in releasing the private fear she had locked away. It wasn’t relevant any more, and she’d been afraid of what Saul might think, of it changing things between them, stealing her happiness from her as it had done all those years ago.

She hadn’t truly deceived Saul. He loved her as she was. And, secure in his love and his promise to her, she was never going to change. She would always be as she was now. She would always be safe.

‘Come back. I hate it when you close down on me and go wherever it is that you won’t let me go with you.’

Saul’s soft words shocked her, prompting her to deny it immediately. ‘I wasn’t closing down on you, and there’s nowhere I would want to go without you.’

Saul watched her. He loved her so much that the force of his love for her still sometimes stunned him and caught him off guard. Perhaps it was the intensity of that love that made him so acutely aware of even the most minor changes in her mood.

‘You were thinking about your parents, your family,’ he told her. ‘I can always tell, because when you do your eyes change colour and darken to the intensity of those green malachite columns we saw in the royal palaces of St Petersburg.’

‘My great-aunt said how happy she was for me because I have you in my life,’ Giselle told him truthfully, adding emotionally, ‘I think I would die of the pain if I was ever to lose you. It would be more than I could bear.’

‘You will never lose me,’ Saul told her as he took her in his arms. ‘There is no power on this earth that could come between us.’

They made love again in the deepest hours of the night, their lovemaking slow and sensual this time, a journey of a thousand deliberately lingered over and enjoyed individual caresses that made up their own encyclopaedia of very private pleasure. As they built step by step, touch on touch, the fire that consumed them both set them free from mortality for a few precious seconds of perfect unity.

Afterwards Giselle lay in Saul’s arms, secure and at peace, floating in the mood of heightened euphoria that came with the aftermath of emotional and sexual fulfilment, falling asleep held safe within his love.

Saul was just drying himself off after his shower when his mobile rang, the sound causing him to frown. He had given his PA Moira instructions that he was not to be disturbed during this precious week he and Giselle had snatched from the busy needs of their lives other than in the most urgent and important of circumstances.

Giselle heard the ring of Saul’s mobile from their bed, still warm from Saul’s body and their early-morning relaxed and tender lovemaking. Through the voile curtains she could see sunshine dancing on the water of the infinity pool they had swum in the previous night. She could hear the rise and fall of Saul’s voice from the adjoining dressing room, but was too relaxed and drowsy to concentrate on what he was saying—so it was a shock when he came into the bedroom, his hair still damp, a towel wrapped round his hips, with an expression on his face that had her stomach churning with the anticipation of bad news even before he told her.

‘We’ve got to get back to London asap. There’s been an accident. The full details aren’t known yet, but it seems that Aldo and Natasha and her father have been the victims of an assassination attempt by one of Natasha’s father’s business rivals. There was a bomb in the car in which they were all traveling. Aldo had told me that they were going to England to look at a property Natasha’s father wanted to buy there—a big country estate. Natasha and her father are dead, but Aldo is still alive. He’s in hospital in Bristol. Moira’s arranged for us to be picked up here by helicopter and taken to Barbados, where there’ll be a private jet waiting for us. The helicopter should be here within the hour.’

Horrified, Giselle was already out of bed, going to Saul to hold him tightly as she told him, ‘I’m so sorry—I’ll get ready. It won’t take me long.’

She knew how fond he was of his cousin, even though they lived such vastly different lives, and as she dressed and packed she prayed that Aldo would be all right. Poor Aldo. He was the most gentle and kind of men, and deserved a far more appreciative wife than Natasha. Giselle shivered, as she remembered what Saul had said. Aldo no longer had a wife. Natasha was dead.

She and Saul had just finished packing their cases when they heard the sound of a helicopter arriving. One of the golf-type buggies the complex supplied for its visitors to get around on was already waiting outside their villa. The breakfast they had been served when Saul had rung Reception to tell them that they were leaving remained untouched apart from the cup of coffee Giselle had poured for Saul—black and strong, his weakness and only addiction apart from her, as he was fond of saying.

During the flights from the complex to Barbados, and from there to Heathrow and then on again by helicopter to the hospital in Bristol—the nearest specialist hospital to the scene of the accident—Saul talked about his cousin and Giselle listened. She had met Aldo, of course. Giselle and Saul had first become lovers during a trip to Arezzio when she had accompanied Saul there as an architect seconded to his company by the practice he had been employing with regard to a new hotel complex.

Aldo was nothing like Saul. Where Saul was ruthlessly masculine and charismatically sexy, Aldo was self-effacing, an aesthete and a dreamer. Natasha, Aldo’s Russian wife, had tried to convince Giselle that the reason Saul had sworn never to have children was because he resented the fact that his child could never inherit the role of Grand Duke of Arezzio. Saul, though, had made it plain that his reasons for wanting to remain childfree were based on his own childhood and the fact that his parents had been absent from it and from him, nothing else, and Giselle had seen that he was speaking the truth. Aldo loved the quiet backwater that was his small country, and had been grateful for the help that Saul had given him with its finances. A small price to pay, Saul had told Giselle, for the freedom he had to live his life the way he wished to live it because his father had been the younger and not the elder brother.

Giselle might not have liked Natasha but she would never have wished her dead—and especially not in such a dreadful manner.

The drips of information relayed to Saul whilst they travelled had told them only that because Aldo had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the chauffeur-driven car he had been spared the worst of the blast, but Natasha and her father had died at the scene of the accident.

‘Natasha’s father’s business methods were murky, to say the very least,’ Saul told Giselle. ‘It’s very clear that his deals have made him enemies, and many powerful people do not approve of what he’s done whilst accumulating his fortune. And it’s my fault that Aldo met Natasha.’

‘Aldo married Natasha of his own free will,’ said Giselle, trying to comfort him, reaching for his hand as their helicopter put down in a cleared area close to the hospital.

‘And now she’s dead. Aldo will be devastated. He adored her.’

A senior policeman was waiting to escort them to the hospital, answering Saul’s anxious question about his cousin with a grim, ‘He’s alive, but badly injured. He’s been asking for you.’

Saul nodded his head. ‘And the incident?’

‘We haven’t spoken to him about it as yet. The fact that the car was to some extent bullet-proof tells us something about Mr Petranovachov’s lifestyle and his feelings about his personal safety—bullet-proof but unfortunately not bomb-proof.’

They had reached the hospital entrance now, and were quickly and discreetly whisked down corridors and eventually into an antiseptically clean and sparsely furnished waiting room adjacent to the private part of the hospital, where the Chief Inspector handed them over to a dark-suited consultant, accompanied by what Giselle guessed must be a senior-ranking nurse.

‘My cousin?’ Saul asked again.

‘Conscious and eager to see you. But I should warn you that his injuries are extremely severe.’

Giselle looked anxiously at Saul, and said, ‘If you want me to come with you…’

Saul shook his head. ‘No. You stay here.’

‘I’ll have a hot drink sent in for you,’ the consultant told Giselle, before turning to Saul. ‘Staff Nurse Peters here will show you to your cousin’s room. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have more than a few minutes with him. We’ve patched him up temporarily, but we need to sedate and stabilise him before we can operate and tidy up the mess made by the bomb.’

The mess made by the bomb. What exactly did that mean? Giselle worried once she was on her own. She hadn’t liked Natasha, but her violent death had reawakened her own memories of the violent deaths of her mother and her baby brother, whom she had witnessed being hit by a lorry. For years she had carried the guilt of being alive when they had died, after sharp words from her mother had resulted in her holding back when she had started to cross the road with the pram. That holding back had saved her life—and filled it with guilt. Only Saul’s love had enabled her to come to terms with the trauma of the accident.

Poor Natasha. No matter how selfish and unpleasant she had been, she had not deserved such a cruel fate.

In the hospital room Saul looked down at his cousin, wired up to machines that clicked and whirred, his head bandaged and his body still beneath the sheets.

‘He’s lost both legs,’ the nurse had told Saul before she opened the door to the room, ‘and there’s some damage to his internal organs.’

‘Is he…? Will he survive?’ Saul had asked her.

‘We shall do our best to ensure that he does,’ she had answered crisply, but Saul had seen the truth and its reality in her eyes.

His vision blurred as he looked at Aldo. His cousin had always been so accommodating, so gentle and good.

‘You’re here. Knew you’d come. Been waiting.’

The words, though perfectly audible, were dragged out and slow. Aldo lifted his hand, and Saul took it between his own as he sat down next to the bed. Aldo’s flesh felt cold and dry. The word lifeless sprang into Saul’s mind but he pushed it away.

‘Want you to promise me something.’

Saul gritted his teeth. If Aldo was going to ask him to look after Natasha in the event of his death then he was going to nod his head and agree, and not tell him that she was dead. Aldo adored his wife, even though in Saul’s mind she was not worthy of that love.

‘Anything,’ he told Aldo, and meant it.

‘Want you to promise that you will look after our country and its people for me, Saul. Want you to take my place as its ruler. Want you to promise that you will secure its future with an heir. Can’t break the family chain. Duty must come first…’

Saul closed his eyes. Ruling the country was the last thing he wanted, and he had always felt confident that he would never have to do so. Aldo was younger than him, after all, and married. He had assumed that Aldo and Natasha would produce children to succeed to the title.

And as for Saul himself producing an heir…That was the last thing he wanted to do. He did not want children and neither did Giselle. For both of them what they had experienced during their own childhoods had left them determined not to have children of their own. That shared decision had forged a very strong bond between them—a bond that was all the stronger because they knew that other people would find it hard to understand. Only with one another had they been able to talk about the pain of their childhoods and the vulnerabilities that pain still caused them.

How could he discuss all of that now, though, when his cousin was dying and with his final breath asking him for his help—and his promise?

What was he to do? Refuse Aldo’s dying plea?

Aldo had touched a nerve with his use of the word duty. Their family had ruled Arezzio in an unbroken line that went back over countless generations, but more important than that he owed a duty of care to this man lying here—his cousin, his flesh, his blood, who but for him would never have met Natasha. It was his fault that Aldo was lying here, dying in front of his eyes—because that was what was happening.

‘Promise me. Promise me, Saul.’ Aldo’s voice strengthened, his hand tightening on Saul’s as he tried to raise himself up.

‘Waited for you to come. Can’t go until you give me your promise. Must do my duty. Even though…’ A grimace gripped his mouth. ‘Hurts like hell.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘Promise me, Saul.’

Saul hesitated. He could and would accept that it was his duty to provide their country with a strong leader, committed to doing his best for his people. He could give Aldo his promise that he would be that leader. When it came to the matter of providing an heir, though, Saul was a committed democrat who believed in elected rule. If he were to step into Aldo’s shoes that would be the direction in which he took the country—leading it by example away from the rule of protective paternalism provided by centuries of his ancestors into the maturity of democracy. And with that democracy there would be no need for him to provide an heir.

Aldo knew his feelings on the subject of ancient privilege. But he was still asking him for a deathbed promise.

Saul looked at his cousin. He loved him dearly. What mattered most here? Being true to his beliefs and stating them? Or easing the passing of his cousin in the knowledge that in reality, no matter what Aldo was asking now, he knew what Saul’s principles and beliefs were? Saul closed his eyes. He had never longed more to have Giselle at his side, with wise counsel and comfort to offer him. But she wasn’t here, and he must make his decision alone.

‘I promise,’ he told Aldo. ‘I promise that I will do my very best for our country and its people, Aldo.’

‘Knew I could rely on you.’ The grimace softened, to be replaced by something that was almost a smile.

‘Natasha?’ Aldo asked, speaking the word so slowly and painfully that it tore at Saul’s heart. ‘Already gone?’

Saul bowed his head.

‘Thought so. Nothing to keep me here now.’ Aldo closed his eyes, his breathing so calm and steady that initially Saul thought with a surge of hope that he might survive. But then he drew in a ragged breath and opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on Saul as he exhaled and then said quite clearly, in a wondering voice of delight and welcome, ‘Natasha.’

Saul didn’t need the flat line of the machine to tell him that Aldo had gone. He could feel it in the flaccid touch of his hand, feel it as clearly as though he had actually seen his spirit leave his body.

In the waiting room Giselle stood up when the door opened and Saul came in, knowing instantly what had happened, and going to Saul to take him in her arms and hold him tightly.

Neither of them spoke very much on the journey back to London City Airport and from there to their townhouse in London’s luxurious and expensive Chelsea.

Once they were inside their house, an eighteenth-century mansion, Saul dropped the guard he had been maintaining whilst they had been in public and paced the floor of their elegant drawing room, his eyes red-rimmed with grief and shock.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Giselle told him, going to him and placing her hand on his arm, bringing a halt to his pacing. ‘I know how much Aldo meant to you.’

‘He was younger than me—my younger cousin—but more like a brother than a cousin to me in many ways. Especially after our parents died and we were one another’s only blood relatives. I should have protected him better, Giselle.’

‘How could you have?’

‘I knew what Natasha’s father was. I should have—’

‘What? Forbidden Aldo from ever sharing a car with his father-in-law? You couldn’t know that Natasha’s father would be assassinated.’ Giselle’s voice softened. ‘I do understand how you feel, though.’ Of course she did. She had suffered dreadfully through the guilt and sense of responsibility she had felt after the deaths of her mother and baby brother. ‘But you are not to blame, Saul—just like I wasn’t to blame for what happened with my family.’

Saul placed his hand over Giselle’s where it rested on his arm.

No one would be able to understand how he felt better than Giselle. He knew that. But the situation with Aldo was very different from her situation. She had been a six-year-old child. He was a man, and he had always known how vulnerable his gentle cousin was—to Natasha and all the pain he would suffer through loving her. But not this—not his death as an accident, a nothing, the fall-out from the actions of someone whose target was not Aldo himself.

‘This should never have happened. Aldo had so much to give—especially to his country and its people.’

‘He wanted greater democracy for them,’ Giselle reminded Saul gently, not wanting to say outright at such a sensitive time that Aldo’s death had opened the door to the country taking charge of its own future, electing a government rather than being ruled by a member of its royal family. Talking about the future of the country without Aldo was bound to be painful for Saul.

‘I’m going to have to go to Russia—and the sooner the better,’ Saul told her abruptly, and explained when she frowned, ‘Distasteful though it is to have to speak of such matters, the fact remains that Aldo survived both Natasha and her father. Since the rule of law when there is more than one death in a family at the same time is that the youngest member of that family is deemed to have survived the longest, it means that by that Natasha, as her father’s only child, will have inherited his assets at the moment of their deaths. And that in turn means that Aldo, as Natasha’s husband, will have inherited those assets from her by virtue of the fact that he survived her.’

‘Does that mean that as Aldo’s only living relative those assets will now pass to you?’ Giselle asked. ‘I don’t like the thought of that, Saul. Not just because of the circumstances of Aldo’s death, and the fact that he has died so young. It’s the nature of the assets, the way they were accumulated. I feel that they are…’

‘Tainted?’ Saul suggested, and Giselle nodded her head. ‘I share your feelings, and certainly the last thing I want or intend to allow to happen is for me to have any personal benefit from that money. However, I have a duty to Aldo and to the country—to do what is right for them. It was thanks to Ivan Petranovachov’s bad advice that Aldo invested so heavily and unwisely in ventures that led to him losing a great deal of money. I know that I helped him out by clearing his personal debts, but the country itself is still heavily burdened with loans that Aldo took out, intending to use the money for the benefit of his people. Unfortunately most of that money ended up in schemes that benefited those who proposed them—many of them business associates of Natasha’s father.’

Giselle nodded. None of this was new to her. She was well aware of how angry Saul had been when Natasha had announced so smugly just after Christmas, when they had visited them, that she had insisted on Aldo ignoring Saul’s advice and turning to her own father instead. Aldo, sweet-natured though he had been, had not had a very good head for business.

‘What I plan to do first of all is speak to Natasha’s father’s Russian partners and business associates and find out exactly what the situation is. Then I’ll set about selling off the assets and using that money to clear Arezzio’s outstanding debts brought about by Aldo’s ill-advised investment of the country’s money in Ivan Petranovachov’s business enterprises. Anything that is left I intend to give to charity. Not our own charity. I don’t want that tainted by money wrung out of businesses that rely on cheap enforced labour—which is what I suspect many of Ivan Petranovachov’s businesses do. I shall speak to someone in authority at the Russian Embassy and ask them to recommend suitable recipients for the money.’

‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ Giselle approved. ‘When will we need to leave for Russia?’

Saul shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to come with me, Giselle.’

She tried to hide how much his statement upset her, but it was impossible for her to conceal her feelings. ‘We always try to travel together, and especially on an occasion like this, I want to be with you.’

To give him her support. Saul knew that was what she meant.

‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘and believe me there is nothing I want more than to have you with me, supporting me.’ He gave her a tender smile. ‘We work so well together. It’s thanks to you that we founded our orphanage charity, and that, as you know, has done so much to help me lay the anger and negativity I felt towards my mother to rest. But I doubt I’ll be well received by some of Ivan Petranovachov’s business colleagues. I don’t want you being subjected to any unpleasantness—or danger.’

Giselle’s heart thudded against her breastbone. ‘And I don’t want you to be in danger.’

‘I shall be very careful,’ he assured her. ‘But it will be easier for me to do what has to be done if I don’t have to worry about your safety. I won’t be gone long. Three or four days at the most.’

Giselle exhaled unhappily. What Saul was saying made sense, but they’d only just spent some time apart. However, she didn’t want to add to the burdens that Saul was already carrying at such a tragic and unhappy time by making a fuss and having him worry about her, as well as dealing with the complications caused by Aldo’s death.

‘I understand,’ she told him, unable to resist adding ruefully, despite her good intentions, ‘I just hate us being apart so much. You’ll have to blame yourself for that, for making me so happy.’

Saul smiled down at her. ‘That’s a two-way street, you know. You make me happier than I ever imagined I could be, and that only makes me feel even more guilty about Aldo. We both know that his marriage can’t have brought him anything like the happiness we share. There was never any real emotional commitment or closeness between him and Natasha.’

‘He loved Natasha but I don’t think she loved him in the same way.’

‘Our relationship is built on mutual honesty and trust. I know you would never conceal anything from me. I doubt very much that Aldo could ever have said that about Natasha.’

Giselle rested her head on Saul’s shoulder, her heart thumping with the guilt that thudded through her. She had kept something concealed from Saul. But it was nothing he needed to know, nothing that affected her love for him. In fact, if anything, what she hadn’t told him only made her love for him stronger and deeper, because their shared decision not to have children meant that what she hadn’t told him need not matter.

‘I love you so much,’ she told him now. ‘Our life together is everything I hoped it would be and more.’

‘I agree. You are the best, Giselle. You bring out the best in me. You are my love and my life.’ Saul drew her closer and kissed her, tenderly at first and then more hungrily. Life was so precious, and so was love, and the need to drive away the darkness of Aldo’s death and find comfort and solace in the act of love surged through him.

Giselle responded immediately, returning his kiss with her own desire. Sometimes actions and emotions did not need words or explanation.

Saul left for Russia the next day, after an early morning appointment at the Russian Embassy to discuss his plans and get approval for them. He had reassured himself that Giselle, who had woken in the night feeling unwell—the result of their rushed flight back to the UK and the shock of the assassination, they both agreed—was back to her normal self, even if her stomach did still feel rather delicate.

Their own affairs would have to be put on hold for now, Giselle knew. There would be Aldo’s funeral to arrange—a state funeral, of course, given his position. Natasha was to be buried with him, but the Russian Embassy had undertaken to arrange her father’s funeral.

Giselle decided to spend the time whilst Saul was away working on her plans for the island Saul had bought, the acquisition of which had originally brought them together. Saul had given the island to her as a surprise wedding gift, and they had decided that instead of building a luxurious hotel complex on it, as had been Saul’s original plan, the island would become home to a holiday complex for orphaned and deprived children. Giselle was in negotiations with various theme parks with a view to creating something very special indeed for those children.

Just one of the things that had deepened her love for Saul was the fact that he understood her need for their charitable work to be focused on children because of the death of her baby brother. She knew, of course, that nothing could bring her brother back to life, just as nothing could ever completely take away the guilt that she suffered, but she still felt driven to do something to help children whose lives she could do something to save.

Because of her baby brother…and because of the children she could never have?

Giselle pushed away the plans on which she had been working in the light-filled studio—Saul had turned the house over to her after their marriage, for her to reorganise as she wished, and the large double office and workspace she had created out of the original darkly formal and masculine library had delighted him as much as it did her.

The children she could never have for their own sake, for their safety when they were small and vulnerable, and for their ability to live their lives without the fear that had stalked her life once they were adult.

Had stalked hers? Was she sure that that fear was truly in the past? Of course she was. Saul had given her his love and his assurance that he did not want children, and her husband was above all else a man of his word. A man she could trust.

Giselle stood up, blinking away the sudden rush of tears that clouded her vision. Why was she crying when she had so much? When she had Saul’s love? When it was in part their shared determination not to have children that had bonded them together? Did she really need to ask herself that? Every time they visited the children supported by their charity, when she spoke to or held one of them, it made her ache to hold Saul’s child, but that could and must never be.

Her mobile rang. She looked at it, smiling when she saw that her caller was Saul.

‘It’s just a quick call,’ he told her. ‘Just to make sure you’re all right.’

‘I’m fine—what about you?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I’m getting through things, so it shouldn’t be too long before I’m back.’

‘I miss you,’ Giselle told him.

‘I miss you, too,’ was his answer.

After their call had ended Giselle promised herself that once all the formalities to do with Aldo’s death were over she’d suggest to Saul that they took a few days out together—not just to make up for the time they had lost in rushing back to England, but also so that Saul could mourn Aldo privately.

In Moscow Saul stared out of his hotel bedroom window. The deathbed promise Aldo had demanded from him still weighed heavily on him. Ruling Arezzio had always been the last thing he had wanted to do, and he had been glad that it was Aldo who had inherited that responsibility and not him. He loved the life he and Giselle had built for themselves, and he knew that Giselle did too. Just as the loss of their parents and their childhoods had left them both with the belief that they hadn’t mattered, that they had not been loved by their parents, had bonded them together, so had their shared enjoyment of their business activities. Their lives during the year of their marriage had focused on their love for one another and their duty to that love.

Now, though, he had another duty to consider. A duty that would totally change the way he and Giselle lived their lives and which would impose on them all the demands that came with taking on the mantle of hereditary ruler—the next in a long line of such rulers, father and son, over centuries of generations.

He would be glad to leave Russia—and not just because he missed Giselle. The behaviour of Natasha’s father and some of his business associates had left a bad taste in his mouth, and he had seen from his meetings with the relevant Russian officials that they shared his distaste for the manner in which Ivan Petranovachov had accumulated his vast fortune.

Around Natasha’s neck at the time of her death had been a necklace which Saul had been informed had belonged to the last Tsarina—a piece of such historic value that its rightful home was a museum. And yet somehow Natasha’s father had been able to gain possession of this piece. Saul had been glad to hand it over to the Russian authorities, tainted as it was by the fate of the Tsarina for whom it had been designed. He smiled to himself, knowing what Giselle’s reaction would be were he to tell her that he wished to commission a piece of jewellery for her worth a king’s ransom. She would immediately insist that he put the money into their charity instead.

Giselle. Saul felt an urgent need to be with her, holding her, feeling the living warmth of her in his arms as they made love.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SIGNS OF MOURNING grew as they drove towards the capital city of Arezzio: black flags bearing Aldo’s crest at half-mast on every lamppost, as well as hanging from the windows of so many of his people. It brought a lump of emotion to Giselle’s throat. She turned to Saul to tell him so, and then stopped.

Saul was not looking at her. He was looking away from her. She had known that Saul would be affected by his cousin’s death, but since he had returned from Russia at the beginning of the week, after their initial fierce and joyous reunion lovemaking, Saul had seemed to retreat from her into his own thoughts. At first she had put it down to his natural grief, but now she was beginning to feel that Saul was deliberately excluding her from his thoughts and feelings about the loss of his cousin. Whenever she tried to talk to him about Aldo he cut her off and changed the subject, as though he didn’t want to share what he was feeling with her. Why? Didn’t he understand that his refusal to talk about Aldo to her was making her feel shut out and rejected?

She reached for his hand, her movement causing him to turn and look at her.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he guessed. ‘What is it?’

Relief filled her, and with it gratitude for Saul’s perceptive awareness.

‘You’ve seemed so guarded and withdrawn since you got back from Russia, I was beginning to worry.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve been struggling to come to terms with what Aldo’s death is going to mean. It never crossed my mind that he might die so young, or to consider how that might impact on the future of the country.’

‘Aldo’s people will miss him,’ she said quietly. ‘I know that neither of us really approved of the way the country was run, with Natasha having such a strong influence on Aldo and when we both feel so strongly about democracy, but Aldo tried his best to be a good ruler. Natasha liked to complain that he put the country first, before her.’

‘That wasn’t true, of course, but Aldo did try his best to do his duty. It wasn’t his fault that Natasha was so determined to have her own way. Also, he believed sincerely in the right of the people to expect him to put his duty to them before everything else—just as he believed in the importance of the tradition of that duty being passed down through the generations.’

‘Your strong sense of duty and loyalty to those you care about is something you and Aldo share…shared,’ Giselle amended quickly, relieved when Saul squeezed her hand rather than looking upset because she had referred to Aldo in the present tense.

She felt much better now that they were talking about Aldo, about Saul’s feelings. Her childhood had left her with a fear of being excluded from the emotions of those she loved, and she suspected that it sometimes made her over-sensitive on that issue.

They had reached the palace now, where the Royal Guard was on duty, their normal richly coloured uniforms exchanged for mourning black, their tunics, like the flags, embroidered in scarlet and gold with the royal house’s coat of arms.

Tradition, like pomp and ceremony, could have a strong pull on the senses Giselle recognised as they were met from the car by one of Aldo’s elderly ministers, who bowed to Saul and then escorted them up the black carpet and into the palace. She tended to forget that Saul carried the same royal blood in his veins as his cousin—principally because Saul himself had always made it so clear to her that he had distanced himself from the whole royalty thing.

Saul had his own apartment within the palace, and Giselle was relieved that he had it, so that they could retreat to it after the ritual and ceremony of the public declaration of mourning that naturally dominated the atmosphere. Even the maids were dressed in black, and all the household staff looked genuinely upset by the loss of a ruler Giselle knew had been much loved, despite the fact that his gentle nature had made it next to impossible for him to stand up to both his wife and those who had wanted to use Arezzio for their own profit via a series of schemes that Giselle knew Saul had tried to dissuade Aldo from adopting.

‘Things will be very different here now for the people,’ she commented when she and Saul were finally alone in his apartment.

‘Yes,’ Saul agreed.

He felt relieved that, even though she had not said so directly, Giselle’s comments about the future of the country meant she was aware of the role he would have to take. He was grateful to her for not insisting on discussing it, and so giving him the space he felt he needed to come to terms with what lay ahead.

When he had given his promise to Aldo his behaviour had been instinctive and emotional. It had only been afterwards that he had truly recognised what that promise meant. Then he had balked at the burden Aldo had deliberately placed on him. He had even felt resentful and angry with his cousin, since Aldo had known that he had always been glad that his father had been the younger brother and he would not inherit either the title or its responsibilities. Those feelings had tormented him whilst he had been in Russia, and he had longed for Giselle to be there so that he could unburden himself to her.

Coming back here today, he felt that sense against hostility to the burden Aldo had placed on him burn very strongly in him. The weight of his responsibility to his cousin and to their royal blood weighed as heavily on him as the mourning that clothed the palace and its inhabitants.

Now, just by walking into his own apartment with Giselle, he could feel that burden lifting, the pressure of the decision he knew he had to make easing. Giselle’s calm and wise words about his inborn sense of duty had helped to guide him in the right direction.

‘The changes that will have to be made will benefit the people—even if right now they might not be able to see that,’ said Giselle. “We all loved Aldo, but the reality is that the country needs a strong and motivated leadership. Perhaps his death was fate’s way of saying that it is time for things to change.’

Saul was even more convinced that she had realised the impact Aldo’s death must have on their own lives. The knowledge comforted and strengthened him.

‘Have I told you how much I love you?’ he asked.

Giselle smiled at him in relief. He had seemed so preoccupied and distant, but now she could see that he was her beloved Saul again.

‘It was here that we first made love.’ He smiled at her and slid his hand beneath the soft weight of her hair to draw her closer to him. Giselle smiled back at him, but their movement towards one another was halted by a firm knock on the door.

Releasing her, Saul went to answer it. Giselle could see the black-garbed major-domo standing outside in the corridor, and Saul was inclining his head towards him to hear what he was saying, before nodding and then closing the door to come back to her. The warm intimacy had been stripped from his expression, and in its place was a shuttered grimness.

‘Aldo’s body will be lying in state in the cathedral from tomorrow morning. The major-domo says that I may pay my last respects privately now if I wish.’

‘I’ll come with you—’ Giselle began, but Saul shook his head.

‘No. I…It’s best if I go alone. You and I will be expected to open the official lying in state tomorrow. We can go together then.’

He had gone before Giselle could make any further objections. The door closed behind him with a sharp click, like an axe falling between them and separating them, Giselle thought uneasily.

There was a private underground passage that led from the palace to the cathedral, hewn out of the rock on which the city was built. The tunnel might now be illuminated by electric lights, but as he followed the major-domo Saul admitted that it wasn’t hard to imagine it lit only by torches as those using it moved down it with a potentially more dangerous and even sinister purpose at a time when the country had been besieged by its enemies and those who coveted it.

The country had broken away from the Catholic church at the same time as Britain’s Reformation, and now its religion could best be described as Protestant high church.

The Archbishop was waiting to receive him, his formal robes a touch of bright shimmering colour after the darkness of the tunnel and the mourning-shrouded castle.

The cathedral reminded Saul of a smaller version of Westminster Abbey. Above the high altar was a stained glass window, depicting the brave deeds of his ancestors before they ascended to heaven escorted by winged archangels.

Aldo’s white-silk lined coffin was in the centre of the cathedral. Aldo himself was dressed in the ceremonial robes of rulership. The smell of incense hung on the air like the words of prayer the Archbishop murmured before he and the major-domo retreated to leave Saul alone with his cousin.

In death, Aldo’s features had gained a stark dignity that made him look more severe than he had been. Such a gentle man, who had not deserved the cruelty of his fate. A man to whom Saul had given his word, his promise, that he would take up the yoke of rulership that Aldo had been forced to cast down.

Silently Saul knelt beside Aldo’s coffin. It was too late for him to change his mind. He had given his word. With that acceptance came a sense of relief and release, a lightening of the grim mood of resentment that had been gripping him.

Giselle had been right when she had said the country needed a strong ruler. There was so much that such a ruler could do for his people. He could provide them with the schools needed to give them a better education. He could make money available for them to study at the world’s best universities and then bring what they had learned back to their country. He could in time endow their own university, where those people could pass on to others their knowledge. He could turn his country from inertia and poverty into a powerhouse of creative energy. It was a project he knew would appeal to Giselle.

He could be the ruler Aldo had wanted him to be, the ruler he had promised he would be, but to do so he would have to turn his back on the life he and Giselle had created together. They would have to sacrifice its freedoms of choice for the onerous burdens of state and expectation, of tradition and ceremony.

Saul stood up.

The first thing Saul did when he got back to his apartments was take Giselle in his arms and hold her tightly.

He smelled of cold air and incense, Giselle recognized, and she felt his chest expand under the deep breath he took before he exhaled heavily.

She lifted her face to look at him, but he shook his head and then kissed her, a fiercely passionate and demanding kiss of such intensity that Giselle’s own emotions immediately responded to it.

He couldn’t trust himself to talk to Giselle about Aldo’s death, Saul recognised. The pain he felt at losing his cousin so unexpectedly and so shockingly held unwanted echoes of the despair and anger he had felt at the deaths of his parents, and with it came an awareness of his own vulnerability through those who mattered to him. If there was one thing Saul found hard to handle it was the thought of being emotionally vulnerable.

It was easier to act than to speak—easier to lose himself in a physical expression of the need he felt for Giselle’s proximity, for the comfort of her living, breathing presence. Easier to hold her and love her than to tell her how he felt. A man did not show his weakness, after all—not even to the woman he loved. Because she surely needed him to be strong for both of them.

It was like being new lovers again, or lovers who had been parted for too long, Giselle thought. Saul’s hunger for her was that of a man who had suppressed a need he could no longer control. It was arousing her and disarming her too, making her feel that nothing mattered other than their love. The sympathy she had wanted to show him, the comfort she’d wanted to give him, was expressed best via their physical commitment to one another. There was a wildness, a fierceness, almost a savagery about the way he touched her, groaning his pleasure against her mouth when he cupped her breast. His desire ignited her own, so that the silence of the room quickly became broken by the sounds of their need, the harsh gasped breaths, the rasp of hands on fabric, the moan of triumph or despair when a new intimacy was gained or denied by the barrier of clothes that their growing passion not only wanted but needed to cast aside.

This was not the lovemaking of a gentle, accommodating lover. This was the mating of a man’s most basic predatory sensual need, and a woman’s—his woman’s—hunger to meet that need, Giselle recognized, as Saul bared her breasts to his gaze and then his touch with a raw sound of triumph.

His hands on her flesh, his fingertips stroking, shaping and then erotically tugging on the flaunting arousal of her nipples, made her shudder convulsively in wanton pleasure. This was their desire for one another stripped bare to its most raw and sensual elements. This was need brought to a pure boiling point of intensity that was just this side of dangerous and starkly shocking.

A woman would have to trust a man completely to give herself over to such a consuming conflagration of desire. And she did, Giselle acknowledged, as she felt its heat burning inside her just as the heat of Saul’s touch burned her flesh.

‘Kiss me,’ she commanded him, knowing that she was walking into the heart of the fire, giving herself over to it and to him to do as he wished.

They were no strangers to the intensity of their own passion, their hunger for one another, but now there was another element to their lovemaking—or so it seemed to Giselle. As though death had honed and sharpened Saul’s appetite for life, and for her. There was an urgency, a need, a driven and heightened edge to their intimacy as Saul anointed and worshipped every sensual part and threshold of her body until he had tightened the sharp spirals of her desire to the point where she could bear it no longer, and she had to beg him to end her torment, to fill the aching, longing emptiness within her.

Her initial climax was sharp and immediate, but Saul drove them both on with deep passion-filled strokes within her that took her beyond her own experience to a place where her flesh clung to his for support during their shared journey just as she clung to him.

The cry that Saul uttered in the final seconds of their shared release seemed to Giselle to be wrested from the very heart of him.

Lying holding Giselle, whilst his heartbeat slowed back to its normal rate, Saul felt his own relief fill him. They were alive, and they were together. They had climbed the heights and plunged down from them together, their journey driving the dark bleakness of Aldo’s death from his heart and restoring to him his strength and self belief. Their lovemaking had touched his soul. But he couldn’t talk about how he felt. He didn’t want Giselle, whom he loved so much, to think of him as emotionally weak and unable to deal with everything Aldo’s loss meant.

Instead he must be strong. He must forge a future for them both out of the funeral pyre which would consume the plans they had previously made. He must prove to Giselle that he was strong enough to make that future for them. He must show her that she could trust him to take the burden fate had dropped onto his shoulders and lift it high enough to enable them to live a life as close to the one they had originally planned as possible whilst at the same time carrying the weight of the promise he had given Aldo. Until he had fathomed out for himself how best that could be done—until he could stand before Giselle and show her how it could be done—he wasn’t going to discuss the situation with her.

The last thing he wanted was for her to be burdened by anxiety and worry about the change in their circumstances. He might owe it to Aldo to keep his promise to him, but far more important was the duty of love and protection that he owed to Giselle.

Aldo’s death had changed their lives completely, Giselle herself would be aware of that, knowing as she did that he was Aldo’s closest living relative. She would know and understand that he was duty-bound to step into Aldo’s shoes, of course, since they had both always known that he was Aldo’s heir. Technically, yes. But neither of them had ever expected that Saul would be called on to fulfil his responsibility towards that duty. Why should they have done, with Aldo younger than Saul, and married to a woman who had made no secret of the fact that she wanted to bear the future Grand Duke? Fate, though, had had other ideas, and now it was his duty to take up the responsibility Aldo’s death had thrust upon him. With Giselle at his side, he would build a new life on the foundations his ancestors had set in place—not just for themselves, but for all those his promise to Aldo had brought within his care.

CHAPTER THREE

THE STATE FUNERAL, WITH all its sombreness and solemnity, was over, and Aldo had been laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum, Natasha at his side. Naturally as Aldo’s cousin Saul had been called upon to play a leading role in the proceedings, being with the heads of other Royal Houses and the representatives of other governments who had attended the funeral. And Giselle, as Saul’s wife, had also had her part to play—a part not so very different, really, from her role within Saul’s business as his wife and business partner.

Now those mourners had returned to their own countries, and two days after the state funeral Giselle and Saul were finally free to be on their own in Saul’s apartments.

‘Have I thanked you yet for all that you’ve done these last few days?’ Saul asked Giselle warmly as they sat together in the private courtyard of his apartment, enjoying the morning sunshine as they ate their breakfast.

‘You don’t have to thank me. I wanted to help, and in truth it wasn’t really any different from the socialising we have to do for the business—although I did feel a bit awkward at times, with so many of the royals who attended the funeral assuming that you would be stepping into Aldo’s shoes. I lost count of the number of invitations we got to visit their royal courts. Not that I would want to accept them.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.