Desire Has No Mercy (17 page)

'
Si, signora
.' Giovanni returned her smile in his rather grave way.

'The steps are quite safe now?' Lucie demanded.

Giovanni inclined his head. 'Tullio has been down to take a look and he assures me everything is in order. We wouldn't allow the
signora
to take any unnecessary risks, especially with the
signore
away from home.'

Rome had been gone for a week, but he had not been in touch to say when he'd be home. 'I expect he got tied up with someone.' Julia poured tea and looked indifferent. 'I'm grateful to you, Giovanni, for getting the beach steps in order.'

'The
signore
left his orders. Is there anything special the
signora
would like for lunch?'

'Just lots of nice tasty things, and one of those crunchy pickles I like. Cosenza will know.'

Giovanni allowed his lips to quirk. 'Cosenza will not forget the pickle,
signora
.'

After he had gone Julia handed Lucie her cup of tea. 'Oh, don't look po-faced, I've missed going down to the beach. It does me good down there. I get plenty of fresh air.'

'You be careful, miss. There'd be hell to pay—'

'Would there?' Julia stirred her tea and looked cynical. 'What do you imagine he's doing right now? Sitting in his office doing the accounts?'

'Very likely.'

'I just can't seem to shake your hero-worship, can I?'

'If he's done wrong, miss, he's doing his best to make up for it. I've seen that for myself—a lot of young women would envy you for having him, and living in a place like this.'

'I happen to think there are more important things.' Julia sipped her tea and her gaze rested broodingly on the shimmering surface of the pool. 'You loved your husband, didn't you?'

'My Bert?' Lucie smiled, and then sighed. 'He was a good, kind man and no doubt that's how he came to die, helping others and not giving any thought to his own safety. Yes, there's something special about loving the man you live with, I'll grant you that, Miss Julia.'

'There's none of that between Rome and me—you must have realised that weeks ago.'

'I know he sleeps in his dressing-room.' Lucie looked directly at Julia. 'Some men are proud, and if you've shown him that you don't want him—'

'He knows well enough that I don't want him,' Julia said tersely. 'We aren't married in the true sense of the word, so don't speak to me as if I'm under some obligation to be a proper wife to him. I'll never give in to him—I'll fight him to the last ditch!'

'You could regret that, you know.'

'The thing I regret is that everything is over between me and Paul, the other man I told you about.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. Paul wanted me as I was. He could never accept the fact that I've belonged to Rome and carried his child. He's too fastidious.'

'One of those, eh?' Lucie looked down her nose. 'The sort who likes to believe women are delicate ornaments rather than functional human beings. I reckon you've had a lucky escape, if you don't mind me saying so, miss?'

'I do mind!' Julia looked indignant. 'I happen to like a sensitive man.'

'Insensitive, you mean,' Lucie muttered. 'A woman is a very natural creature and she needs a man who accepts that she isn't always sweet and sunny but has her moods and a body that's at the mercy of old mother nature. Now Mr Rome likes women because they are women, not bits and pieces of Crown Derby to be put on a shelf in a nice arrangement.'

It was a remark Julia refused to find amusing, but for some odd reason she smiled over it as later on she made her way down the beach steps, the young gardener Tullio walking ahead of her carrying her picnic basket, a striped rug and several magazines.

The sun was hot and tawny like honey through glass, and the sea was littered with great globules of golden light, with silver trapped inside. Everything had a lazy air, and the meandering sands were patched gold and brown, the scattered rocks lapped by the water. Seabirds took languid swoops over the sea, their wings carved against -the blue sky.

'What a perfect day!' Julia paused on the steps to take in the scene, her nostrils tensing to the wild scents of everything. Tullio turned to look at her, and she thought that with his torso bared to the sun and his black curly hair he looked like the wild god Pan.
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, and breaking the golden lilies afloat
. She smiled and his white teeth flashed in answer to her. In that moment she understood what Lucie had been getting at. Italian men more than most seemed to have an earthy reverence for all that was part of nature, and it was there in Tullio's dark eyes as they moved over her body. She could see his bold approval of her, a woman pregnant with an Italian baby.

He then said something in Italian, unaware that she understood his words. 'A pretty woman should not be alone on a beach but should have the company of a man.'

For an instant Julia was tempted to reply to him in Italian, and then decided that he might think she was inviting his company. It wasn't that she feared Rome's disapproval, it was her realisation that she felt rather lonely and would have liked to share her picnic lunch with someone friendly and uncomplicated. But it wouldn't do to invite the gardener to lunch. The others working in the villa wouldn't understand or approve, and she didn't want to hurt Maddalena's feelings.

When they reached the sands she politely thanked Tullio for carrying her basket and rug. 'I shall be fine just here. You go and have your own lunch.'

She saw the little expression of regret in his eyes, as if he had hoped that she might ask him to stay. 'Go along,' she smiled. 'Maddalena will be waiting to have lunch with you.'

'
Si, signora
.' He inclined his curly head and the sun glinted on the religious medallion he wore. He and Rome were about the same age, she realised, but there was a worldliness about her husband that made him seem more mature than Tullio. It was probably his American upbringing and the kind of people he mixed with at the casino, and as she watched Tullio mount the steps in long strides she wondered if Rome would have been like him had he been born in Campania and taken to the soil for a living. She tried to imagine Rome in such circumstances, but inevitably the image was obscured by the vivid reality of another… Rome in a white dinner-jacket, wrenching loose his tie in reply to her accusation that he was a lowdown gambler. 'Right,' he said, 'let's see how you like being brought down to my level, my lady!'

Julia stood a moment staring at the sea beyond the arching groin of rock through which it swept back and forth in relentless motion, then shaking her head as if to clear it of images she laid her beach rug in a wedge of shade from the overhanging cliffs. She knelt and smoothed it out, feeling the little drag on her body where the baby lay curled inside her. A warmth stole over her skin, rising out of the neckline of the thin cream tunic she wore with a rust-coloured skirt which Lucie had altered.

Julia didn't want to think about Rome, but there was no chance of forgetting him the way she was. She would have liked to take a dip in the sea but could no longer get into her swimsuit… unless of course she went in nude. A smile tugged at her lips and she glanced around her. The beach was entirely private to the villa and from here she couldn't be seen from the
terrazza
… again she glanced at the sea and the longing to feel the creaming water on her limbs was too much for her.

Quickly she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, then removed her shirt and underwear. She gave her brassiere a wry look; it was two sizes larger than she normally wore and had been bought at a store in the village. Having a baby, she reflected, made a woman feel as if her body was being taken over by some lordly little creature who expanded it for his own use.

She stood there in the down-pouring sun and an almost sensuous feeling stirred through her body, and then she was running towards the sea, her hair bright and free about her bare shoulders. She ran into the sea from under the big groin of rock, gasping at the thrust of the water as it lifted her off her feet and turned her on her back, so that instinctively she opened her arms and moved her legs to the motion.

How good it felt! She was buoyant in the water, her body light and free again. She swam with smooth strokes, loving the silky coolness on her skin. Never in her life before had she swum without a suit, and now she understood why Rome never wore one.

She knew he didn't, having watched him in the pool unobserved, nothing on his body but the dark hair that lay like silk on his skin when he climbed out of the water and stretched himself on the sun-hot tiles. He would roll over lazily as the sun caressed every inch of him, just like a tawny tiger. 'Swim with me,' he had invited her, but she always refused, and he shrugged his shoulders as if it didn't really matter to him if she gave him her company or withheld it.

He knew there were other women who would welcome him in a pool, or in more intimate places. He had probably been aware since puberty that he had sensual appeal for women, and Julia knew that if it hadn't been for the baby it would have suited him to remain unmarried. He didn't have that air of wanting to be settled that some men had, and some nights he would prowl the garden court, a cigar glowing at his lips, and the following morning he would say at breakfast that he had to go to Naples. It was as if he felt caged up in the villa and needed the bright lights of the casino, the sound of the croupiers at the tables, the excited laughter of women who staked everything on the turn of a card or the spin of a ball on the roulette wheel.

It all went through Julia's mind as she swam until she was pleasantly gratified and ready for her lunch. When she came out of the water the sun was so warm that her body was dry before she reached her niche under the cliffs. She wrung the water from her hair and combed her fingers through its damp strands. Her hands travelled down over her neck and bosom, wiping oft the salty bloom until her skin was supple and glowing.

She felt so good and couldn't confine her sense of freedom. The sensible brassiere was crammed out of sight in her raffia bag, and all she put on was her cream tunic which came to her thighs. She would wear her skirt later on when she returned to the villa.

She sat down on the rug and opened her lunch basket, which contained a salad, slices of cold chicken and ham, a wedge of cheese pasta, a crisp-looking pickle, fruit and a flask of creamy coffee. She sighed with contentment and tucked into the food, watching the sea as it creamed in and out of the big groin of rock.

The sands were resilient and soft as velvet between her toes, and as she licked pickle juice from her fingers Julia wished that time could stand still and the peace she felt could be suspended. She didn't want to think about the future and its problems; right now she wanted to pretend she was a teenager once again, sheltered and protected by her grandmother. How innocent and romantic she had been; she had truly believed that love could be as beautiful as the theme for Tristan and Isolde… as the words that Romeo spoke to Juliet when she leaned from her balcony.

Julia lay on her rug, her slim legs stretched out so her feet were in the sand. Her senses were lulled by the sea sounds; a sensuous drowsiness was seeping, through her body and the beach was hers, a great soft bed that cradled her and soothed her off to sleep. Her bright tousled hair lay spilled across the rug, her cheek rested on a curved arm, and the hem of her tunic revealed the slim honey smoothness of her legs. She looked vulnerable, lost in her dreams, unaware of the birds that came pecking the crumbs from her lonely lunch. The sea moved in its ceaseless motion, splashing the rocks and crooning to itself. Overhead the sky was cerulean shot with the gold of the sun, stroking warm across Julia's feet and winking in the green gem on her outflung left hand. Her fingers were partly buried in the sand, as if from the weight of the rings, the wide gold band that glistened richly, and the emerald which she had removed once or twice and been firmly told to replace.

A bird fluttered as in sleep Julia shifted her position as if to ease her own weight on the centre of her body. Then she settled into stillness again, and now her left hand lay against her body, lustrous green lights shifting in the emerald to the rise and fall of her breathing.

The air was filled with the tang of sea-wrack and ozone when she awoke, bemused and still half-dreaming. The sun was starting to go down and the sky was beautiful, unearthly, but all Julia was aware of was the male figure lounging on the sand above her reclining one. A cabana jacket lay unbuttoned against the brown firmness of his chest, open to the belt of his trousers.

A whiplash of fear curled through Julia's blood. Nerves fluttered in the pit of her stomach.

'W-what are you doing here?' The shafting sunset seemed to drain colour from her skin.

'My dear wife, you say the most amusing things.' His lips twisted into a smile and he touched her face before she could evade him. 'You have such poignant cheekbones and I can see the sunset in your eyes.'

Julia gazed up at him with the dilated eyes of her surprise at seeing him. 'When did you get back?'

'About an hour ago. I had a bite to eat, then I thought I'd come and say hullo to you.' His eyes slid down her figure. 'You were sleeping like a baby, so I waited until you awoke naturally. I've missed you,
cara mia
.'

'Really?' Julia felt herself go tense. 'I can't imagine that you went without feminine company while you were a whole week in Naples. It would go against the grain where you're concerned.'

'Would it?' He stroked a strand of hair behind her ear, where his fingers lingered, their tips against her earlobe. 'That goes to show how little you really know me.'

'I know you!' His touch was disturbing even though it was featherlight, but she wouldn't pull away from him in case he resorted to a more definite kind of caress. 'Even while you were away a woman was writing to you, no doubt a love letter as it was written on scented mauve paper. They can't leave you alone, can they?'

He smiled down at her, his teeth glimmering against his dark skin. 'Does it worry you,
mia
? Don't you like it that other women write to me, on scented mauve paper?'