Desire Has No Mercy

by Violet Winspear

  It mocked her and unrolled each scene on its mini-screen, adding sound and broken scraps of dialogue.

  Julia gave a choked little cry and pressed her hands to her ears. Rome had said such things to others and she couldn't bear it. Such endearments should be private, between two people, not shared with another woman who wrote to remind him of the occasions when he had held her in his arms. Had it been on a beach, a sky above filled with trembling stars, the sea in constant motion upon the rocks, moments torn out of time when the world stopped and heaven took its place?

  Suddenly the shower was turned off and Lucie was wrapping a large towel around Julia and urging her out of the bathroom. She was rubbed dry like a child and a nightdress was slipped over her head. 'I'm putting you to bed, miss. You've had a little too much sun and sea air and you're overwrought. I'll ask Mr Rome if he'd like his supper up here with you.'

  'I don't want him,' Julia said stubbornly. 'I was perfectly all right until he came home. He's the one who gets me all churned up a-and scared about everything. He unsettles me—you know he does.'

  Lucie stroked a brush through Julia's damp hair. 'You fight him, miss, when it's much easier to give in.'

  'But I didn't—' Julia bit her lip. 'We didn't exactly fight.'

  'Then what's upsetting you?'

  'That he—those other women. Like so much candy!'

  'How do you know? How can you be sure? Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?'

  'Scented letters!' Julia looked scornful. 'She's someone he knows—intimately.'

  'An old flame, I daresay.' The long gliding brush strokes were making Julia's hair glisten in the lamplight. 'The signore is a mighty good-looking man and there would have been—flames.'

  'They're still burning, Lucie. They aren't forgotten ashes.'

  'If you didn't care for him, my lovey, you wouldn't be so churned up.'

  'It's a matter of pride.'

  'Pooh, pride.' Lucie waved it away with the brush. 'When you get to my age you realise there are more important things in life than letting your pride be a killjoy. Mr Rome wouldn't have come home feeling so lively if he'd been playing around with candy. D'you think I was born yesterday, miss?'

  Julia flushed and twisted the rings on her hand. 'He's bigger than me, and with the baby hampering me I could hardly run away.'

  'Yes, he's a fine figure of a man,' Lucie smiled. 'There, your hair looks very nice against that peach colour, and you've got quite a bit of colour in your cheeks. I'll go and fetch the signore.'

  'You'll do no such thing,' Julia protested. 'I told you I didn't want him—let him stay downstairs and drool over his scented letter.'

  'You know what he should do, miss.' Lucie smoothed the bedcovers. 'He should give your bottom a few spanks.'

  'That would be good for the precious son and heir,' Julia scoffed.

  'He's tucked away too nice and cosy to take harm from Mr Rome, whether he spanks you or canoodles with you. What you refuse to admit is that the signore has in his bones the marrow of kindness. I'm twice your age and I've worked as a maid since I was a bit of a girl, and you get to learn about people when you're in and out of their bedrooms. It isn't always the born rich who are the ladies and gentlemen. More often than not they're wilful and arrogant and about as generous as Scrooge. I've found out from Cosenza how good Mr Rome has been to the people hereabouts. Everyone likes him, and if you aren't careful, Miss Julia, he'll find someone else to console him—he's a big fine man and he has the needs of his nature, so you be warned in time.'

  'And what is my wife being warned about?' Rome had strolled into the bedroom from the adjoining salone, and since coming up from the beach he had obviously taken a sauna and was clad in a white jacket, wine silk shirt and tie, and black trousers perfectly tailored to his lean hips and long legs. 'And what is more, cara, what are you doing in bed?'

  'Lucie says I'm overwrought.' Julia felt his eyes skim the neckline of her nightdress and the contrast of her hair against the silk. Tiny nerves trembled under her skin, reacting to his vital darkness and boldly sculpted lips… those lips which only a short while ago had been so intimate with her.

  A frown drew his brows together and he glanced at Lucie. 'There isn't anything amiss? I demand to know.'

  Lucie smiled at him and shook her head. 'Miss Julia gets herself a little worked up—she was always a nervy one as a child and would sometimes cry over silly things and yet go to the dentist or put up with a bad cold as good as gold. I thought it would be nice, signore, if the two of you had supper up here.'

  Still he frowned and gave Julia a searching look. 'That stitch in your side went away, didn't it?'

  Julia gazed up at him and suddenly she knew a way to hurt him… to keep him from touching her ever again. 'I do have a pain,' she said. 'I've had it ever since we came up from the beach.'

  Rome caught his breath and Julia was almost startled to see how ashen he went around the nostrils, while the cleft seemed to sharpen at the centre of his chin. 'A pain?' he exclaimed, coming at once to the bedside, 'What is it— what's causing it?'

  Her eyes met his and she saw from the lock in them that each moment of their encounter on the beach was going through his mind. He had made love to her, therefore he had caused the pain which she claimed to be feeling!

  'I must send for the doctor,' he said anxiously. 'We can't take any chances.'

  Lucie had come to the bedside and was giving Julia a suspicious look. 'You said nothing to me about a pain, Miss Julia. Are you sure you have one?'

  'Of course I'm sure.' Julia was looking at Rome and enjoying his discomfiture. 'As my husband says, we can't take any chances. He'd be so upset if I lost the baby—'

  'Let me feel your forehead.' Lucie leaned over her and pressed a hand to her brow. 'Umm, you do feel a little feverish. Whereabouts is the pain?'

  Julia indicated her pelvis, and as she did so she saw Rome's hands clench at his sides.

  'I want the doctor to come and take a look at you, Julia. Is it very severe?'

  'Bearable,' she said quietly. For the first time she had him at a disadvantage and she told herself she liked the feeling. Even so she turned her gaze away from his strained face. 'There's no need to send for the doctor, I expect it will go away. Perhaps I need something to eat.'

  'Miss,' Lucie took her by the chin and looked into her eyes, 'has there been any bleeding?'

  Julia heard Rome catch his breath and suddenly what had started as a game had taken a serious turn. 'No,' she said hastily. 'I—I think it's a hunger pain—I really do—'

  'I'm fetching the doctor.' Rome strode to the door. 'I'll drive down myself, it will be quicker that way—'

  'Rome, no!' Julia knelt up on the bed. 'I don't need him, really. You don't have to go driving down to the village at some breakneck speed—please! I'll be perfectly all right as soon as I've eaten my supper—I do get this gnawing feeling—it's because I'm eating for two. Please, don't go!'

  He stood gripping the door handle, and then he swung round to face her. 'Are you playing a game with me?' His jaw was grimly set and there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes.

  Julia huddled down into the bedclothes, feeling her mouth go dry. 'I—I expect I have indigestion—'

  'Yes, something to gripe about.' His narrowed eyes raked over her, then he glanced at Lucie. 'Please leave us,' he said. 'I think I have to get to the bottom of this—infliction.'

  'Yes, signore.' Lucie gave Julia a quick look, half-shaking her head as if to say that she was in for it, and deservedly so. Rome withdrew from the door as Lucie approached and he gave her a brief smile as she went out of the room, but as soon as he closed the door behind her, his smile was gone. He slid his hands into his jacket pockets as he came back to Julia, as if he didn't trust their inclination to give her a good shaking.

  'I suppose you think you're clever?' he said, leaning over her and giving her the full benefit of the anger in his eyes. 'Well, I get the message, my dear, and you have my full assurance that what
occurred down on the beach won't happen again. I have no inclination to touch a woman who stoops to petty spite in order to get even with a man, but for what it's worth, Julia, you weren't unwilling in my arms. You were as much a part of it as I was, and I wonder if that's why you had to pretend I'd hurt you in some way. Santo Dio, I felt as if me blood left my heart! But you'll never do that to me again—I wouldn't touch you now if you begged me to do so!'

  Julia gazed up at him, her heart thudding so hard beneath the silk of her nightdress that she thought she might faint The stiletto she had turned on him had now been reversed and it was as if a fine thread of pure steel was sliding in somewhere in the region of her ribs. She caught her breath at both the pain and the lean dark intensity of Rome's face in the lamplight His eyes held that diamond brilliance, the pupils so enlarged they were like mirrors reflecting her white face. There wasn't a vestige of triumph left in her now… she was feeling the backlash that spitefulness brought with it.

  'Well, now we're even.' She turned her head away from him, her nerves shrinking when something landed on the bed with a thump.

  'You can regard that as payment for all your recent suffering at my hands.' Never had he sounded more sarcastic. 'Take a look—I was told by the dealer that it's genuine Victorian, so it should suit your attitude very well, my dear.'

  Julia didn't want to look at what he'd thrown on the bed, but she knew he was in a smouldering rage that would intensify if she didn't show some interest in his gift. She felt the tremor in her hands when she opened the package and discovered a vanity-case of gold patterned with filigree and adorned by a glimmering pearl and a lustrous ruby set side by side.

  'Purity and passion,' he mocked. 'I intended to buy you a trinket, but when I saw the box I couldn't resist it. The perfect gift for my pearl of a bride, eh? Does it appeal to you?'

  'Yes, thank you.' She spoke tonelessly. 'The vanity-case is very nice.'

  'And doubtless the woman who last used it was just as good at playing the shrinking violet.'

  'Wouldn't it have suited your tempestuous seňorita?' Julia flashed.

  'I wouldn't dream of giving anything like that to Ramona Albaňez.' He gave that soft laugh Julia had heard before in connection with the woman, and his casual mention of her name in their bedroom was a little too much for Julia's temper. One moment the vanity-case was in her hand and the next it was flying towards Rome and she saw it strike his cheek, making him flinch and step backwards, a livid mark showing against his skin. He gazed silently at her for about half a minute, then as if he no longer trusted himself he swung on his heel and strode out of the room, flinging the door shut behind him.

  The gold box lay where it had fallen, half buried in the deep wool of the carpet. Julia crouched on the bed, appalled by what she had done. It could have struck his eye, and her stomach heaved as she pictured the blood and the agony. Suddenly she pressed a hand over her mouth and made urgently for the bathroom where she leaned over the toilet bowl and was wrenchingly sick. After several minutes she fell back against the tiled wall. Her body felt cold and yet there was a fine film of perspiration clinging to her skin.

  Julia had never behaved in such a temperamental way in her life; such a wilful action could so easily have damaged one of Rome's eyes.

  A sob caught in her throat and she sank down in the matting of the bathroom floor and buried her face in her hands. She could feel the tears seeping between her fingers and she felt almost as wretched as when she had found she was going to have a baby and the future had felt so frightening. She rocked back and forth in a kind of emotional agony, the tears running down her face and salting her lips. Tonight she had satisfied the urge to hurt Rome, but in the process she had hurt herself as well, in a way so bewildering she hardly knew how to cope with it.

  Rome had come to her from the beach, a seeking light in his eyes which she had quenched… she had seen it flicker and die when he turned on his heel and left her, bearing on his face the bruise she had inflicted.

  Lucie found her huddled on the floor and after bathing her eyes for her, helped her back into bed. 'I warned you, my lamb.' She stroked the tousled hair out of Julia's swollen eyes. 'When a man holds out the olive branch you don't knock it out of his hand. When you do that, it's a poor broken thing that you try to pick up again.'

  Prophetic words, as Julia discovered in the days that followed and turned gradually into weeks.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cigales kept up a continuous chirring in the gullies of ilex and wild-growing oleander. A smouldering warmth lay over the sea which looked like beaten silver through the branches of the gnarled olive and pomegranite trees. There was a honey tang of sun-hot thyme and figs, and a whiff of citrus from the lemons whose branches shaded the little arbour at whose doorway was a winged Psyche of stone.

  Julia no longer went down to the beach, for the climb back up the steps had become too much for her. Instead she came and sat in the cool arbour and read books or did some embroidery. Maddalena, proficient like most Italian girls at the art, had taught her how to do it and right now she was making a design of tarantella dancers on a nightdress-case. It kept her mind occupied, for having no close neighbours the villa was a quiet place whenever Rome was away from home.

  Julia awaited the birth of their child in three weeks' time. She looked composed, with her hair worn for coolness at her nape, clad in the charming maternity dresses which had come from Naples. She kept well hidden the trepidation that she felt with each passing day. It wasn't the actual birth which she feared; it was her reaction to the moment when the baby looked at her and she found herself gazing into the velvety pupils and glimmering grey irises which she knew the child would inherit from the man she had sworn to leave… who had accepted that she would leave when the baby was born.

  Rome had told her she could go. 'I won't make you stay,' he had said, a few days after they had quarrelled and she had flung the Victorian vanity-case at him. 'I don't want my child growing up in the kind of atmosphere you and I create. I shall love the little one enough for the two of us.'

  Often Julia remembered the dignity with which he said it, and the way he looked, aloof and proud and never to be touched again, as she had touched his warm, tawny body as they passionately embraced on the starlit beach. He had withdrawn from any more contact with her; he was a polite, generous, kindly host, but he was no longer a husband.

  Julia sighed, and then gave a gasp as the embroidery needle stabbed her hand. A shadow had fallen across the doorway of the arbour and when she glanced up a complete stranger was standing there, studying her, a drift of smoke from the thin dark cigar in his hand. He was of middle height, with heavy-lidded eyes and a dark moustache. He wore slacks and a Madras jacket, yet there was something of command in his attitude. His face held that tameless hint of danger she had often seen in Rome's. Like Rome's his face was somehow ancestral in its detailed Latin darkness… as if he stood poised upon a chariot that was about to be driven at a dangerous pace. He had a hard chin but something of humour in the curve of his mouth.

  'Scusa, signora, I startle you and you stab your hand. I hope it isn't too bad?'

  'No—' Julia shook her head and wondered who he was.

  As if guessing this he gave her a half-bow and drew his heels together. 'I must introduce myself, eh? I am Vitale Cantrelli, a good friend of your husband whom he may have mentioned to you?' A black eyebrow was raised enquiringly. 'This is so, signora? Rome has spoken of me to you?'

  'Why—yes.' Julia remembered very well what Rome had told her about this man, of Sicilian parentage born in America, who had been to prison while young and had been innocently connected with the death of Rome's father.

  'You are Don Vitale,' she said quietly.

  At once a humorous glimmer came into his dark eyes and he lock a slow pull at his cigar. 'Do you mind?' he drawled, a slight American twang in his voice; the kind of sound Rome had deliberately eradicated from his own speech.

  'I try not to judge people befo
re meeting them,' she replied. 'Rome very much likes you, so why should I take the opposite view? I don't imagine that you have your henchmen with you.'

  He laughed quietly, and she felt his eyes flick the softly flowered fabric of her dress: He was probably aware from Rome that she was soon to have a baby, and he said:

  'I wouldn't want to make you nervous, signora. I understand there is a neonato shortly on the way. Rome is very happy about it, eh?'

  Julia felt an inward quivering of nerves when he said that; Rome rarely spoke of his feelings these days. 'I expect so, signore. Latin men are very fond of children, aren't they? It's one of the nicest things about them.'

  'Aren't there other nice things, signora?' He quizzed her through his cigar smoke and Julia couldn't help but catch the admiring gleam in his eyes as they stroked her hair. 'You must have thought so, being obviously espoused by a compatriot of mine.'

  It occurred to Julia that he was curious about Rome's marriage and was perhaps wondering why he had taken an American girl for his wife when there were Latin women in pursuit of him.

  'Rome didn't mention that you were paying a visit to Domani,' she said. 'He's in Naples right now and—'

  'Yes, I know he's there on a transaction, but I understand he'll be home very soon. He knew I might pay him a visit. Rome and I aren't formal about such things and I would have called sooner to be introduced to his wife, but for some time I've been in Spain—a personal matter that hasn't really resolved itself.' Don Vitale frowned and gazed up absently at the lemons clustering on the branches that arched over the arbour. 'Rome has found for himself a very attractive young woman to share his life. His fairly young life has held its tragedies, as you are no doubt aware? May I call you Julia? It's a Latin name, but a man has only to look at you to see you are very much the Anglo-Saxon type of woman.'