Desire Has No Mercy (14 page)

'Lucie!' Julia wanted to be angry, but she relied too much on Lucie's kindness and goodwill to reprimand her for what she took to be the truth. Julia couldn't have borne for anyone to know the real truth, that it hadn't been love which had brought her into collision with Rome… that there had been no moon shining in a velvet sky and no whispered words of longing. He had collected payment for a gambling debt, and he had made sure of the interest rate!

'Were you terribly shocked, Lucie, when you realised I was having this baby and that its conception had taken place before my marriage to Rome?'

'It's no crime for a couple to want each other, and I'm not narrow-minded, miss. Mr Rome married you, and that's the main thing.'

'Do you really think so?' Julia couldn't help looking cynical. She had wanted Paul Wineman and the orderly, elegant life they would have shared, with none of the heated emotion which underlay her connection with Rome. She didn't love him, but because they were husband and wife she couldn't help but be suspicious of the life be led when he was absent from Domani. She resented his child inside her, yet she obeyed all the instructions given her by the obstetrician who came to see her once a month. She drank pints of milk and orange juice, took her vitamins regularly and combined relaxation with sensible exercise. She wanted the child to be healthy, but she was terrified of loving it.

Julia fought those kind of feelings and was determined to leave Italy as soon as she was able to do so. She wouldn't allow herself to feel guilty about leaving Rome and the baby, no more than he had felt guilty that morning in Naples, watching her leave his apartment with a slight smile at the edge of his mouth, as if he already knew that the humbling of Blanche Van Holden's granddaughter had only just begun.

'I'm going down to have my breakfast.' Julia made her way to the door, for if she stayed here another moment she would blurt out to Lucie that she hated Rome and was going to abandon the baby to him as soon as it was born. Lucie would do her utmost to dissuade her; she would underline words like motherhood and duty, and Julia fled from them in her own mind, hastening down the stairs to the hall.

When she walked out on to the sunlit
terrazza
she felt an instant clutch of dismay, for Rome was seated at the table, a newspaper spread open in his hands. When she neared the table she heard him utter an imprecation.

'That's a nice greeting, I must say!'

He glanced up from the paper and met her eyes. '
Santo Dio
, but it's annoying! Our team sat on a single goal against Holland when they should have attacked them for a few more.'

'World-shattering,' she murmured as she sat down.

'
Si
.' He inclined his head. 'Now Italy haven't a chance for the Cup.'

'What a catastrophe!' Julia poured coffee and added plenty of cream, then took a look under the lid of the silver warmer to see if Rome had left her any bacon. She always had a fancy for it when that morning queasiness wore off, and to her delight there were several slices of crisp fried bacon, a couple of sausages and little button mushrooms. 'Delicious!'

'Have some fruit first.' Rome was looking at her as he flicked a hand at a basket of golden medlars, plump nectarines and a couple of melons.

'A slice of melon,' she decided, and was reaching for it when he touched her wrist and fingered the gold gate-bracelet she always wore, with the little heart attached.

'Allow me.' He took the melon and cut it in half, scooped out the seeds from the socket and added a large spoonful of honey. As he placed the melon in front of her, his eyes flicked her sun-touched hair. 'You're looking very well, Julia. The baby doesn't trouble you in any way?'

'I always feel as if I could be sick when I first wake up.' She took a mouthful of the sweet juicy fruit and as she ate it was conscious of his gaze upon her lips. 'Lucie removes my pillows and makes me lie flat and still and the heaves gradually fade away.'

'It can't be very pleasant for you,' he said, with a touch of concern.

'None of this has been a picnic for me, Rome.' She took a bread roll, fresh and fragrant from the oven, and broke it in half. He handed her the butter dish and she noticed how brown his hand was in contrast to the creamy butter. She took a bite of the bread and remembered what Lucie had said, that she had a wholesome look and that Rome sometimes looked as if he'd like to bite her. Julia met his eyes and told herself it was the sun on her skin that made her feel suddenly hot.

'If men,' she said, 'had to feel sick each morning and go around looking like a lump, there would be a sudden drop in the population count.'

His lips quirked at the edge and his eyes held glints of sunlight that added to their brilliance in his lean Italian face. 'I would hardly say that you look lumpy,
mia
. You—you remind me of the way you looked when you were a small girl, your hair in a ribbon, a smear of jam on your mouth, pushing a cat about in a pram.'

'Really, Rome, don't get sentimental.' Julia didn't want him to refer to the days of their childhood, when they had both been innocent and she hadn't known why her grandmother said she wasn't to play with the cleaning woman's boy. She had liked his eyes and had wanted to sit with him on the smooth green grass and see him smile and dip his hand in her bag of jelly beans.

'Don't get hard, Julia,' he rejoined. 'You couldn't look as you do and be totally unhappy here at Domani.'

'It's a nice house.' She shook a little tomato sauce on to her bacon and sausages. 'I like swimming in the pool and lazing about in the sun and strolling in the garden. I do my very best to forget why I'm really here, though it becomes more difficult as your child fills me out a bit more each day.'

'It's our child, part of both of us.' He spoke decisively as he spun the wheel of his lighter and lit a cheroot, puffing the smoke away from the table so it eddied over the
terrazza
wall.

'You sound as if you've been reading some of Lucie's romantic novels,' Julia said, giving him a cool-eyed look. 'You forced me into this condition, Rome, but you can't take control of my emotions. I give your child a warm nest to lie in and, I hope, health and strength from your excellent cuisine, but I have no more affection for it than I have for you. Nature hasn't worked some alchemy and made me love my seducer.'

'Julia, for the love of heaven!' His eyes flashed with sudden temper through the smoke of his cheroot. 'I won't have that word at my table!'

'I know another, Rome, much more basic.' She carried sausage to her mourn and chewed it appreciately. 'I'm getting so fat that Lucie is going to let out seams for me.'

'There's no need for that,' he said. 'I can have some smart maternity outfits sent from Naples.'

'Why can't I come with you and choose them?' she found herself asking.

'Do you want to come?' His eyes had narrowed as he looked at her and she could actually see the tension of his shoulders, as if he were preparing to reject any real desire on her part to go with him.

'No,' she said indifferently. 'I prefer being here at Domani on my own, and there are such a lot of dresses in my wardrobe that Lucie, I assure you, will do more than let out a few seams. I hate maternity smocks and things, they don't really hide anything but make you look bulgier in other places. No, I'll stay here. I haven't any interest in what goes on at the casino, and as they say, two's company and three is none.'

'I beg your pardon!' His cheroot was arrested midway to his lips.

'You have good ears,
signore
, you heard what I said.'

'The full meaning of your remark escapes me, so please explain yourself.'

'You know very well what I mean, so don't quiz me.'

'I can guess what you're implying and I want an explanation.' He snapped his fingers. '
Pronto
!'

'Really, Rome, I'm not a naive fool—not any more.' She gave him a scornful smile. 'I haven't had the displeasure of your company at bedtime since we came here to the villa, so there has to be someone who provides you with your— fun.'

The instant she spoke Julia felt a stab of fear; he was so big and dark sitting there and the chalk-striped grey suit he wore added to his look of male power. Very deliberately he took a pull on his cheroot and drew down the smoke before releasing it from his taut nostrils, in that nerve-burning moment he studied her as if she were a gnat he was planning to squash. The sun gleamed on his thick dark hair, played over his features but couldn't find its way into the deep chin cleft. His face had a seriousness which made her accusation seem cheap and tawdry, and suddenly she couldn't bear his scrutiny a second longer and jumping to her feet she went to the wall of the
terrazza
and gazed down at the water, beaten silver in the sunlight, the beach meandering beside it into the distance.

'So you think I have a girl-friend in Naples,' he said quietly. 'Does the idea make you jealous?'

'Not at all,' she said. 'There could only be jealousy if I cared for you, and you happen to know my feelings. I don't care a fig what you do when you're in Naples so long as I don't have to be pestered by you. You can have a dozen girl-friends for all I care.'

'What if I had one here in Campania?' he drawled. 'What would you say to that, my dear?'

Julia locked her hands upon the wall, feeling the iron spears under her fingers, hot with the sun and cemented into the stone as a safeguard against anyone sitting on the parapet with its long, fateful drop to the beach and the rocks.

'Nothing you did would surprise me, Rome,' she replied, watching the glint of the sun on her bracelet. It made her think of the mother she could barely remember; the bracelet had belonged to her along with the gold heart neck chain which had been given to Verna. What, she wondered, would have been the course of their lives had their parents not been killed? Her mother had been English so they might have gone there to live and then she would never have met Rome Demario.

'But it would affront your dignity, Julia.' His chair moved on the flagstones as he stood up and strolled to where she stood, tall above her figure and the pale shine of her hair. He stood behind her and she felt him to the base of her backbone though he made no attempt to touch her.

'I—I hardly feel dignified any more, not with this constant reminder of you that I have to carry around. I wish it could all be over! I wish the days away, do you know that?'

'It's natural,' he murmured. 'I realise that the baby grows heavier and you are only a slender girl. His fingers touched her looped hair and moved underneath to the softness of her nape. The shock of his fingers on her was more than she could bear and she swung round in order to dislodge his hand, which slid to her shoulder and then to the contour of her breast.

'Don't!' she gasped, her eyes reflecting the shock that went through her body as he fondled her. 'How dare you?'

'I am your husband.' He smiled as he said it and that set a fierce little flame to her temper. She lashed out with her hand and caught him across the throat, making him catch his breath rather sharply. She drew away from him, the pupils of her eyes hugely dilated as she watched him massage the place she had struck. She had meant to slap his face but the blow had gone astray, finding one of the vulnerable parts of his strong body. Irrationally she wanted to say she was sorry, but the words wouldn't come… it really served him right for touching her… like that.

'A touch of Karate, eh?' His lip twisted into a brief smile. 'I wonder why you didn't try that in Naples?'

'It was just an unlucky blow—' She bit her lip. 'I wish to goodness I had thought of it in Naples!'

Rome merely looked at her, his eyes upon the swell of her body.

'Do you know what I wish whenever you leave this house?' She felt as if his eyes were seeing the actual strain upon her where his child was resting.

'That I shall drive off the highway and with any luck break my neck?'

'No! It's just that I wish you'd live at the casino a-and leave me in peace.'

'I see.' He quizzed what was left of his cheroot and deliberately crushed it out between his hard fingertips. 'Does my presence here so disturb you, Julia? Is that why you sometimes roam from your bedroom at night and sit on your balcony?'

'I—get restless when the baby moves inside me.'

'You never think to call me in—I might be able to help you sleep.'

'I call Lucie, thank you!' A flush stung her cheeks, for there seemed in his words a hint that he would make love to her and make her drowsy that way.

'And what does she do?' He raised a sardonic eyebrow. 'Talk with you about the days when you were a pampered little girl and I was the slum kid with his nose pressed up against the windows of your house on Grand Drive?'

'We talk,' Julia admitted, 'but not about you. I've tried not to shatter the romantic image Lucie has of you, Rome. It rather amuses me to listen to the superlatives about my husband and all the trouble he goes to making sure I have the best of everything in my delicate condition. I do believe that Lucie thinks I'm the luckiest girl alive to have such a handsome and thoughtful husband, but I know what you're really like, don't I,
signore
?'

'What am I really like, my dear?' He lounged against the parapet wall and with the sunlit sky behind him, his eyes became shaded by his black lashes and brows.

'A devil who trades on his charm,' she replied, and thought again how alike he was to that painting of the underworld lord who carried off Proserpina as she plucked flowers in a field.

'So you think I have charm—that at least is encouraging.'

'It's a natural perquisite of Italian men,' she rejoined. 'Look at your gardener!'

'I fear it doesn't come natural to me, looking at other men. Do you often look at him, my dear?'

'Why not?' She gave a flippant laugh. 'He's so obviously on show with his bare torso and his neck chain, not to mention his tattoo.'

'Julia,' Rome spoke her name softly, 'don't ever encourage the attentions of other men.'

'When I'm like this?' She swept an expressive hand down her figure. 'Don't you Italian people call this a state of grace, which makes me holy and untouchable except by—' She bit her lip. 'There's only one man whose attentions I sought and you—you made it seem as if I was one sort of person at the gallery, and another sort behind his back. You never gave me a chance to speak privately with Paul—'