Sienna shook her head, while he pressed the box towards her until it would have been churlish not to raise her hands and accept it. ‘But it was your mother’s. Shouldn’t it go to your sister?’
‘Open it,’ he urged. She gasped as the case snapped open, revealing the stunning jewels within, gemstones of every hue and shade, suspended at intervals from a diamond-set necklace.
‘It’s beautiful,’ was her first reaction. ‘I can’t accept this,’ was her second. But he was already on his feet, taking the necklace from its setting and fixing it at her throat. She put a hand to the precious piece, the jewels feeling heavy and cool against her skin, whereas the brush of his fingers felt warm at her throat, but all too light and all too brief.
He sat down again, the fire in the gems reflected in the flames in his eyes. ‘They suit you.’ And then, ‘did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?’
She dropped her eyes. ‘Carmelina chose it.’
‘It’s not the dress,’ he said. ‘It’s you. You look radiant.’ He lifted his glass to her. ‘Here’s to you, my future bride, the mother of Montvelatte’s future.’
She trembled, the responsibility of the title he’d just bestowed upon her feeling like a leaded weight. ‘Look, Rafe, I haven’t actually agreed to marry you yet.’
He frowned, her words clearly taking him off guard, before reaching over the table to take her hand. ‘What choice do we have? Soon you will start to show. Do you want this marriage to look like some shotgun wedding?’
Like her parents’ perchance? His words cut through the goodwill they’d built tonight like a scythe, sharp and deep, reopening old wounds and laying them bare. ‘If I did agree to marry you, why shouldn’t it look that way, when that’s exactly what it is?’
‘I prefer to call it a marriage of convenience, for both of us.’
‘And I call it like I see it. You may not be holding a shotgun to my head, but you might as well be. What choice have you given me?’
Candlelight flickered in his dark eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe coming out tonight was premature and you are not yet ready to see sense.’
‘As you are not yet ready to see my point of view!’
He sighed and leant back in his chair, throwing his napkin down onto the table. ‘And what is your point of view? That you can go on your merry way carrying two royal babies and somehow continue your life as a helicopter pilot as if nothing had happened?’ He cursed under his breath and stood, signalling to the waiter for the car to be brought around.
She remained exactly where she was and jagged her chin up higher. ‘I don’t know any more. Two babies—I just don’t know. But I do know that whatever you call it, a marriage between us will have no chance of success while we remain virtual strangers. Look at our conversation tonight, we don’t know the first thing about each other.’
For a moment his jaw looked so set she thought he might just turn and leave without her, and then he breathed out on a sigh and folded himself into his chair again, nodding. ‘Si. You are right. I am rushing you. Would a month be long enough, do you think?’
He was giving her a month to decide? She rolled the proposal around in her head, looking for the catch but happy to take any concession going given the way she’d been railroaded up until now. ‘That would certainly help.’
It did help. Rafe had Sebastiano rearrange his diary to free up his evenings over the course of the next week, taking her to the opera, to the opening of a play and countless magnificent dinners overlooking the lights of the city or the harbour or sometimes even both. They were photographed wherever they went, a buzz around them whenever they were spotted, and while Sienna knew there would be pictures in magazines and articles written about them, she wasn’t uncomfortable with the attention. She’d made no commitment to him. She had her month and she had the time to get to know Rafe better.
At every event, Sienna was reminded of what it was that had put her under Rafe’s spell from the very beginning. He could be so utterly charming, his attention focused one hundred per cent on her and her alone, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. She’d missed that attention, especially lately. Missed the feeling that she was special for herself. And all the while he’d been the perfect gentleman, never pushing her for so much as a kiss, even though there were times she saw his need in a glance or in the tightness of his movements, like he was trying to keep it in check. She appreciated it. They’d known each other’s bodies before they’d known the first thing about each other. Now they could redress the balance.