Free Desire Has No Mercy by Violet Winspear

many women to this house, Rome?' Julia made her way to the dressing-table, trying not to notice that her legs still felt oddly tremulous. She took up a hand mirror that lay there and noticed that it was rather beautiful.
    'Only my mother—and you,' he replied. 'That mirror is a genuine Medici, but I bought it for a song in a little shop at Capua. I had it cleaned at a jewellers and it was there I was told its real value. I'm quite good at picking up bargains.'
    'Bully for you,
signore
.' She turned the mirror about in her hands and saw the gems encrusted in the frame, which was golden. 'Do you regard me as a bargain as I happen to be a Van Holden?'
    'Yes,' he drawled, 'when you come to think of it I did get you for a fairly moderate price. Some people lose a great deal more at my casino than your sister did.'
    Julia swung to face him, hardening her green eyes. 'If they have to repay you as I did, Rome, then it's a wonder you haven't other children to show for your resourceful way of collecting your debts! I really know very little about you when you come to think of it.'
    'You'll soon know a lot, my dear, but you'd better learn to control your tongue if you don't want to get acquainted with my Italian temper.'
    'Do you lose it, Rome, when people get curious about your background? After all, you've admitted to being friends with a Mafia leader.'
    'As I told your friend Wineman, there are two sides to my life, as there are two sides to the lives of a lot of men.' Rome drew open the door of his dressing-room. 'I'll leave you to get ready for dinner. Wear something attractive for our wedding eve.'
    'Is that an order,
signore
?'
    'Merely a request,
carina
. I don't regard you as a member of my staff, so don't pretend to yourself that I do. You're my wife—my bride.'
    'Your—pregnant bride, Rome. Hardly romantic!'
    'I find it—erotic,' he said, and closed the dressing-room door behind him, leaving her with the filigreed mirror clenched in her hands. Erotic, stimulating to his Latin sensuality, that her body was ripening with his baby. Julia lifted the hand mirror and met her own tormented eyes. Always she had been the big sister who looked after her little sister, and now because of it she was burdened with a marriage she didn't want while Verna enjoyed life with a husband she loved.
    Julia's lips had a bitter little twist to them, and she felt their tenderness from the hard pressure of Rome's mouth. There was no love in what he felt for her… in all its aspects it was profane, even a little brutal when he made her kiss him in that way the girls at charm school had said would give a girl a baby. She ran the top of her tongue, around the velvety innerside of her lips and reproduced slightly the sensations he had caused. A shiver ran through her body. Oh God, why couldn't she be married to Paul? He had been so kind and courtly. He wouldn't dream of treating her the way Rome did… Rome was such a boundless, arrogant brute, with none of the sensitive qualities she liked in a man. He was like some untamed animal, graceful to look at but with the instincts of the lower East Side where he had grown up, adept with his fists, part of a tough gang of boys, who had wooed and won girls in the dark alleys at the back of the dance halls where the music had a heavy sensual beat to it.
    That she was Julia Van Holden who had led a sheltered life meant nothing to him. He was out to prove to her that as far as he was concerned she was just a girl who ought to be grateful he had done the honourable thing and married her. It was, for him, the most subtle form of revenge he could take on her family, whom he despised as snobs who had no feelings of pity or understanding for those who had to live in poverty. Julia suspected this might have been true of her grandmother, but it wasn't true of her. She could be compassionate, but the man she was married to had long outgrown the need for compassion.
    She gazed around the bedroom with its silvery and jade