Desire Has No Mercy (6 page)

A bride, she knew, was expected to look starry-eyed, but when she gazed at herself in the mirror of the powder-room she saw that her eyes were shadowed within the frame of her lashes and the arch of her brows, which were naturally darker than her hair. The only radiant thing about her was the emerald on her hand, shooting its green fire as she ran a comb through the wings of hair that smoothly up-curled on her shoulders.

Julia wondered what Verna's reaction had been when she received in Paris the wire which informed her that she was now related by marriage to the Italian gambler who she innocently believed had presented her with the IOUs which could have had an adverse effect on her own marriage. Verna might find the situation rather romantic, Julia thought, seeing reflected in the mirror the cynical twist of her lips, but her husband and his family would hardly be delighted. A man such as Paul Wineman would have suited them as an in-law, but not Rome Demario. He was so obviously foreign and involved not in law, banking or the arts, but in a more blatant form of commerce.

Julia recalled the women she had seen playing at the casino, heavily painted, the sparkle of their jewels rivalling the gambling lustre in their eyes. It wouldn't trouble Rome's conscience if such women lost money at his tables, but Julia found unforgivable the way he had used Verna in order to lure herself into his trap.

That was what her marriage felt like… she was so firmly caught in the trap he had laid that there seemed only one way of escaping from it, and that was to try quite deliberately to lose this child he had set his heart on.

She placed a hand on her midriff, pressing upon herself until she felt the slight swell that betrayed the presence of the infant. Rome was the only one who wanted it… the spoils of the battle fought in the luxury of his bedroom above the gaming rooms of the white-stoned casino set in a palm court on the Neapolitan waterfront.

Rome had said that when they arrived at the Villa Domani she could swim and ride; both were energetic activities and this was her first pregnancy. Being a man he probably didn't realise that a first baby was more easily lost than a second or third, especially if the mother was psychologically opposed to bearing it.

Julia dropped her compact and comb into her handbag, smoothed the jacket of her suit, and emerged from the powder-room. As she made her way back to Rome there was a defiant little flame burning in her eyes. She heard the intake of his breath when she pressed past him into her seat; he had caught the scent of her freshly applied face powder and as she sat down Julia smiled quietly to herself. He was vulnerable in his own way, this tawny Italian with his southern sensuality, and the next time they battled he would be the one who got wounded.

Lunch was served and Julia suddenly found that she was hungry. She tucked into butterfly steak with baby peas, potatoes and gravy. She enjoyed the individual pudding with syrup which followed, and had two glasses of red wine. She was aware that Rome sat there looking suavely amused by her appetite, a lazy droop to his eyelids. He made no comment, but when coffee was served he remarked to the stewardess that his wife had very much enjoyed me cuisine on board the aircraft. Julia noticed the way he said 'my wife', a definite note of possessiveness in his voice.

'That's nice to know, sir.' The girl's eyes flicked Julia's hair and face and the orchid on the lapel of her suit. Her gaze dropped to the emerald which sparkled its facets on to the smooth suiting, and it was obvious to Julia that she was envious and would have liked to be possessed by a man whose looks and style made him seem the epitome of Latin charm.

'When is touchdown?' he enquired.

The girl glanced at her wristwatch and said they would be landing at Naples in exactly one hour and twenty-five minutes. 'I'm pleased you've enjoyed the flight, sir. Will you be returning to New York?'

He smiled and shook his head. 'We have a villa in Campania and at this time of the year it's very pleasant there. The sea is very blue and it will be good for my wife to get away from the tall buildings of her native city, where to me the air always feels as if it's been put through a pressure steamer. I couldn't live anywhere else but in Italy.'

'It is very exciting.' The girl was looking at him as if she really meant that he was. 'Things Latin do have that certain charisma.'

'Do they?' He drew Julia's left hand towards him and enfolded it in his own. 'I wonder if my wife agrees with you? Do you, my dear?'

He looked into her eyes and she gave him back a cool look. 'Whatever you say, Rome. I know Italian husbands like to have their opinions supported and their instructions obeyed. It oils their ego and makes them smooth, I expect.'

The stewardess looked as if she didn't know whether to disapprove of the remark or smile at it. Her eyes went automatically to Rome, as if to take a lead from him.

'My wife has a droll sense of humour.' His expression was sardonic. 'She's also a little shy and likes to hide her feelings from people. I'm the only one permitted to know exactly what she thinks of me.'

'I'm sure she thinks you're—' The girl broke off, blushing. 'If you want more coffee, or anything,
signore
, just give me a call. I'll be only too happy to oblige you.'

'I'm sure she would,' Julia laughed softly when the stewardess moved away to attend to her other passengers. 'That girl would love to be sitting here cuddled up real close to you. She thinks you're a charmer, with loads of machismo and such perfect manners. You really know how to put on a good act, don't you, Rome? With your talent for charm and your dashing looks you should have gone to Hollywood and taken over where Tyrone Power left off.'

'You're such a sweet-faced bitch, Julia.' He said it with a smile, and bending over her put a kiss against her cheekbone. 'For the benefit of the stewardess,' he murmured. 'She's determined to believe we're a very romantic couple.'

'If I'm a bitch, Rome, then take the credit for it.' Julia gave him a cool look, but his lips had left their warmth against her skin, reminding her of other kisses he had made her accept, of being helpless in a pair of arms whose bronzed strength could still send shivers up and down her spine. Her eyes dwelt on his shoulders in the grey suiting that was tailored smoothly to their power. Alone at the villa with him she would have little defence against whatever he desired of her, and neither her reluctance nor her lack of affection would prevent him from having his way with her, no more than they had done at the casino.

Julia looked into his eyes and saw the devil fires burning there, lit long ago from his boyhood rage and now a hundred times more inflammable in the adult Rome Demario. She tried to remember the boy he had been, but the memory was lost in the man he had become.

'Will you really enjoy being married to a woman who hates you?' she asked, with a cool politeness.

'It could prove to be a fascinating experience,' he rejoined. 'It will provide me with the task of taming you, won't it, my lovely? After all, what fun is there in having a filly who accepts the bridle without kicking up her heels? And what kind of challenge is there in a sea without unpredictable currents and high tides? You know me for a gambler, Julia. I enjoy staking my bet on an outside chance.'

'And do you always win?' she enquired.

'Some of the time.' He drew his fingers down the smoothness of her hair. 'To think Rome Demario can do this to the little girl who always looked so neat and prim! There were times when I longed to take you into the back streets where I played so I could bring you back to your grandmother with street dirt on your face and tangles in your well-combed hair, and maybe a hole in your white socks.'

Julia jerked her head away from his touch. 'Eventually you managed to drag me through the dirt,' she said coldly. 'Had my grandmother been still alive she'd have had you bullwhipped.'

'You mean you'd have told her?' He quirked a black eyebrow. 'Somehow that doesn't sound like you, Julia, When you left me that morning in Naples you meant to bury the memory of me deep as a stone dropped into the Long Island sound. You wouldn't have told a soul about that night. You just wanted to wipe it out as if it had never been. What did you do when you realised you had a memento from the bad-mannered Italian boy? Did you burst into tears, or toss your hairbrush through a window?'

'I cursed the very thought of you.' Her fingers tensed and curled as she looked into his dark handsome face, wanting to make him bleed, wanting to make him curl into an agonised heap on the floor, where she had lain for a long time wishing that despair could lead quietly and quickly to death itself.

Then as if he saw in her face some residue of the despair she had felt, he said quietly: 'You are safe now, Julia. Matters have been adjusted, and no one knows except the two of us that our marriage was a necessity.'

'You promised me that our marriage would be—' She bit her lip, for the words would sound archaic and yet she had to say them. 'You promised it would be in name only.'

'Have some sense, Julia.' He frowned and flipped open his cigar case. 'How can you expect a man to behave like a monk with a woman who has his name and is to bear his child? I know I'm every sort of villain in your eyes, capable of every sort of lowdown trick, but I had to make you marry me. No way was I going to allow my child to be removed from you as if it was garbage. That baby will be born, and I'm too much flesh and blood not to want the woman who carries it for me.'

He shrugged and applied a flame to his cigar. 'Love is -good for a woman. It gives her a glow.'

'Love?' Julia looked at him in total incredulity. 'Do you know what you are, Rome Demario?'

'A man,
carina
?' Smoke drifted lazily from his lips. 'You tell me what you think I am.'

'A devil who'd break every commandment in the book just for the hell of it! I hope you never showed your true self to your poor mother!'

Through the drifting cigar smoke he stared at Julia and suddenly he had a brooding look. 'I don't discuss my mother with a Van Holden. I've told you how she died, now we'll let her rest.'

Julia bit her lip and turned her head away from him. She gazed out upon the sky where the great balls of cloud looked solid enough to bounce. Soon they would be over Naples, and her hand clenched against her body. Rome wanted this child with a kind of passion she couldn't fully understand… unless it gave him a cruel kind of satisfaction because he had forced it upon her.

She sat there, resolve hardening in her to deny him the ultimate joy in his vendetta against the Van Holdens. He could only feel that when he held the baby in his arms… what would he feel if she lost it? Would agony clutch at his insides and drag him down on his knees in abject misery?

How that would pleasure her, to see that happen to Rome Demario!

'Soon we'll be landing.' He reached up for her travelling coat of smooth cashmere, with a deep velvet collar, ex-pensive and perfectly tailored and bought in place of the fur coat she had refused adamantly to accept. 'There's enough cruelty and destructiveness in this world,' she had said meaningly.

He assisted her into the coat and flicked her hair out of the collar. 'You'd look stunning in mink, the dark shining variety,' he murmured. 'I know a furrier in Naples—'

'From whom you've bought furs for your other conquests?' she broke in. 'No, thank you! I only accepted this coat at your insistence but I won't wear fur and be a walking advertisement for the suffering and slaughter inflicted on poor dumb animals. I don't expect
you
to understand my point of view, you're too used to fleecing human beings to have any mercy for mere animals.'

'Always you find something flattering to say to your husband, don't you,
mia
?' He gripped her shoulders; there was a menacing smile in his eyes and the cleft in his chin looked deep and dark. 'Fools and their money are easily parted and if I didn't rake it in at my tables someone else would. Look where honour and trust in others put my father! Believe me, Julia, I learned my lessons very young and I've never forgotten them… expect very little from other people and you won't be disappointed, for it isn't the meek who inherit the earth, it's those with the gall to take the plums off the tree before they fall to the ground.'

'Rome,' she sighed, 'you're a real cynic.'

'I'm no saint,' he agreed, 'but I know how to treat a woman who fires my blood.'

'Yes,' her face was pensive, 'I learned how well in Naples.'

'See Naples and die, eh?' he mocked.

'You killed something in me, Rome.'

'A girlish idealism maybe. A belief in shining knights who rescue maidens in distress. Did you come to the casino hoping to find a modern equivalent who'd regard you as a damsel in distress?'

'The moment I saw you—!' She clamped her lip and shook her head. The angry hurt boy had become a man, eyes glinting with the shared memories as they swept up and down her grown up figure.

'Strange we should meet again, eh? What was between us was unfinished and incomplete, and being Latin I believe in the machinations of fate. Had my parents stayed in Italy instead of going to the States I might now be working contentedly in a vineyard or running a
ristorante
, and you would no doubt have married into the social register and remained unaware of my existence. As it is, Julia,
che sera, sera
.'

'Fasten your safety belts, please.' The stewardess was leaning over Rome, giving him a shy but inviting smile. Julia wondered if the girl hoped for some signal from him that he would like to see her again, and she watched him as if hoping for his betrayal.

'Napoli,' he said. 'It's where I met my wife.'

'Then you must be longing to get there, sir.'

'We are, aren't we, my dear?' He directed a slight smile at Julia.

'I can't wait,' she said cynically, and as the aircraft began to lose height, she felt as if her heart was sinking as well.