It Happened In Rome: The Forced Bride / The Italian's Rags-to-Riches Wife / The Italian's Passionate Revenge

In an effort at distraction, she found an elderly pack of cards and spent an hour or so playing solitaire, but without success, finding herself invariably thwarted at the last minute. How very like real life, she thought crossly, pushing the cards together.

She went into the kitchen and began assembling the evening meal. The meat was still frozen, so she decided to use the unpromising sausages instead. Cooking them in batter would disguise their major faults, she thought, measuring flour into a bowl, and an onion gravy would also be a plus.

By the time Raf came in, she’d made up the living room fire and lit the candles. He was sitting on the sofa, pulling off his boots, when she emerged from the kitchen and his brows lifted as he realised she was bringing him a mug of freshly made coffee.

‘You are the perfect wife, carissima,’ he told her lightly and she turned away, biting her lip. Except in one respect, she thought, but no doubt he considered that was merely a matter of time.

While their meal was cooking, she sat opposite him and pretended to read in the intimacy of the flickering light, while he was absorbed in another chess problem, and occasionally stole a glance at him when she felt it was safe to do so.

He’d have fitted well into an earlier century, she thought, wearing silk and velvet, although she was only just becoming used to him in jeans and sweaters rather than the customary elegance of formal designer suits. She could imagine him standing in the shadows of some Renaissance court, his hand on the jewelled hilt of a sword, or riding into a conquered city at the head of his men, his eyes scanning the captive women lined up for his inspection, and his choice.

She caught herself there and halted, because that was rather too apposite, she thought wryly. Yet, at the same time, she found herself wanting to laugh at her own nonsense.

‘What are you thinking?’ The quiet question startled her.

‘Why do you ask?’ she parried.

‘Because you are smiling at your thoughts, cara, and that is something of a novelty in my acquaintance with you.’

So, she thought, he’d been watching her too, which was distinctly unnerving.

She shrugged lightly. ‘But you can’t just ask,’ she said. ‘You have to say—penny for your thoughts. And pay up,’ she added, playing for time.

Raf reached into a pocket and tossed a coin to her. ‘So—tell me.’

‘Ten pence,’ she marvelled. ‘I’m not sure it’s worth such a vast sum. I was just wondering how people managed in the past when candles were all the light they had.’

‘With their eyesight in ruins, perhaps,’ Raf said drily. ‘But they would have used many more, I think. Great, glittering chandeliers and banks of candelabra. It would have been—amazing—spettacoloso.’

‘Also a hell of a fire risk.’

‘That too,’ he agreed. ‘But, I wonder again, bella mia, what you were truly thinking.’

She put her book aside, her smile swift and taut as she rose. ‘Right now, I think I should check on supper.’

Which had turned out far better than she could have hoped, the sausages looking brown and succulent, their surrounding batter golden and well-risen.

‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ she announced as she placed the dish in front of him.

‘Santa Madonna,’ he said with disbelief. ‘Tell me the name again.’

She complied. ‘Also bubble and squeak,’ she added demurely, indicating the bowl of potatoes fried with cabbage and chopped onion.

His eyes were alive with laughter as they met hers across the glow of the candles. ‘I think you are winding me up, carissima.’

‘Not at all.’ She paused. ‘Although it isn’t the gourmet food you’re accustomed to, signore.’

He took a substantial helping. ‘I have no complaints, believe me, signora.’

It was the most companionable time they’d spent together. For the most part, they talked about food—their likes and dislikes—and some of the best and worst meals they’d ever eaten, although Raf won hands down here with a pungent description of some of the more exotic courses he’d been served in the Far East, making Emily shudder and gurgle with laughter at the same time.

‘You understand now why I might find toad-in-the-hole disturbing.’ He refilled her wineglass.

‘It’s only fresh fruit for dessert, I’m afraid.’ She began to collect the used dishes together. ‘And not much choice at that. You can have an apple or an apple.’

He pretended to consider. ‘I think I would prefer an apple.’

As he followed her into the kitchen with the dirty plates, Emily, putting cutlery in the sink, glanced through the window and gave a squeak.

‘I can see a light.’ She pointed. ‘Several lights—down there in the distance. Glory hallelujah, I think the power’s back on. Try the switch.’

‘I must do this?’ He sounded rueful. ‘Candlelight is gentler, bella mia. It has more—atmosphere.’

But not the sort she necessarily wished to encourage, Emily realised, her throat tightening.

‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to end up with ruined eyesight.’

‘No.’ His hand moved to the switch and the kitchen surged into a sudden brightness that broke any spell there might briefly have been. ‘I shall go to check on the boiler—ensure that tonight the radiators are hot in the morning.’

‘And the water,’ she reminded him. ‘You won’t want any more treks upstairs with heavy pans.’

‘Ah,’ Raf said softly. ‘But even that had its compensations.’ He took an apple from the bowl on the counter top and disappeared off to the cellar, leaving Emily’s sense of apprehension growing by the minute.

It was one thing to repeat to herself that she’d already experienced the worst he could do to her. However, believing it was something else again.

And she was nervous about filling the hours until bedtime. Scared that she might find herself watching him again in the lamplit silence and that he might interpret the confusion of her thoughts in his own way.

Because she wasn’t sure she was the same person as the outraged defiant girl of two nights ago, who’d fought not just his possession of her but the treachery of her own senses, and achieved a kind of victory.

Since their marriage, she thought, she’d taught herself quite deliberately to regard Raf as a stranger—an occasional guest to be accorded a polite welcome on arrival, then more or less ignored until his departure.

During the first year, of course, she’d been showered by joint invitations from local people, eager to offer hospitality to the newlyweds. ‘We do so hope we’ll meet your charming husband this time,’ had been the general theme. But she’d refused them all, mendaciously citing Raf’s hectic work schedule as an excuse.

‘We are not a couple,’ she’d wanted to say so many times. ‘We are two separate people trapped in a situation.’

And, as his visits had diminished, it had become easier to think about him less. Even to pretend that he did not really exist as a man. That he was just a disembodied voice on a phone, or a name on a letter.

But now, in the space of forty-eight short hours, he’d placed himself centre-stage in her awareness in every possible way. And it wasn’t just a sexual thing either. In some strange way she was beginning to accept his presence—becoming used to having him around. There’d even been moments over supper when, however reluctantly, she’d actually found herself enjoying his company.

If only I wasn’t married to him—or if the marriage had stayed in name only—maybe we might have been friends, she thought with an odd wistfulness. Then remembered that he’d once offered friendship, which she’d rejected too. What she could not seem to recall was—the reason for her refusal.

But that’s in the past, she told herself decisively. It was tonight she needed to be concerned about, now that Raf had made it clear he intended to take full advantage of his sexual prerogative.

She needed to devise some way of holding him off, and quickly too. Yet, somehow, she didn’t think that simply inventing a headache would work, while pretending she had her period would simply cause complications later.

Maybe some version of the truth would serve her better, she thought unhappily. An attempt to convince him, somehow, that he was wasting his time with her and that he should give up whatever game he was playing and go back to his mistress.

But would he see it that way?

‘Why are you staring into space, cara?’

His voice behind her made her start violently.

She turned, flushing. ‘I was just thinking I’d leave the washing-up until morning,’ she said evasively. ‘I—I’m feeling horribly tired.’

‘Davvero?’ Raf’s expression was sardonic as he disposed of his apple core in the kitchen bin and rinsed his fingers under the tap. ‘Then, as soon as we have had coffee, we will go to bed, mia bella.’

Emily bit her lip. ‘That—isn’t what I meant.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That, at least, is the truth.’ He paused. ‘It is time we talked a little, Emilia. Wait for me by the fire.’

It was a command, not a request, and there was a note in his voice that warned her not to risk defiance.

She trailed unwillingly into the living room and sat down on the edge of the sofa, her hands clamped together in her lap, as she wondered what he planned to say. Perhaps he’d come to the same conclusion as herself and had decided to draw a final line under this ill-judged marriage.

But, when he arrived with the coffee, he didn’t take his usual seat on the sofa opposite, but came instead to sit beside her. Making Emily realise, dry-mouthed, that she’d hoped for altogether too much.

‘No coffee for me, thanks,’ she declined curtly as he picked up the cafetiére.

‘You are afraid it will keep you awake?’ He sounded faintly amused as he filled his own cup.

She sent him a fulminating look, resenting the way he was lounging there, so much at his ease, as he drank his coffee, his jeans-clad thigh only an inch or two from hers, then turned her attention to the fire, staring at the small blue flames licking round the logs until her eyes blurred.

Eventually, she heard him replace his cup on the tray and tensed.

There was a long pause, then he said quietly, ‘Emilia—please look at me, cara mia. I cannot talk to your back.’

‘Is there any need for us to talk at all?’ She turned her head unwillingly, absorbing the taut, unsmiling lines of his face.

‘I think so.’ He hesitated. ‘Carissima, I would be the first to admit that our marriage has begun badly, and for that I blame myself.’

‘That’s big of you,’ she said.

‘Our life together was wrong from those first nights and days three years ago.’ His hands closed on hers, unclasping them and stroking her rigid fingers.

‘Yet that could change—so very easily,’ he went on. ‘Please believe that.’

‘I do,’ she said stonily. ‘But only if you were to leave—give me the divorce we agreed at the beginning.’

‘You may feel that,’ he said. ‘But I say there is an alternative. That perhaps we might find a little happiness together.’

His fingertips caressed the curve of her face, tracing tiny patterns on the line of her throat.

He said very softly, ‘You don’t think, my beautiful wife, that if I tried—if I really tried—I might coax you to be—more compliant?’

He was half smiling as he spoke, but the hazel eyes as they met hers were rueful—almost tender.

Her breath caught as it occurred to her in that moment, with all the stunning force of a blow, that with very little effort Count Rafaele Di Salis could probably coax the heart out of her body.

She thought desperately, Dear God, what’s happening to me—and how can I stop it—now—before it’s too late?’

His arm encircled her shoulders, drawing her closer. ‘Don’t fight me any longer, Emilia.’ His voice was a breath against her ear. ‘Tonight, let us take each other as lovers. Allow me to show you, carissima, what joy can be.’

She said, quietly and clearly, ‘You recently implied, signore, that I was spoiled. I think you’ve been over-indulged too—by a succession of women who’ve allowed you to think you’re irresistible. And, to them, perhaps you are. But not to me.’

She paused. ‘And I have absolutely no plans to sacrifice my self-respect in order to provide you with an hour’s amusement in bed.’

There was a silence. She felt him tense—the arm round her shoulders become a bar of steel. He said harshly, ‘An hour, you say? I think not. After all, we shall not be making love, so a few minutes only will suffice. And we do not need a bed.’

Before she could move or protest, he was lifting her off the sofa and down on to the thick hearthrug, kneeling over her as he unfastened her cord trousers, dragging them down from her hips together with her underwear, then wrenching at his own zip.

Gasping, Emily tried to struggle—to push him away. ‘What are you doing?’

He controlled her effortlessly, nudging her thighs apart with a knee. ‘How does it seem?’ he countered harshly. ‘You are not open to any form of persuasion, signora. You prefer to close your heart and mind against me, so this is what you must expect.’

‘Oh, God, you don’t mean this…’ Her voice broke as she felt the hardness of him seeking her moist and yielding heat, then entering her with one strong, implacable thrust.

She lay beneath him, stunned, trembling while he proceeded swiftly, almost perfunctorily to his release.

When he had finished, he lay still for a long moment, then she heard him say quietly in a voice she barely recognised, ‘This—this cannot be endured.’

There was another silence, then he moved, lifting himself away from her and pulling her clothing back into place with a kind of casual indifference that chilled her.

She wanted to be angry—to call him names—to fling something hateful and hurtful at him. Something that would punish him eternally for his shameful treatment of her. But no words would come. Besides, she thought as pain lanced through her, hadn’t she insulted him enough? And not just tonight, either?

Hadn’t it been her desire to shake his cool arrogance—to wound him that had brought her to this moment in the first place?

Suddenly she felt numb and frightened, as if she was standing on the edge of some abyss. And sad. Above all—sad.

She felt an urge to reach out a hand. Speak his name. But she didn’t get the chance. Because Raf spoke first.

‘And now get out of my sight, per favore.’ His voice was harsh as his expression as he stood, refastening his jeans. He did not look at her. ‘You said you wished to sleep. Bene. Go to bed and do so. You will not be disturbed.’

Emily scrambled to her feet and fled to the stairs. Once in her room, she closed the door, leaning back against its panels, aware of the wild thunder of her heart—and the forlorn ache of her hungry body, trapped in its self-imposed fast.

He’d wanted to seduce her and she’d prevented him. Objective achieved. Job done.

But at what a cost.

It would have been a relief to her feelings if she could have called him a brute—an animal. But it wouldn’t have been true. In its way, what he’d done to her had been a demonstration of almost passionless efficiency. There had not been one kiss or caress. Which made it somehow worse.

You prefer to close your heart and mind against me… His words came back to haunt her. Because that was indeed what she’d set out to do from the first, deliberately and precisely. And tonight she’d reaped the bitter harvest of her actions.

This is what you must expect…

Dear God, she thought, was that going to be true? And, if so, how could she bear it?

This could not be how he treated the other women in his life, so she could only hope he would soon grow tired of this sterile and one-sided arrangement. Return to his old ways—old loves, she thought, and flinched.

In the meantime, she couldn’t allow herself to be found here brooding like this when Raf came to bed. It was vital not to let him see that anything he might do mattered to her. Or that she might have anything to regret.

She undressed quickly and got into bed, turning her back to the door and thumping the pillow into shape. She wouldn’t be asleep when he arrived or, probably, for hours afterwards, but she could pretend. And he’d said he wouldn’t disturb her.

And from now on she would keep strictly to her own side of the bed.

It seemed an eternity before she heard him come upstairs and walk past on his way to the bathroom. She burrowed further under the covers, closing her eyes so tightly that tiny stars danced behind her lids, and waited for his return. For the moment when her door would open.

Then, softly but very definitely, Emily heard a very different sound—the subdued click of the spare room door closing just across the passage.

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