by Lynne Graham
As Ilaria began ranting hysterically at Luca in Italian she backed away from the table. A look of astonished incomprehension on his taut features, Luca rose upright and strode towards his sister. ‘Cosa c’e che non va... what’s wrong?’ he demanded urgently, anxiously.
Crying now in earnest, Ilaria clumsily evaded her brother’s attempt to place comforting hands on her shoulders. Tearing herself away, she gasped out something in her own language and fled.
Instead of following her, Luca froze there as if his sister had struck him. He raised his lean hands, spread them slightly in an odd, inarticulate movement, and then slowly dropped them again.
Darcy hurried over to his side. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
His clenched profile starkly delineated against the flickering pools of shadow and light, Luca drew in a deep, shuddering breath. He turned a strange, unfocused look on Darcy. ‘She said... she said...’ he began unevenly.
‘She said...what?’ Darcy prompted impatiently, listening to Ilaria having a rousing bout of hysterics in the hall.
‘Ilaria said she stole the Adorata ring,’ Luca finally got out, and he shook his glossy dark head in so much shock and lingering disbelief he had the aspect of a very large statue teetering dangerously on its base.
‘Oh...oh, dear,’ Darcy muttered, so shaken by that shattering revelation that she couldn’t for the life of her manage to come up with anything more appropriate.
Ilaria was sobbing herself hoarse in the centre of the hall. Darcy tried to put her arms round the girl and got pushed away. Ilaria shot an accusing, gulping stream of Italian at her.
‘I’m sorry, but I was absolutely lousy at languages at school.’ Darcy curved a determined hand round the girl’s elbow and urged her into the drawing room. ‘I know you’re very upset...but try hard to calm down just a bit,’ she pleaded.
‘How can I? Luca will never forgive me!’ Ilaria wailed, and she flung herself face-down on a sofa to sob again.
Sitting down beside her, Darcy let her cry for a while. But as soon as Luca entered the room she got up and said awkwardly, ‘Look...I’ll leave you two alone—’
‘No!’ Ilaria suddenly reached out to grab at Darcy’s hand. ‘You stay...’
‘Yes...because if you don’t, Darcy,’ Luca muttered in the strangest tone of eerie detachment from his sister’s distress, ‘I may just kill her.’
‘You’re nearly as bad as she is!’ Darcy condemned roundly as Ilaria went off into another bout of tormented sobbing. ‘You won’t get any sense out of her talking like that.’
‘I know very well how to get sense out of her!’
Luca rapped out a command in staccato Italian which sounded very much like a version of pull-yourself-together-or-else.
‘I’m sorry...I’m really s-sorry!’ Ilaria gulped brokenly then. ‘I panicked when I realised that Darcy was the woman you met that night... Because you had married her I thought you had guessed...and that you had brought me over here to confront me with what I did!’
‘Your brother wouldn’t behave like that,’ Darcy said quietly.
Luca shot her a curious, almost pained look, and then turned his attention back to his sister. ‘How did you do it?’
‘You shouldn’t have been at the apartment at all that evening because it was the night of the ball.’ Sitting bolt-upright now on the sofa, clutching the tissue that Darcy had fetched for her use, Ilaria began to shred it with restive, trembling hands. ‘I needed money and you’d cut off my allowance... refused to let me even see Pietro...I was so angry with you! I was going to run away with him, but we needed money to do that—’
‘You were seventeen,’ Luca cut in harshly. ‘I did what I had to do to protect you from yourself. If you hadn’t been an heiress that sleazy louse wouldn’t have given you a second glance!’
‘Let her tell her story,’ Darcy murmured, watching Ilaria cringe at that blunt assessment.
‘I h-had a key to the apartment. I knew all the security codes. One day when I had lunch there with you, you went into the safe and I watched you do it from the hall,’ Ilaria mumbled shamefacedly. ‘I thought there would be cash in the safe...’
‘Your timing was unfortunate.’
‘All there was...was the Adorata,’ Ilaria continued shakily. ‘I was furious, so I took it. I told myself I was entitled to it if I needed it, but when I took the Adorata to Pietro, he...he laughed in my face! He said he wasn’t fool enough to try and sell a famous piece of stolen goods. He said he would have had Interpol chasing him across Europe in pursuit of it...so I planned to put the ring back the next morning.’
‘That was a timely change of heart,’ Darcy put in encouragingly, although one look at Luca’s icily clenched and remote profile reduced her to silence again.
‘But you see, you went back to the apartment that night and stayed there...you found the safe open and the Adorata gone... was too late!’ Ilaria wailed.
‘What did you do with the ring?’
‘It’s safe,’ his sister hastened to assure him. ‘It’s in my safety deposit box with Mamma’s jewellery.’
Momentarily, Luca closed his eyes at that news. ‘Porca miseria...’ he ground out unsteadily. ‘All this time...’
‘If you’d called in the police I would have had to tell you I had it,’ his sister muttered, almost accusingly. ‘But when I realised you believed that the woman you’d left the ball with had taken it...’ She shot a severely embarrassed glance at Darcy, belatedly recalling that that woman and her brother’s wife were now one and the same. ‘I mean—’
‘Me...it’s all right,’ Darcy cut in, but her cheeks were burning.
‘You see...’ Ilaria hesitated. ‘You weren’t like a real person to me, and it didn’t seem to matter who Luca blamed as long as he didn’t suspect me.’
Darcy studied the exquisite Aubusson carpet fixedly, mortification overpowering her. She could well imagine how low an opinion Ilaria must have had of her at seventeen: some tramp who had dived into bed with her brother the same night she had first met him.
Disconcertingly, Luca vented a flat, humourless laugh. ‘Aren’t you fortunate that Darcy disappeared into thin air?’
Darcy was more than willing to disappear into thin air all over again. She turned towards the door. ‘I think you need to talk without a stranger around,’ she said with a rather tremulous smile.
Distinctly shaky after the strain of the scene she had undergone, Darcy shook her head apologetically at Luca’s manservant, who was now hovering uncomfortably in the dining room doorway, obviously wondering what was happening and whether or not any of them intended to sit down and eat dinner like civilised people. She had enjoyed a substantial lunch earlier in the day and now she felt pretty queasy.
Poor Luca. Poor Ilaria. Such a shaming secret must have been horrible for the girl to live with for so long. A moment’s reckless bitter rebellion over the head of some boy she had clearly been hopelessly infatuated with. As Ilaria matured that secret would have weighed ever more heavily on her conscience, probably causing her to assume a defensive attitude to cover her unease in Luca’s presence.
Guilt did that—it ate away at you. Little wonder that Ilaria had avoided Luca’s company. She had been too afraid to face up to what she had done and confess. And the instant Ilaria had appreciated that her brother’s wife was also the woman Luca had once believed to be a thief, she had jumped to the panic-stricken conclusion that Luca somehow knew that she was the culprit. After all, how could Iliaria ever have guessed that her lordly big brother might have married a woman he still believed to be a thief out of a powerful need to punish her?
And now Luca would finally get that wretched ring back. Could he really believe that any inanimate object, no matter how valuable, precious and rare, was worth so much grief? How did he feel now that he knew he had misjudged her? Gutted, Darcy decided without hesitation. He had looked absolutely gutted when comprehension rolled over him like a drowning tidal wave. His own sister.
Darcy heaved a sigh. Maybe, as Luca had said himself, peace would now break out. Naturally he would have to apologise...in fact a bit of crawling wouldn’t come amiss, Darcy thought, beginning to feel rather surprisingly upbeat. Having checked on Zia, she wandered downstairs again and into the dining room.
She sat down at the table, appetite restored, and tucked into her elaborate starter. No, she didn’t want Luca to crawl. He was having a tough enough time with Ilaria and his spectacular own goal of misjudgement. She had to be fair. The evidence had been very much stacked against her. And how could he ever have suspected his seventeen-year-old sister of pulling off such a feat?
She was halfway through the main course when Luca appeared. ‘Santo cielo... how can you eat at a time like this?’ he breathed in a charged tone of incredulity.
‘I felt hungry...sorry to be so prosaic,’ Darcy muttered, wondering where that rather melodramatic opening was about to take him. ‘How’s Ilaria?’
‘I persuaded her to stay the night. I’m sorry about that...’
‘About what?’ Conscious that the sight of the cutlery still in her grasp seemed to be an offence of no mean order in his eyes, she abandoned her meal. In fact, in the mix of shadow and dim light in which Luca stood poised, the dark, sombre planes of his unusually pale features lent him an almost lost, lonely sort of aspect.
‘About what?’ Luca echoed, frowning as if he was struggling to get a grip on himself. ‘Aren’t you furious with Ilaria?’
‘Gosh, no...she was terribly distressed. She’s rather young for her age—very... well, emotional,’ Darcy selected, striving to be tactful for once in her life.
‘Being emotional is not catching... is it? You must be outraged with me,’ Luca breathed starkly.
‘Well, yes, I was when all this nonsense started—’
‘Nonsense?’ Luca cut in with ragged stress.
Darcy rose to her feet, wishing she could just run over and put her arms round him, spring him out of this strange and unfamiliar mood he was in, but he looked so incredibly remote now. As if he had lost everything he possessed. But he would strangle the first person who had the bad taste to either mention it or show a single hint of pity or understanding.
‘I always knew I didn’t take the wretched thing,’ she pointed out gently. ‘I’m awfully glad it’s all cleared up now. And I understand why you were so convinced I was the thief...after all, you didn’t know me, did you?’
Luca flinched as if she had punched him in the stomach. He spun his dark head away. ‘No...I didn’t,’ he framed almost hoarsely.
She watched him swallow convulsively.
Feeling utterly helpless, craving the confidence to bridge the frightening gap she could feel opening up between them, Darcy was gripped by a powerful wave of frustration. He was so at a loss; she wanted to hug him the way she hugged Zia when she fell over and hurt herself. But she thought she would crack their tenuous relationship right down the middle if she made such an approach. He was too proud.
‘We’ll talk later,’ Luca imparted with what sounded like a really dogged effort to sound his usual collected self. ‘You need to be alone for a while.’
He needed to be alone for a while, Darcy interpreted without difficulty. He’s going to walk out on me...what did I do wrong? a voice screamed inside her bemused head. Here she was, being as fair, honest and reasonable as she knew how to be, and the wretched man was withdrawing more from her with every second.
‘Tell me...would you have preferred a screaming row?’
‘We have nothing to row about any more,’ Luca countered, without a shade of his usual irony. In fact he sounded as if his only enjoyment in life had been wrenched from him by the cruellest of fates.
As the clock on the mantelpiece struck midnight, Darcy rose with a sigh. And that was when she heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. As the drawing room door opened, she tensed. For a split second Luca stilled at the sight of her, veiled eyes astutely reading the anxious, assessing look in hers.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he murmured quietly as he thrust the door closed.
‘A brandy...’ She watched him stride over to the ornate oriental drinks cabinet. Lithe, dark, strikingly good-looking, every movement fluid as poetry. He didn’t look gutted any more—but then she hadn’t expected him to. Luca was tough, a survivor, and survivors knew how to roll with the punches.
But she must have been born under an unlucky star. What savage fate had decreed that she should be involved up to her throat in the two biggest mistakes Luca had ever made? It was so cruel. He would judge himself harshly and he would never think of her without guilty unease again. She was like an albatross in his life, always a portent of doom. She hoved in to his radius and things went badly wrong. If he was like every other man she had ever known, he would very soon find the very sight of her an objectionable reminder of his own lowest moments.
Luca handed her the balloon glass of brandy, his lean, strong face sombre. ‘I have come. to some conclusions.’
Menaced by both expression and announcement, Darcy downed the brandy in one long, desperate gulp.
‘You must have found the last few days very traumatic,’ Luca breathed heavily, fabulous bone structure rigid. ‘In retrospect, it is impossible to justify anything that I have done. I can make no excuse for myself; I can only admit that from the instant I found you gone from the apartment, the safe open, the Adorata gone, I nourished an obsessive need to run you to ground and even what I saw as the score between us—’
Predictably, Darcy cut to the heart of the matter. ‘You thought I’d made a fool of you.’
‘Yes... and that was a new experience for me. I must confess that there was nothing I was not prepared to do to achieve my objective,’ Luca admitted with a grim edge to his dark, deep voice. ‘If Ilaria hadn’t confessed tonight, I’d still have believed you guilty, and since it would not have been possible for you to satisfy my demand that you help me to regain the Adorata... I would, ultimately, have dispossessed you of Fielding’s Folly.’
Darcy was ashen pale now. ‘No...you wouldn’t have done that.’
Slowly, Luca shook his dark head, stunning dark eyes resting full on her disbelieving face. ‘Darcy, you’re a much nicer person than I have ever been... I would have done it. When I married you, I already held the future of the Folly in the palm of my hand.’
‘What do you m-mean?’ she stammered, moisture beading her short upper lip as she stared back at him.
From the inside pocket of his beautifully tailored dinner jacket, Luca withdrew a folded document. ‘I bought the company which gave your father the mortgage on the Folly. This is the agreement. You’re in default of the terms of that agreement now. I could have called in the loan and forced you out at any time over the next six months,’ he spelt out very quietly. ‘It would’ve been as easy as taking candy from a baby.’
Her shattered eyes huge dark smudges against her pallor, Darcy gazed back at him transfixed. ‘You...you bought the company?’ she gasped sickly.
As he absorbed the full extent of her horror at such calculated foreplanning, Luca seemed to pale too. ‘I had to tell you. I had to be completely honest with you. You have the right to know it all now.’
Her lips bloodless, Darcy mumbled, strickenly, ‘I don’t think I wanted to know that...how could anybody sink that low?’
‘I wish I could say that I don’t know what got into me...but I do know,’ Luca murmured with bleak, dark eyes. ‘My ego could not live with what I believed you had done to me that night. I had the power to take a terrible revenge and that was my intention when I replied to your advertisement.’
Darcy nodded like a little wooden marionette, too appalled to do anything but gaze back at him as if he had turned into a monster before her very eyes.
A faint sheen now glossed Luca’s golden skin. ‘Not a very pretty objective...when I think back to that now, I am very much ashamed. You have made such a valiant struggle to survive against all the odds.’
>
Darcy shook her pounding head with a little jerk. She felt as if she was dying inside, and now she knew what was really the matter with her—could no longer avoid knowing. She had fallen in love with him. How else could he be hurting her so much? She turned almost clumsily away from him, a mess of raw, agonised nerve-endings, and sank down onto a sofa. ‘I slept with you,’ she muttered, suddenly stricken.
‘I definitely don’t think we should touch on that issue right now,’ Luca contended without hesitation. ‘I’m sinking faster than a rock in a swamp as it is. What I want to do now... what I need to do...is make amends to you in every way possible.’
‘I hate you...’ And she did. She hated him because he didn’t love her, because he had made a fool of her, because she had made a fool of herself and, last but not least, because she could not bear the thought of having to struggle to get over him again.
‘I can live with that.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Of course. The jet is at your disposal. When were you thinking of leaving?’
‘Now—’
‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to get Zia out of bed.’ Since Darcy was still staring numbly at the rug beneath her feet, Luca hunkered down in front of her. ‘Shout at me...hit me if it makes you feel better. I don’t know what to do when you’re quiet!’ he murmured fiercely.
‘I’ll leave first thing in the morning,’ Darcy swore.
Luca reached for her tightly coiled hands. ‘When do you want me to fly over?’
Darcy focused on him for the first time in several minutes but said nothing, her incredulity unfeigned.
Brilliant dark eyes glittered. ‘You’re stuck with me for the next six months,’ Luca reminded her gently. ‘Surely you hadn’t forgotten that...had you?’
Darcy had. Her brain felt as if it was spinning in tortured circles.