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'I would not!' she flung back at him, 'I feel nothing but contempt for you that you'd accept my father's money '

His fingers bit into her arm, causing her to cry out, but he paid no attention to her distress. On a rising tide of panic she saw that he was now every bit as angry as she. He dragged her into the study, where she had so recently been talking to her father, and slammed the door behind them.

'What makes you think I would accept a penny from your father?' he demanded, his face no more than a few inches from her own.

'Why would you have kidnapped me otherwise?' Her eyes misted and she would have liked to have looked away, but he held her so tightly she could not. 'Michael was paid five hundred pounds to nanny me while I was in Rome—how much were you paid?'

'Not one lira!'

'I don't believe you! Why else should you go to so much trouble -'

'Very reluctantly, to begin with,' he told her. 'I don't usually waste time on the daughters of my business acquaintances, but your father asked only that I should make sure you came to no harm while you were in Italy and I could scarcely refuse such a request.'

'You didn't have to keep me a prisoner in your home!'

'That was my pleasure,' he said, with a slow, sardonic smile. 'I liked the thought of you being my prisoner.'

What Deborah would have said, she never knew, for the telephone bell rang insistently beside them. With-

out letting her go, Domenico reached out a hand across the desk and picked up the receiver. Deborah listened to the flood of Italian that was exchanged between him and the unseen woman at the other end of the line.

'Bene
, Flavia,' he said at last.
'Viene ad un cocktail questa sera?'

Deborah couldn't tell whether his invitation had been refused or accepted. 'Who is Flavia?' she asked as he put the receiver back on its cradle. 'Isn't Alessandra enough for you?'

'Do you object to my having other girl-friends on her behalf, or on your own?'

The question slowly permeated Deborah's consciousness, followed by a wave of humiliation that he should ask her such a thing. 'You can keep a whole harem for all I care!' she retorted briskly.

'Alessandra wouldn't care for that at all,' he drawled, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her. 'And nor would Flavia. That leaves only you, Deborah Beaumont. What ideas you do have,
piccolina! Dio mio
, but you tempt me to make you tonight's favourite. You would not say no to me for long!'

'For long enough!' Deborah declared, but she didn't believe it herself, so why should he?

'My
dear little Deborah, deceive yourself if you must, but you don't deceive me!' There was a distinct gleam in his eyes that unsettled her.

'I don't know what you're talking about!' she denied. She tried to rid herself of the tight constriction in her throat. 'I'm not your prisoner now that my father is here, so you can't force me to anything!'

'Bravely said!' he admired.

'Can you?' she insisted.

The pressure of his fingers on the small of her back set her heart thumping against her ribs. 'Shall we find out?' he whispered against her cheek.

'No!' She was overtaken by panic.

'No? Then confess that you would like me to and I'll set you free!'

'I won't be bullied!' she snapped.

'Of course not,' he said at once. 'I'm only asking you to tell me the truth, that you are not the indifferent English rose you have been busy pretending to be.'

'And how will that help?' she sighed.

'It would be a beginning, Deborah. I'm not asking more than that for now.'

'But a beginning of
what
? Alessandra '

'Forget Alessandra! This is between you and me. Well, Deborah?'

'You have behaved abominably!' she berated him. 'For all you knew I might have been scared out of my wits, thinking I'd been kidnapped and—and so on!'

'And so on?' he taunted her.

'No girl would have felt safe '

'Did you suppose I would seduce you while you were under the same roof as my mother and sister?'

She opened her eyes wide. 'How am I to know what you're capable of? I wasn't to know that you were only acting as my father's lackey! You might have had any number of reasons for kidnapping me!'

His hands tightened on her back. 'I am not and never have been your father's lackey! '

'No?' she retorted, glad to have found a stick to beat him with. 'Then why did you keep me here? I was quite all right with my friends!'

'Perhaps I don't approve of your independent ways any more than your father does,' he said quietly. 'It was time you grew up, Deborah Beaumont, and became a woman, and you were not going to do that junketing around with your friends. You would have found yourself in time, I have no doubt, but I wasn't prepared to wait. England can be as far away as the moon if you are a busy man with as many commitments as I have. Do you understand now?'

'I suppose I do, but there doesn't seem to be much future in it. You see, I won't—I
can't
' She broke off, aware of the impossibility of explaining to him that she couldn't see her way to becoming his mistress when he had yet to ask her to enter into any kind of relationship with him.

'You underrate yourself!' he said dryly. 'Don't you know how much I want you, my love?'

She shook her head. 'It wouldn't do! I hate to sound like Alessandra, but you have your family to consider '

'I thought you liked my family?' he protested.

'I do!'

He frowned. 'I agree there will be difficulties, but nothing that can't be overcome. Is the Roman nobility such a frightening proposition to you?'

'Of course not!' She smiled a rather wavery smile. 'Where ignorance is bliss, I suppose! You see, I don't know much about it. Only that you attend the papal court sometimes '

'On increasingly rare occasions. There used to be a great deal of protocol involved, but nowadays most of the old rituals have been cleared away—and a good thing too!'

'But there are some occasions when you still attend the Pope, and I shouldn't like to be hidden away from him as though you were ashamed of me—and you would be obliged to leave me behind, wouldn't you?'

'In the beginning,' he agreed. 'I admit I hope you will one day want to join me in the practice of my faith '

She winced. 'What have the rituals of the black nobility to do with that?' she demanded.

'Very little,' he admitted carefully. 'One likes to do what one's ancestors have always done, but'—and he smiled at her, causing her heart to lurch within her— 'I would willingly give up those few minutes of glory for you!'

'But your family will suffer!' she sighed.

'My mother has never enjoyed such displays,' he reassured her. 'She feels that even today women are not precisely welcome in the Vatican. She will be on your side,
amante
, it is I who will be the one to suffer her displeasure if I leave you alone too often!'

She thought he was joking. 'I don't believe your mother is as unconventional as you want me to think. She may not feel the same as Alessandra about her faith, but I'm sure her sense of tradition is equally great. She wouldn't approve at all of your giving up any of it for me.'

'You think not? I have always found her a great one for compromise and I had hoped you were the same. You haven't anything against my faith, have you?'

Deborah dismissed that as lightly as she felt it deserved. 'Of course not! But this isn't a question of faith, is it? This is a family matter. How could you go on as before if you were breaking all the rules! I wouldn't feel good enough for you like that, and my pride wouldn't let you hide me away either, so how could we possibly be happy?'

'Could you ever be happy away from me?' he countered.

He was very sure of his ground. She could feel it in the caress of his fingers against her back and could see it in the confident set of his head.

'I was happy enough before I ever met you,' she said.

His air of command was very hard to withstand. 'You're a different person now;' he said in her ear. 'You've grown up, little one, like a single lovely rose coming into bloom. Could you bloom like that for any other man?'

She shrugged her shoulders, knowing in her heart that he was right. 'A few clothes!' she scoffed. '
And
paid for by my father! I'm still the same me inside them.'

'They're not paid for yet,' he reminded her. 'And I did quite well with you before I took you shopping, I seem to remember. If I were to kiss you again, you would not go on denying you were made for me, I am thinking!'

Deborah clenched her fists against his chest. 'That isn't kind! Domenico, I have to go away from you! Surely you see that?'

He let her go so suddenly that she was afraid her knees might give way under her and she sat down quickly on the nearest chair. He had his back to her and she couldn't see what he was thinking. How could she bear to go away and never see him again?

'What about the bust you are going to do of me?'

his voice broke across her thoughts. 'Won't you need to see me for that?'

'I'll send it to you '

'You will not! You will sculpt it here in the palace or not at all! Well,
piccolina
, which is it to be?'

'That isn't fair!' she exclaimed.

'No, it isn't,' he agreed promptly. 'Haven't you a saying in England that all is fair in love and war? If you won't stay with me of your own free will, this is both!' He took a step towards her chair, standing over her, his eyes narrowed as he surveyed her. 'Shall we go and choose the marble together tomorrow?'

She nodded her head, glad he had taken the decision out of her hands for the moment at least. She looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. 'When I've finished it you'll have to allow me to give it to you!'

He was keeping his temper on a very short leash and she was more than a little afraid that she had pressed him too far.

'I think it better we should decide our relationship on a day-to-day basis,' he said at last. 'Tonight you will attend my party as your father's daughter and meet my friends. Tomorrow, I shall take you to the quarry to choose the marble. The day after—who knows? But the day after that, my darling, you will have to make up your mind to end the battle between us. If you won't come to me willingly, then it will have to be unwillingly, but come to me you will!' He bent his head close to hers. 'You will not be unwilling for long, I promise you that!'

His kiss was angry and demanding and, when she tried to pull away, his arms closed about her, holding her a prisoner against the hard frame of his body and the excitement that she always felt when she was close to him flared into life, kindling her own desires with a sure touch.

'Domenico,' she began. 'I can't think when you Please, won't you be gentle with me '

'Then, by God, you'd better come willingly, for I mean to have you one way or the other. You have my word on that!'

He kissed her again, but the anger had gone out of him and she felt his tenderness like a living flame between them, warming her and building up the fires of her passion until she could think of nothing and no one but him and of the love she bore him.

When he lifted his head she felt only a sense of loss. 'The day after tomorrow, my sweet, can't come quickly enough for me,' he said, 'but you'd better go now and get ready for the party. I may forget my promise to you otherwise!'

Deborah went in a daze, filled with a mad hope that he would keep his word and would find some way to keep her with him, but halfway up the stairs common sense prevailed and she knew she would have to leave both Italy and him long before then. If she couldn't be his wife, then there was nothing else for her to do but go, even though it should break her heart. She was sufficiently her mother's daughter to want all or nothing—but, dear God, she hoped she would be strong enough to bear the desolation that would go with her.

Dressed in one of her brand new dresses, she felt a stranger to herself on her father's arm. She had thought it was to be a fairly small party, but the palace was already crowded with people and although she had been faithfully introduced to every one of them she had no idea who the half of them were. All she had been aware of was the naked curiosity with which they had greeted her, coupled with an unexpected desire to please her that had bewildered her father almost as much as it had herself.

'Do you suppose they think I'm somebody else?' she whispered to him.

Her father surveyed the crowded room with satisfaction. 'Beaumont's must be more important in Italy than I'd thought. I'm glad you came after all, my dear. I always knew Domenico Manzu was a useful contact, but he's certainly coming up trumps this evening.'

'I don't think that's why Domenico gave the party,' Deborah put in, disliking the idea with a violence that could only dismay her.

'Why else?' her father grunted. 'He would hardly have given it for you, now would he?'

'He might,' she said.

Her father looked quite shocked and then thoughtful. 'Are you getting sweet on him?' he asked with his customary lack of tact. 'Because there's nothing for you there, my dear. His family will see to that! These old European families are far more sticky than our own aristocracy and when it comes to marriage they never look outside their own ranks. They're unbelievably jealous of all their old traditions. I suppose it comes of living in a republic where no new nobles can be created.'

Deborah said nothing. She had known it all for herself, of course, but she found it all the more lowering to hear her father confirm her worst fears. It made Alessandra seem a more suitable wife than ever. With relief she turned away from her father to Gianetta, looking suddenly beautiful on the arm of her fiancé.

'Where is Alessandra?' she hissed at her.

Gianetta shrugged. 'Who cares?'