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

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.