by Lynne Graham
‘You can’t be...you can’t be!’ she gasped abruptly, impervious to the presence of the others.
‘Take it easy, Darcy,’ Karen advised, evidently unaware that anything was seriously wrong. ‘You passed out and you’re confused, that’s all. Look, I’ll keep Zia with me until you’re feeling better. You should lie down for a while. I’ll call over later and see how you are.’
Still in a world of her own, Darcy moved her muzzy head as if she was afraid it might fall off her neck. Luca Raffacani could not be the man with whom she had spent the night in Venice; he could not possibly be the same man! And yet, he was! It made no sense, it seemed beyond the bounds of even the wildest feat of imagination, but those strong promptings of familiarity which had troubled her apparently had their basis in solid fact.
‘Can you stand?’ Luca enquired.
‘I’m fine... really,’ Darcy whispered unconvincingly as she fought to focus her mind. She got up on legs that felt like cotton wool sticks. She shook hands with the vicar, who was anxiously hovering. Then she stared at Luca again with a kind of appalled fascination and knew she would never feel fine again, knew she felt, rather, as if she had lost her mind in that devastating moment of recognition.
‘The car’s outside, sir.’ Benito spoke for the first time as he turned from the window.
Darcy’s attention swivelled to the younger man. Sir? She encountered a fleeting look of pity in Benito’s gaze. The sort of pity one experienced for someone sick when all hope had gone, Darcy labelled with a bemused shudder.
What on earth was going on? Who was Gianluca Fabrizio Raffacani? And whoever he was, whatever he was, she had just made him her husband!
‘Calm yourself,’ Luca urged before they walked back out of the church to face the crowd of well-wishers waiting to see them off.
‘But I recognised you...’ she told him shakily.
‘You mean you finally shuffled the memory of one face out of the no doubt countless one-night stands you have enjoyed?’ Luca murmured in a silken smooth stab, making her shrink in stricken disbelief at such a charge. ‘Am I to feel honoured by that most belated distinction?’
His cool confirmation that he was who she believed he was shook Darcy up even more. In the back of her mind she had still somehow expected and foolishly hoped that Luca would turn with a raised brow to tell her that he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
‘You don’t understand,’ she began, in an unsteady attempt to defend herself, so confused was she still. ‘I could hardly see you that night, not in any detail...your face was a blur and out of focus—you looked different...’
‘I guess one bird for the plucking looks much like another,’ Luca responded with a sardonic bite that sizzled down her spine like a hurricane warning and made her turn even paler.
A bird for the plucking? She didn’t understand that crack any more than she could understand anything else. As they left the churchyard her attention fell on the big silver limousine waiting by the kerb. Pressed into a vehicle which was the very last word in expensive luxury, she was even more bewildered. Benito swung into the front seat. The tinted glass barrier between the front and the back of the limo was partially open, denying them privacy.
Darcy snatched in a shuddering breath. Her brain ached, all at once throwing up a dozen even more confusing inconsistencies. In a daze, she struggled hopelessly to superimpose the image of the Luca she had thought she was getting to know over her memory of the male who had romanced her in Venice, the sleek, seductive rat who had torn her inside out with the pain of loss...
Involuntarily she focused on Luca again. There was a strikingly relaxed quality to the indolent sprawl of his strong, supple body. In the state Darcy was in, that supreme poise and cool was uniquely intimidating.
Within minutes the limo drew up outside the Folly. Darcy scrambled out in haste, her heartbeat banging in her eardrums. With damp, nerveless hands she unlocked and thrust open the heavy front door to walk into the echoing medieval hall with its aged flagstoned floor.
She spun round, then, to face Luca, where he had stilled by the giant smoke-blackened stone fireplace. Her oval face was stiff with strain as she attempted to match his aura of complete self-command.
‘I can’t believe that coincidence has anything to do with this...’ Darcy admitted jaggedly.
‘Very wise.’ Luca surveyed her with a grim satisfaction that was chilling.
‘How could you possibly have found out who I was...or where I lived?’
‘With persistence, no problem is insuperable. It took time, but I had you traced.’
‘You had me traced...dear heaven, why?’ Darcy could not hide her incredulity. ‘Why the heck would you even want to do such a thing?’
‘Don’t play dumb,’ Luca advised with derision.
Darcy shook her head dizzily as she braced her hands on the back of a tapestry-covered chair to steady herself. ‘You came to that interview in disguise...you have to be certifiably nuts to have gone to such outrageous lengths—’
‘No...merely guilty of the inexpressibly vain assumption that I might be in some danger of being recognised.’
Darcy winced at that jibe and closed her eyes, but then she had to open them again, possessed as she was by a sick compulsion to keep on watching Luca. But his lean, hard features betrayed nothing. ‘Why did you do this? What’s in it for you? You can’t be unemployed or b-broke.’
‘No... What was that vulgar term you used about your fortunate friend, Maxie? I’m “loaded”,’ Luca conceded with a scornful twist of his lips. ‘But you will not profit from that reality, I assure you.’
‘I don’t understand...’ Her hand flew up to her pounding temples. ‘I’m getting the most awful headache.’
‘Retribution hurts,’ Luca slotted in softly. ‘And by the time I am finished with you, a headache will be the very least of your problems.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? For heaven’s sake...are you threatening me?’ Darcy gasped, releasing her hold on the chair to take an angry step forward.
‘No, I believe I am revelling in the extraordinary sense of power I’m experiencing. I’ve never felt like that around a woman before,’ Luca mused thoughtfully. ‘But then, where you are concerned, I have no pity.’
‘You’re trying to scare me...’
‘How easily do you scare?’ Luca enquired with appalling self-possession.
‘You don’t behave like the man I met in Venice!’ Darcy condemned shakily.
‘You’re not the woman I met then either. But she’ll emerge eventually... I have this wonderful conviction that over the next six months whatever I want, I will receive.’ Brilliant dark eyes gleamed with cruel amusement below level black brows. ‘My every wish will be your command. Nothing will be too much trouble. I will just snap my fingers and you will jump...’
Darcy tried and failed to swallow. The living nightmare of her own confusion was growing. While one small part of her stood back and believed that he was talking outrageous nonsense, all the rest of her was horribly impressed by the lethal edge of cool, collected threat in that rich, dark drawl and the deadly chill in his level gaze. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘As a sobering taste of your near future, consider this... depending on my choice of timing, if I walk out on this marriage you will lose everything you possess.’ Luca spelt out that reminder with an immovable cool that made what he was saying all the more shocking.
The silence, broken only by the steady tick of the grandfather clock, hung there between them as breakable as a thin sheet of glass.
‘No...no...’ Every scrap of remaining colour drained from Darcy’s shaken face as she absorbed the full weight of that threat. ‘You can’t do that to me!’
‘I think you’ll find that I can do anything I want...’ Strolling closer with fluid ease, Luca stretched out a seemingly idle hand and closed it over her clenched fingers. Slowly, relentlessly employing the pressure of his infinitely greater strength, he pulled
her towards him.
‘Stop it...let go of me!’ Darcy cried, totally unprepared for this even more daunting development, heartbeat thundering in panic, breath snarling up in her convulsing throat.
‘That is no way to talk to a new husband,’ Luca censured indolently as he skimmed a confident hand down to the shallow indentation at the base of her spine and held her there, mere inches from him. He studied her with satisfaction. ‘And particularly not one with such high expectations of your future behaviour. All that cutesy tossing of coins and sleeping on the floor like a naive little virgin...it’s wasted on a male who has perfect recall of being pushed down on a bed and having his shirt ripped off within hours of meeting you!’
As that rich, dark-timbred voice flailed down her taut spine like a silken whip, Darcy’s eyes grew huge and raw with stricken recollection of her own abandon that night in Venice. She trembled, her pallor now laced with hot ribbons of pink.
‘You were wild,’ Luca savoured huskily. ‘It may be the most expensive one-night stand I ever had, but the sex was unforgettable.’
Expensive? But she still couldn’t concentrate. She gazed up at him, as trapped as a butterfly speared by a cruel pin. Only in her case the pin was the stabbing thrust of intense humiliation piercing her to the heart. Raising one lean brown hand, he rubbed a blunt forefinger over the tremulous line of her full lower lip and she shivered, spooked by the blaze of those brilliant dark golden eyes so close, the shocking effect of that insolent caress on her tender mouth. With stunned disconcertion she felt a spark of heat flame into a smouldering tight little knot that scorched the pit of her tense stomach.
‘You burned me alive,’ Luca whispered mesmerically. ‘And you’re going to do that for me again...and again...and again until I don’t want you any more...is that understood?’
No, nothing was understood. Too much had happened too fast, and at absolutely the wrong psychological moment. Darcy had stood at that altar, firmly and exultantly believing that she was in the very act of solving her every problem. Everything had fallen apart when she was least equipped to deal with it. Now she was simply reeling from moment to moment in the suffocating grip of deep, paralysing shock.
‘Who are you...why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded all over again, her incomprehension unconcealed as he released her.
‘Isn’t it strange how the passage of time operates?’ Luca remarked with a philosophical air. ‘What you once didn’t want to know for your own protection, you are now desperate to discover—’
‘You can’t do this to me...you can’t threaten me...I won’t let you!’ Darcy swore vehemently.
‘Watch me,’ Luca advised, consulting the rapier-thin gold watch on his wrist with tremendous poise. ‘Now, I suggest you locate your passport and start packing.’
‘Passport...p-packing?’ Darcy parroted.
‘My surprise, cara.’ His mocking smile didn’t add one iota of warmth to the cold brilliance of his dark eyes. ‘In a couple of hours a helicopter will pick us up and take us to the airport. We’re flying to Venice. I want to go home.’
Darcy backed away from him, green eyes burnished by angry bewilderment. ‘Venice? Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to Italy with you!’
A fleeting smile of sardonic amusement curved his expressive mouth. ‘Think that refusal through. If I leave this house without you, I will not return, and you will forfeit any hope of winning your inheritance in six months’ time.’
‘You bastard...’ Darcy mumbled sickly as that message sank in. Evidently Luca knew far more than she had naively told him. He knew the exact conditions of her godmother’s will. A marriage that lasted less than that six-month deadline would not count.
His stunning dark eyes narrowed to an icy splinter of gold. ‘In the light of the circumstances of your child’s birth, I’m astonished to hear you use that particular word.’
Slashed with guilty unease by that unwelcome reminder, Darcy’s facial muscles locked tight. Zia...her mind screamed with equal suddenness, as she finally faced up to and acknowledged the connection between this particular male and her child. Their child. The furious colour in her cheeks receded to leave her pale as milk. Zia was Luca’s daughter as well—not that he appeared to have even a suspicion of the fact, although he seemed to have a daunting grasp of every other confidential aspect of her life.
‘And by the way,’ Luca murmured sotto voce, ‘when you collect your daughter from the lodge, try not to forget the confidentiality clause in the pre-nuptial contract we both signed. If you talk about this, I will talk to the executor of your godmother’s will.’
Darcy closed her eyes tightly again. ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me...’ she ground out unsteadily.
And it was true. She had played into his hands so completely that she had tied herself in knots. Her home, her security, both her future and her daughter’s were entirely reliant on Luca maintaining his verbal agreement with her. If they parted company a day before that six months was up, she would indeed lose everything she had worked so hard to retain.
Luca lifted one of her hands and lazily uncurled her fingers to plant something into her palm. ‘Your missing lens...perhaps if you replace it, your view of the world will be clarified.’
Her lashes flew up. ‘You are one sarcastic—!’
‘And when you have shed the equivalent of Miss Havisham’s wedding gown, which strangely enough does more for you than anything I have recently seen you in, is it possible that you could dig very deep into your wardrobe and produce something even passably presentable in which to travel?’ Luca enquired gently.
‘I’m not going to Italy...I’m not leaving to go anywhere ...I have too many responsibilities here!’ Darcy shot at him in a rising crescendo of desperation. ‘This is my home...you cannot make me leave it!’
‘I can’t make you do anything,’ Luca conceded softly. ‘The choice is yours.’
Outrage gripped Darcy at that quip. Both her hands closed into fierce fists of frustration. ‘You’re blackmailing me...what choice do I have?’
Luca surveyed her with immovable cool and said nothing.
Unnerved by that lack of reaction, Darcy twisted away and raced upstairs to her bedroom.
Her mind was in a state of utter turmoil, stray thoughts hitting her like thrown knives thudding into a shrinking target. How would Luca feel if he found out that she had conceived his child that night in Venice? She was in no hurry to find out. Wouldn’t that give him even more power over her? And why the heck had she had Zia christened Venezia? Or was that fanciful use of the Italian name of that great city too remote a connection to occur to anyone but her own foolish and sentimental self?
What the heck was Luca trying to do to her? Most of all, her brain screeched, why was he doing it? His behaviour made not the smallest sense. In fact her sheer inability to comprehend why Luca Raffacani should have employed diabolical cunning and deception to sneak into her life and threaten to blow it asunder was the most terrifying aspect of all. He knew so much about her, but as yet she knew next to nothing about him—and ignorance was not bliss!
Galvanised into action by that acknowledgement, Darcy reached for the phone by her bed and punched out the number of Richard’s stud farm, praying he was in his office because he hated mobile phones and refused to carry one. ‘Richard...it’s Darcy—’
‘How are you, old girl?’ Richard cut in warmly. ‘Odd you should ring. I was actually thinking of dropping down this—’
‘Richard...do you remember telling me that it’s possible to find almost any information you want on the Internet?’ Darcy interrupted with scant ceremony. ‘Could you do that for me as a favour and fax anything you get?’
‘Sure. What kind of information are you after?’
‘Anything you can get on an Italian called...Gianluca Raffacani.’
‘There’s something vaguely familiar about that surname,’ Richard commented absently. ‘I wonder if he’s into horses...’
‘I
’ll be grateful for anything you can send me, but don’t tell anyone I’ve been enquiring,’ she warned nervously.
‘No problem. Anything wrong down there?’ he enquired. ‘You sound harassed. What’s the connection? Who is this chap?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. Talk to you soon...thanks, Richard.’ Darcy replaced the receiver.
She studied the framed photo of Richard by her bed and gave his grinning cheerful image the thumbs-up sign. To fight Luca she had to find out who and what she was dealing with.
No way could she go to Italy! The Folly could not be left empty. And who would feed the hens and Nero, her elderly horse, look after the dogs? Work that the wedding had so far prevented her from carrying out today, she recalled dully. Shedding her late mother’s gown, she pulled on her work jeans and an old sweater. She could not bear the idea of leaving her home...
But if she didn’t, she would lose the Folly for ever. For ever. Perspiration beaded her upper lip. Her shoulders dropped in defeat. In the short term, what choice did she have but to play along with Luca’s demands? And that meant going to Italy with Zia. Before she could lose her nerve, she dug a couple of suitcases out of a box room further down the corridor. She packed them with a hastily chosen selection of her clothing and her daughter’s, squeezing in toys until both cases bulged.
A quiet knock sounded on the bedroom door.
It was Benito. His face a study of careful solemnity, he passed her several sheets of neatly trimmed fax paper. ‘This was on the machine in the library when I went to use it, signora.’
Her fair complexion awash with disconcerted pink as she glimpsed the topmost page, which bore a recognisable picture of Luca, she said stiffly, ‘You work for Luca?’
‘As his executive assistant, signora.’
Closing the door again, wondering in hot-cheeked chagrin if Luca had personally censored the information sent by Richard or if, indeed, he considered her efforts to learn about him a source of amusement rather then a worrying development, Darcy spread the results of her former fiancé’s surf on the Internet across the bed.