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Sofia held her breath and prayed. And her prayers were answered. There was no engagement, the Austrian princess vanished from the scene and eventually the rumours died.
Over the years Sofia had never been conscious of saving herself for Damiano, but perhaps without realising it that was in fact what she had done. For she had never had a real boyfriend, never even been kissed. Sexually, she really had been totally inexperienced when, four and a half years ago, tragedy had struck and Damiano had suddenly found himself in need of a wife.
At just fifty-nine years old, his father was killed when the helicopter he was travelling in crashed into a mountain. And within the month, years before he’d expected to succeed, Damiano was being crowned in Rino Cathedral. He was a popular successor but one vital thing as missing. He was unmarried with no heir and that had to be put right.
At the time it was common knowledge that he’d been seeing a lot of Lady Fiona, the glamourously beautiful daughter of a local count, and that he’d actually been doing a great deal more than just seeing her—that he and the lovely Fiona were madly in love and for the past eighteen months had been having a passionate affair. Would Fiona be the one to become his duchess? people were asking. And again Sofia held her breath and prayed. Though she was being foolish, she told herself. Even if he didn’t marry Lady Fiona, he would still marry someone else. He would never marry her.
But then the strangest thing happened. A couple of months later she was invited with her parents to a private dinner at the palace. And at the end of it Damiano, who had been most attentive to her all evening—so attentive that she had scarcely managed to eat a bite—took her out onto the terrace and there, beneath the moonlight, told her, ‘I think it would be really nice if we could get to know each other better. What do you say, Sofia? How would you feel about that?’
Sofia was almost as tongue-tied as on that previous occasion. She blushed to her hair roots. ‘I’d like that,’ she answered. And she stared hard at the. ground, not daring to meet his eyes.
After that there followed a brief, intense courtship. Dinners together. Outings in public. And rumours quickly spread that she was to be the one. But she still didn’t really believe it, for she knew he didn’t love her. So she was totally stunned when, three months later, he proposed.
Her reaction made him smile. He looked down into her shocked face and gently reached out to touch her cheek with his fingers.
‘I appreciate that what I’m asking must seem a pretty daunting prospect. The role of Duchess is an important and extremely demanding one, though I know my mother will help you all she can. But I think you can do it. You’ve lived most of your life close to the palace. You know how things work. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’
He looked into her face with those dark eyes that could melt her soul. ‘I really would be very pleased if you’d agree to be my wife.’
Sofia looked back at him, struggling for composure. It had sounded more like a job offer than a proposal of marriage. Not one word had he spoken of his personal feelings for her or of what he expected their relationship to be. But somehow that didn’t matter. She already knew he didn’t love her. But she loved him. And something else she was very sure of was that he was the only man in the world she would ever want to marry. So she took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’
I’ll make him love me, she vowed to herself. I’ll make him love me as I love him.
The wedding took place in Rino’s splendid Gothic cathedral once the official one year mourning period for the old Duke was over. And it was a glorious occasion, with the twenty-year-old Sofia looking perfectly exquisite in a fairy-tale wedding dress, wearing a tiara that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother, and with a look of blissful happiness in her wide grey-blue eyes. That day she felt she must be the luckiest girl in the universe.
They flew to Sicily for their honeymoon and stayed in a hilltop castle belonging to one of Damiano’s relatives. And Sofia could clearly remember how excited and terrified she’d been when they’d set off for that honeymoon.
She was a virgin, of course—one of the reasons, after all, that Damiano had chosen her to be his bride. And until that night when they found themselves alone together in the big vaulted room with the vast canopied bed Damiano had never done more than chastely kiss her. She stood there frozen, her mouth dry, her heart hammering. She wanted him. She longed for him. But she was desperately nervous. Would she do it all wrong? Would she disappoint him? Would it hurt? Did he really want her anyway?
‘Come here.’
He was standing in the open doorway to the balcony, the starlight in his hair, making it glisten like polished jet. And he held out his hand to her and smiled at her gently.
‘Come here,’ he said again. ‘I want to kiss you.’
Sofia walked towards him as though she were walking on water. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of feeling in her legs, or in any other part of her rigid body, come to that. But then he took her hand and kissed it and slipped his other hand round her waist and, as he drew her towards him and she felt the strength of him enfold her, every inch of her suddenly burst into flames of desire.
‘Don’t be afraid, Sofia. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ He released her hand and tilted her chin and delicately, unhurriedly bent to kiss her mouth. ‘I want you to enjoy this. I want it to be special.’
She looked up into his eyes, drowning, drowning. God, how I love him. How I love him, she thought. And she smiled a nervous smile.
‘That’s better,’ he said.
Damiano kissed her again then, her face, her eyes, her hair, and as she began to relax a little she laid her hands on his shoulders, then let them slide round to the back of his neck. She felt the dark hair brush her fingers and a jolt of pleasure stab through her. Suddenly her fear was slipping away, excitement growing in its place.
And that was when, at last, he took hold of her more firmly and kissed her as she had only ever dreamed of being kissed. Fiercely. Hungrily. A kiss that blazed with passion. And she found herself responding, clinging to him, gasping, tight spirals of desire twisting in her body.
‘My sweet Sofia.’
His hand was on her breast now, moving lightly, sending a rain of brightness through her. Suddenly all the fear inside her had vanished. She was filled with a bright, hot need that must be satisfied.
He was leading her towards the bed, undoing the buttons of her dress. Then he was slipping it from her shoulders, letting it slither to the floor, and quickly discarding his shirt before laying her on the coverlet.
‘You are beautiful,’ he told her, making her heart swell with happiness, for there was nothing she wanted more in the world than to please him. And she could see from the dark look in his eyes that she did. At least he desired her. That much was plain enough.
And she desired him. Every inch of her ached for him as she reached up her hand to caress his broad chest, letting her fingers slide quiveringly over the taut muscles of his shoulders, feeling the strength of him, longing for that strength to overwhelm her.
He stripped her naked, never hurrying, discarding her garments one by one, inviting her to do the same with his. And all the while he was whipping up her senses with deep, hot kisses and intimate caresses that grew ever more fiery, ever more urgent. Desire licked through her, making her limbs tremble.
‘Damiano! Oh, Damiano!’ she whispered, pressing against him. How I love you! she added silently. Please love me in return!
When the moment came he was swift and sure and gentle. As he entered her, Sofia felt a quick, sharp shaft of pain. Then it was over and he was a part of her. As she clung to him and kissed him, every inch of her was flooded with a sense of pure, exquisite joy.
And that was when she knew she would love him all her life. He was part of her now and nothing could change that and her love for him would be the glorious centre of her life.
The first couple of months were marvellously happy. He still didn’t love her, but he seemed to have grown fond of her and their sex life was wonderfully, greedily satisfying.
‘You’re going to wear me out,’ Damiano would sometimes tease her. ‘Wouldn’t you ever just like to read a book or something in bed?’
And she would laugh and tease him back, turning away from him, ‘OK. No making love tonight. I’m going to catch up on my Shakespeare.’
‘The devil you are!’ He would grab her then and kiss her as they lay there naked in the big four-poster bed. ‘You can catch up on your Shakespeare once I’ve finished with you, young lady!’ And he would take her breast in his hand, teasing the nipple. ‘Though I’m afraid that may not be for quite some time. I can tell this is going to be another long session.’
‘Is that a threat or a promise?’ She would press against him, shivering, her heart tightening with excitement as she felt him harden.
‘It’s a promise.’
‘How do you know? Maybe I don’t want a long session. Maybe I really do want to catch up on my Shakespeare.’
‘OK, then. Go ahead.’ And he would pretend to release her. But even as she clung to him and moaned in protest he would be kissing her and turning her moans of protest into breathless, excited moans of pleasure.
And Sofia would sink back against the pillows in surrender, losing herself in the cascade of sweet sensations that went tumbling over her in great drenching waves of pleasure.
The secret of their glorious sex life was really very simple. Neither of them, quite frankly, could get enough of the other.
Less than three months after their wedding, however, a second tragedy struck that rather took the edge off their happiness. Damiano’s mother died. Of a broken heart, it seemed, for she had never got over the death of her beloved husband.
Damiano was devastated. Coming so soon after the loss of his father, the loss of his mother affected him badly. And though Sofia tried to be there for him she felt inadequate, almost useless. What could a child like her offer him? She was only twenty, after all. And it seemed to her that they started to grow a little apart at that point.
There was something else too that was starting to trouble her, for Sofia had hoped she might get pregnant very quickly. She had always wanted to have lots of children; besides, Damiano needed an heir, and, more than anything, she longed to give him one. Especially now, after the tragic death of his mother, for surely it would help to ease the pain of his loss. It might also, it occurred to her, have another happy side-effect. It might bring them closer together again.
But the months went by and nothing happened and she grew more and more upset, though Damiano assured her, ‘Don’t worry. There’s no hurry. There’s plenty of time. Just put it out of your mind and, you’ll see, it’ll happen.’
But she couldn’t put it out of her mind and it didn’t happen. Suddenly she began to feel like a horrible failure.
And it was around that time that she heard the first stirrings of the rumour that Damiano was seeing Lady Fiona again.
Sofia ignored these tales. The possibility that they were true was a horror so huge that she dared not even look in its direction. Instead, she focused on Damiano. On trying to please him every way she could, in bed and out of it, desperate to make him love her. And then—miracle!—it seemed at last that the power to do so was within her grasp. Just thirteen months after their wedding, she finally became pregnant.
That was a wonderfully happy time. Damiano was ecstatic, and so sensitively caring and so gloriously proud of her. Sofia felt herself blossom. It was all going to be all right now—a fact which seemed secure when a scan showed that the child was a boy. How could he not love her now, when she was about to give him his precious heir?
During her pregnancy he made love to her with less and less frequency, though Sofia kept assuring him that the doctors had said it was all right.
‘I don’t want to take any risks. This baby is too precious,’ he told her. ‘And so are you,’ he added, kissing her. ‘Let’s just err on the side of caution.’
Very well. Sofia accepted that. There would be plenty of sex later. And she felt a thrust of perfect happiness at the thought of all the joys the future held. Soon they would be a real family with a lovely little son. It was as though the stars had dropped down from heaven and kissed her.
But then all that changed. Another wave of rumours reached her concerning Damiano and Lady Fiona. They stopped her in her tracks. She wept for days, but said nothing. And then she found proof in his waste-paper basket.
She flung it at him in fury when he returned to their apartments that evening after a day of official duties.
‘I would like you,’ she spat at him, fighting back tears, ‘to kindly explain the meaning of this!’
Damiano picked up the crumpled fax with infuriating calm. Glancing down at it, he demanded. ‘Where did you find this, if I may ask?’
‘I found it in your office waste basket! That’s where I found it!’
‘And what were you doing in my office rummaging through my waste basket?’
Sofia glared at him. The truth was that she’d been looking for evidence, praying with all her heart that she wouldn’t find it, after storming down to his office late that morning to question him about where he’d been the night before. For he hadn’t slept with her and, when she’d gone to check, she’d discovered that neither had he slept in the room along the corridor that he sometimes used these days, since the advancement of her pregnancy, claiming that when he came home late he didn’t want to disturb her. But when she’d arrived at his office to demand some answers his secretary had told her he was out on an appointment, so, in fury, she’d searched first his desk then his waste-paper basket.
But she didn’t tell him that. Instead, furiously, she told him, ‘It doesn’t matter what I was doing! All that matters is what I found! And, if you don’t mind, I’d very much like you to explain it!’
Damiano said nothing for a moment and a look crossed his face that fleetingly suggested he was far from in agreement that it didn’t matter why she’d been rifling through his waste bin. But another look instantly replaced it, a look of sharp concern, as he took stock of her flushed and agitated face.
He stepped towards her. ‘Sofia, sit down,’ he told her. ‘You shouldn’t be standing there like that.’ For she was half leaning against the back of one of the armchairs, her weight awkwardly balanced, as though she might topple over.
He took hold of her arm. ‘Come on. Sit down.’
Sofia tried to push him away and very nearly did topple over. And that made her feel worse. Tears sprang to her eyes. She was like a great ungainly whale these days, now that she had reached the eighth month of her pregnancy. Not like Fiona, who was slim and svelte and sexy!
‘Leave me alone!’ she started to protest. But he had already caught firm hold of her and was lowering her, whether she liked it or not, into the safety of the armchair.
Then he sat on the arm and took her hand in his, though she clenched her fist tight and would not look at him.
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