‘And what might they be?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She screwed the lid back on the mayonnaise. ‘Like what kind of childhood you had?’
If anyone else had dared quiz him about something so personal, he would have dismissed it as an outrageous imposition—but Cathy had a soft way of asking which was hard to resist. ‘It was a childhood in two halves,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The first bit was idyllic—and then my mother died.’
Her heart went out to him—because didn’t she know only too well the pain of that? ‘And everything changed?’ she prompted quietly.
‘Totally. My father was utterly bereft.’ He stared at the ceiling. The depth of his father’s grief had taught him the dangers of emotional dependence as well as the temporary nature of happiness. ‘And then he turned all his attention into grooming my older brother to succeed him, as King. It meant a lot of freedom for me—so I was able to concentrate on my riding. That’s when I first started to learn about polo.’
Cathy experienced another wrench of sympathy—because too much freedom for a child could sometimes mean loneliness. She tried to imagine Xaviero as a little boy, doubly bereaved in a way—first by his mother’s death and then by his father’s withdrawal. And while she knew all about bereavement, at least she had enjoyed a close relationship with her great-aunt. ‘And your brother is now King,’ she said.
‘That’s right. My father died last year and big brother is now in charge,’ said Xaviero, a sudden edge to his voice. ‘Busy modernising Zaffirinthos with his sweeping reforms.’
But Cathy wasn’t interested in sweeping reforms—she wanted to see the island through her lover’s eyes. ‘And is it very beautiful?’ she asked. ‘Zaffirinthos?’
‘Very beautiful,’ he murmured. But somehow her questions made him realise how long he’d been away—and reinforced his sense of exile. He had not returned since his brother’s coronation, for reasons which were essentially primitive and guilt-inducing. Boyhood rivalries ran deep as blood itself, he thought grimly—and hadn’t there been a part of him which had always resented the accident of birth which had ensured that Casimiro would inherit the crown? Power was easy to come by, and Xaviero had built up his own power-base through his own hard work—but no one could deny the lure of ruling a country…
He realised that Cathy was still looking at him, her aquamarine eyes searching his face as she waited for him to paint the perfect, holiday-brochure picture of his paradise home.
He shrugged his shoulders. Well, he would give her the brochure version. Why not? He would be her fantasy prince in his fantasy land and that could be the memory she would keep of him. ‘It has forests so green that, like Ireland, it is known as the emerald isle. And the best beaches in the world, with sand as pale as sugar. And we have a bay with the bluest water—even bluer than your eyes, cara—where the rare caretta-caretta turtles come to lay their eggs on summer nights so still that you can almost hear the stars shooting across the sky.’
Cathy looked at him and couldn’t suppress a little sigh of longing. His lyrical words painted pictures, yes—but also helped create an image of the man she wanted him to be. One who was romantic, and caring. Would it be too much to hope that he cared a little bit about her? Hadn’t he just compared her eyes to the bluest sea and then called her ‘darling’ in Italian? How easy it would be to read too much into a simple remark like that—perhaps imagining that he wanted more from her than just being his willing bed-partner. ‘It sounds…it sounds like paradise,’ she said wistfully.
‘Oh, it is,’ he agreed evenly, because he knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted him to say that he would take her there. Was she building little fantasies about visiting the magnificent palace, perhaps—mistakenly imagining that she might have some place there? In which case, she should be very careful not to confuse fantasy with reality.
‘But you know, of course, that I can never take you there,’ he said softly, and, reaching out, he pulled her down onto his lap.
On one level, of course she had known that—but on another, she had hoped… Cathy bit her lip. She had hoped for what every woman in her situation would hope for—no matter how foolish that hope. And why had he made that completely unnecessary statement, which necessitated her asking a question she didn’t really want to ask? Suddenly, she found herself on the defensive.
‘Why not?’
He lifted her chin with the tip of his finger. ‘Because my people would never accept me openly flaunting a lover there. They are less accepting of modern sexual manners than you are here.’
‘They would look down on me, I suppose?’ she questioned shakily.
‘Cathy,’ he appealed. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Because, of course, it’s always the woman who takes the blame, isn’t it? They would never dare to think that their darling Prince might have something to do with it.’
‘That,’ he said warningly, ‘is enough.’
Her lips were trembling. ‘All right, it’s enough. And actually, I’m pretty bored with the subject myself!’
‘Well, you’re the one who brought it up.’
‘And you’re the one who spoilt it.’
‘Are you aware,’ he questioned silkily, ‘that if you spoke to me in such a way in the presence of others you could be accused of gross insubordination?’
Pull yourself together, Cathy told herself fiercely, banishing her foolish longings and pressing her lips hungrily to the base of his throat instead. ‘You could—but only if I were your subject,’ she objected as she inhaled his raw, masculine scent. ‘Which, of course, I’m not.’
As he laughed Xaviero felt his irritation dissolve, acknowledging that her native intelligence was surprising. And in a curious way she could have almost held her own when compared with other women he had bedded—all of them more high-born than her.
He had slept with heiresses whose own fortune could almost have matched his and he had slept with super-models whose rangy bodies and exquisite features had graced countless glossy magazines.
Once, he had even dated an Oscar-winning English actress and had watched from his hotel suite while she had tearfully—and rather embarrassingly—accepted the award and dedicated it to ‘the only man I have ever loved. The other man with the golden eyes.’ The press had gone crazy when they had worked out just who she was referring to. Later that night, they had made love beneath the metallic gaze of the statuette and a week later he had told her it was over—that public declarations of love had never been on the agenda.
But, out of all those confident and accomplished women, none had spoken to him with quite the same sunny simplicity as Cathy. It perplexed him—and he was not a man who did perplexity. Was it because her whole life had been spent in service that she seemed totally without guile or expectation? Or was it because she had been a virgin, and he had taken her innocence that she was so eager to be moulded by him?
He could see her looking at him questioningly, and he stroked at her silken hair. ‘Who’d have thought,’ he murmured, ‘that a couple of weeks of intensive sexual tuition could make a humble little chambermaid such a perfect partner in bed?’
Cathy’s smile didn’t slip. She told herself not to react. That he probably wasn’t intending to insult her. To concentrate instead on the way he made her feel when his fingers were stroking sweet enchantment over her skin. Anyway, perhaps he couldn’t help it—maybe that arrogance was inbuilt and part of his unique royal make-up. Maybe princes from Zaffirinthos were expected to be arrogant. Far better to accept him for who he was and not try to change him. Why spoil what was never intended to be anything other than a brief, beautiful liaison? ‘Who’d have thought it?’ she agreed.
‘So