Desire Has No Mercy (10 page)

Julia stood poised at the head of the stairs, gazing down the long sweep of them to the hall. In a romantic novel she had read at charm school the heroine had fallen down a flight of stairs and lost her baby… she had wanted it and the husband had been the one who didn't care. Julia put out a hand and gripped the stair rail. It was crazy to compare real life with fiction, and much as she wanted to be free of Rome she didn't fancy a broken neck in the process.

One hand on the rail and the other holding the long skirt of her dress Julia descended the stairs with the unaware grace she had possessed even as a child. She had a natural air of composure which had always masked her hurts and bruises, and the only time she had cried in front of others had been at Verna's party… the memory was still so vivid, of a boy uninvited to join in the fun and games because he was the cleaning woman's son. Proud and fierce, he had flung her offering of ice-cream at her feet and when it splashed her shoes and white socks she had burst into tears. Maybe that was why her grandmother had been that extra bit angry, seeing her in tears when she so rarely gave way to them.

Lost in her thoughts, Julia arrived at the foot of the stairs to find the object of her memories waiting there, and as always it was confusing to find the intense boy lost in the tall worldly man. Her eyes locked startled with his as she stood poised on the final step to the hall. His lean face was shaven except for the darkness of his sideburns and she felt deep inside her a movement, a spasm, as if within the womb his child reached out to him.

It was unsettling and as if he sensed this Rome reached out and took hold of her hand. As he did so his eyes moved up and down her figure in the velvet dress.

'You,' he murmured, 'are a lovely thing to see.'

'So you've already informed me,' she said coolly.

'Not in so many words, my dear.'

'Your eyes do the speaking for you—they always did.'

'I'm a grown up man now, Julia. If you gave me ice-cream now I wouldn't throw it back at you.'

A warmth ran over her skin, for he gave the words a sensual meaning; her fingers tensed within his, but she only managed to pull her gaze from his. His dinner jacket was a deep aubergine colour, superbly tailored to his lean hard figure. Julia noticed the fine quality silk of his shirt and tie, the way his tapered trousers fitted without a crease. He was straight like a Guardsman, but with a supple, animal ease that Julia felt in him as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and walked her across the hall and out upon the wide
terrazza
at the rear of the villa.

It overhung the sea like the prow of a galleon, and was balustraded by a fretwork of iron. A circular table was set with fine china and silver on lace and so still was the night that candles had been lit in silver sticks. There were big terracotta pots against the parapet wall, in which flowers of various sorts spilled over the sides. Lanterns shone here and there on the terrace and shadows lit mysteriously a few remnants of Roman statuary.

Over all hung the scent of the sea, and overhead the moon was awesomely full, like a great golden pendant attached to a string of diamonds, the stars that paled to obscurity beside that glowing orb.

'What a night!' Rome exclaimed. 'Do you know that line of Browning's, "Open my heart and you will see graved inside of it, Italy"?'

'I can see that America could never hold you,' Julia replied. 'You're an Italian in every cell of your body, aren't you? Looks, instincts, roots! You belong
here
, but I don't.'

'A woman learns to adapt, Julia. Women are good at that because their roots can re-establish themselves in the man rather than the land.'

'That remark is so arrogantly male,' she rejoined. 'As if without a man a woman is rootless.'

'Most women are, my dear.'

'And what do you call a man without a woman?'

'A damned fool.' Rome's grey eyes were moonlit, and amused as they met hers. 'There isn't any part of a man that doesn't get pleasure from the woman he wants to be with. All his senses are involved… what he sees, touches, breathes, hears and speaks to. A woman pleasures the possessive instinct in a man.'

'And yours is particularly potent, isn't it, Rome?' She slid into the chair and was very aware of him standing over her, her spine tensing as she felt his hand slide over her hair.

'Yes, I like the feeling of being the owner of fine things,' he agreed. 'I like it very much that you have elegance and class, like this Versalini goblet.'

He picked up the goblet, which had graceful patterns in the glass and was set on a shining stem. He moved it about in his fingers by the stem and there was a faint smile on his lips, and then abruptly his eyes met Julia's as he struck a fingernail against the crystal and it made a ringing sound. 'Aren't you going to thank me for the surprise you found upstairs?'

Julia touched the necklace. 'It's very nice, thank you,' she said politely.

His fingers tightened on the stem of the wine glass and she stared fascinated, for his fingers were strong enough to snap it. 'By God, Julia, I could take you by the neck when you put on that milady air of yours and don't really care a damn if I gave you nothing. Other women—'

'Yes,' she broke in, 'what would other women do? Lick your shoes?'

'Not my shoes, Julia.'

She flushed and had an image of another woman in his arms, held milky-pale and yielding against the tawny gold skin, her lips moving in sensuous kisses over his body. There was no doubt in Julia's mind that what she imagined had often been a reality. The warmth in Rome's skin went deep into his flesh and bone and he would always have needed the touch of a woman. She remembered how his mother used to look when she brushed the tousled black hair out of his eyes after he came back from running an errand, or had been helping old Jeffers in the garden. There had been pride and love and a hint of fear in Mrs Demario's eyes, as if she had known that the force of life would be powerful in her son as he grew up to be a man and there would be no way she could keep him safe from women and danger.

Both had been attracted to Rome, and Julia knew it as she watched him replace the lovely wine glass on the lace tablecloth.

'I wasn't thinking of the necklace,' he drawled.

Julia caught her breath as comprehension struck her. 'You mean Lucie?'

'Of course I mean Lucie.' He strolled round to his own chair, beside which stood a stand with a silver bucket holding a bottle of wine. He withdrew the bottle from the ice and took a look at the label, nodded his satisfaction and sat down. 'Are you pleased with her, at least?'

'Oh yes.' This time there was fervency in Julia's voice. 'I was so surprised to see her after all this time—what made you think of asking her to come to Italy?'

'I thought you would like with you someone you had known as a child and trusted.' He caught and held Julia's gaze across the table. 'I know it isn't easy for a girl when she's having her first baby. You will have need of the good Lucie. She's kind and sensible and she knows your little ways better than anyone. She was probably more of a mother to you than your tartar of a grandparent, who always looked as if she was locked body and feelings into whalebone.'

'Grandma was good to Verna and me. It was a great shock to her when our parents were killed on that safari during the Kenya uprising. It wasn't until I grew older that I learned about the Mau-Mau and what they did to white people who fell into their hands.'

'I know.' His face went sombre. 'Put it out of your mind,
carina
. Don't be haunted by it.'

'In case I damage your child, Rome? I've heard that one about beautiful thoughts making beautiful babies, so I'll think about that night in Naples instead.'

'
Santo Dio
!' He banged a hand down on the table and shook the china and stemware, and made the candle flames quake in the silver sticks. 'Can't we ever enjoy a meal without a mention of Naples, and what you like to think of as my animal lust?'

'It's why I'm here,' she retorted. 'I don't happen to prefer a dinner a
deux
with you to being with friends of my own choosing, whose company I find congenial.'

'You no doubt have the aesthetic and courtly Paul Wineman on your mind.' Rome raised his left eyebrow in a sardonic way. 'I'll permit him to be there, but elsewhere is my province. Quite frankly, I couldn't imagine that he'd know what to do with a woman if he ran out of artistic conversation.'

'Don't judge Paul by your standards,' she rejoined. 'Machismo isn't everything in a man—some women find it a bit of a bore.'

'Not those I've known,
donna mia
.'

'Dance hall girls and silly women who bet on bad numbers?'

'By the saints—' Abruptly he laughed. 'They should have named you Kate, not the sweeter name of Julia, which sounds like Juliet.'

'Romeo and Juliet!' It was her turn to laugh. 'They should have named you Tarquin!'

The amusement fled his eyes and suddenly they were like hot steel in his dark face. 'I didn't pounce on you in the dark, my dear. You asked for a levelling when you called me lowdown. I don't take that kind of talk from anyone, least of all from a Van Holden. Didn't you realise, you little fool, that you had those IOUs almost in the palm of your hand? I was going to give them to you after I'd made you plead a little, but you had to let me know how superior you thought yourself. Superiority has no defence against nature, has it, Julia? It got the better of both of us for I'm usually in better control of that kind of situation.'

'Meaning?' She flung up her chin as she looked across at him.

'Meaning, my dear, that I don't usually get the girl into trouble. You must have gone to my head.'

'Your head, Rome?'

He stared at her and she heard the catch of his breath. 'Watch out, Julia, or you might become human.'

'It's because I'm darned well human that I'm stuck with you!' She forced her gaze from his and glanced over to where those remnants of statuary caught the moonlight on their pale stonework. 'I—I hate bits and pieces of stone torsos, but you Latins seem to find them fascinating.'

'Mainly because sculpture was quite an art in Italy and Greece.' He broke a breadstick and crunched it. 'Michelangelo thought the male body one of the supreme creations, but I take the opposite view. The touch of a woman by soft lamplight is comparable only to perfect pizza and hot melting cheese—ah, and here comes Giovanni with some of that good Italian food!
Che bello
! It smells good!'

Julia felt her own hungry response to the appetising
pasta e fagioli
which was served to them in earthenware bowls, a soup crammed with chopped vegetables and spaghetti, thick, spicy and hot. Chunks of home-baked bread were placed on the table and the chilled wine was poured into the Versalini glasses.

'I know what you're thinking.' Rome gave her an amused look. 'Posh wine glasses with peasant soup bowls, eh? Maybe it's a combination which typifies the Italian, com his lusty appetite with his eye for beauty. Go to the opera at La Scala and you will see Italians as enthralled by
Tosca
as by the salami in their sandwiches.'

'Italian opera is very schmaltzy,' she said.

'So is
Tristan und Isolde
, and the
Liebestod
.'

'Do you go often?'

'Occasionally to the San Carlo, if I'm in a romantic mood.' He raised his wine glass and studied the wine through the patterns in the crystal. 'This is called a Lacrima Cristi, the tears of Christ, and the grapes for it are grown on the slopes of Vesuvius. You have to admit, Julia, that we Italians have a flair for drama.'

'I'd be the last to deny it.' She took a sip of the wine, which had a creamy, slightly biting sweetness. 'Not that I've ever known many.'

'Then knowing me will be quite an education for you,
mia
.' He broke bread and bit into it with his firm white teeth.

'You lived in the States all those years,' she said wonderingly, 'and yet no one would take you for anything but an Italian. You've reverted to type absolutely and could have been born here rather than there.'

'We invariably spoke Italian and ate this kind of food. I attended Mass each Sunday with my mother—not that I pretend to be religious in the sense that I abide by all the rules of our church. Maybe I enjoyed the ritual.'

'You must surely believe in hellfire and damnation,' she murmured.

He narrowed his eyes at her and the candle flames made a frame of shadows about the boldness of his face. 'Meaning?'

'Well, you aren't exactly sinless, are you, Rome? Unless, of course, you go to confession.'

'I do go, on occasion.'

'When you're feeling in a guilty mood?'

He made no reply but just looked at her across the candlelit table, while in the silvered garden the
cigales
chirred in the cypress and ilex, and the blue trees as he had called them.

'You're a pagan,' she said. 'You feel no guilt about me, do you?'

'None,' he agreed shamelessly. 'I'd have hated my own guts had I left you to go and have an instrument used on your body. There are men who do that, but I have a sense of responsibility. Grant me that at least,
donna mia
.'

'You have a sense of ownership,' she retorted. 'Tell me, Rome, what makes you so sure I'm having
your
baby?'

'Of course it's mine!'

'Can any man say that with total certainty?'

'I can say it because I know you, Julia.'

'You knew me as a child, but we met in Naples as adults.'

'I was adult,' he tipped wine into his mouth, 'but you were just a more grown-up version of the little girl. You were quite innocent.'

'Yes, until I met you I was innocent,' she agreed. 'When I returned to New York I was a different person—and Paul was there.'

Rome laid down his soup spoon very carefully and she saw the candle flames reflected in his grey eyes, intensifying their dangerous beauty. His lashes and eyebrows looked night-dark in contrast, and Julia felt the heavy beating of her heart as he raked those eyes over her face, her neck, down over the velvet-covered curve of her breast.