The Vengeful Husband

by Lynne Graham

  “Should you agree to take the position on offer, you would be well paid even though there is no work involved.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Copyright

  “Should you agree to take the position on offer, you would be well paid even though there is no work involved.”

  “No work involved?”

  Darcy was soothed to receive the exact response she had anticipated in that interruption. “No work whatsoever,” she confirmed. “While you were living in my home, your time would be your own, and at the end of your employment—assuming that you fulfill the terms to my satisfaction—I would also give you a very generous bonus.”

  “What’s the catch?” Luca prompted very softly. “In return you ask me to do something illegal?”

  A mortified flush stained Darcy’s perfect skin. “Of course not,” she rebutted tautly. “The ‘catch’, if you choose to call it that, is that you would have to marry me for six months!”

  Dear Reader,

  What I enjoy most about writing is the creation of entirely different heroines. THE HUSBAND HUNTERS is about three women who find love where they least expect it. Maxie cannot imagine any man appreciating her for herself, rather than her looks. Darcy had been badly hurt and has given up on the male sex. Polly falls in love and is betrayed. To match these ladies, we have Angelos, who fondly imagines that Maxie will be his the instant he asks; Luca, who seeks revenge by ensuring that Darcy marries no one but him; and Raul, who finds out the hard way that Polly, the idealistic mother of his child, can be surprisingly unforgiving....

  Sincerely

  Look out next month for Polly’s story:

  Contract Baby by Lynne Graham

  Harlequin Presents #2013

  LYNNE GRAHAM

  The Vengeful Husband

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  CHAPTER ONE

  A SLENDER fragile beauty in a silvery green gown. Translucent skin, a mane of vibrant Titian hair and spellbinding eyes as green as peridots behind her flirtatious little mask. A hoarse, sexy little voice, sharp enough to strip paint and then sweet enough to make honey taste bitter...

  ‘No names...no pack drill,’ she had said.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ she had said, when he had tried to identify himself. ‘After tonight, I’ll never see you again. What would be the point?’

  No woman had ever said that to Gianluca Raffacani before. No woman had ever looked on him as a one-night stand. The shock of such treatment had been profound. But her eagerness in his bed had seemed to disprove the dismissive words on her lips...until he’d wakened in the early hours and found his mystery lover gone and the Adorata ring gone with her. And then Luca had simply not been able to credit that some unscrupulous little tart had contrived to rip him off with such insulting ease.

  His memory of that disastrous night in Venice almost three years earlier still biting like salt in an open wound, Luca surveyed the closed file labelled ‘Darcy Fielding’ on his library desk, his chiselled features chillingly cast. With the cool of a self-discipline renowned in the world of international finance, he resisted the temptation to rip open the file like an impatient boy. He had waited a long time for this moment. He could wait a little longer. ‘It is her this time...you’re sure?’ he prompted softly.

  Even swollen with pride as Benito was at finally succeeding in his search, even convinced by the facts that he had to have the right woman, Benito still found himself stiffening with uncertainty. Although the woman he had identified matched every slender clue he had started out with, by no stretch of his imagination could he see his famously fastidious and highly sophisticated employer choosing to spend a wild night of passion with the female in that photograph...

  ‘I will only be sure when you have recognised her, sir,’ Benito admitted tautly.

  ‘You’re backtracking, Benito.’ With a rueful sigh that signified no great hope of satisfaction, Luca Raffacani reached out a deceptively indolent brown hand and flipped open the file to study the picture of the woman on the title page.

  As Luca tensed and a frown grew on his strong dark face, setting his pure bone structure to the cold consistency of granite, Benito paled, suddenly convinced that he had made a complete ass of himself. That bedraggled female image sported worn jeans, wellington boots, a battered rain-hat and a muddy jacket with a long rip in one sleeve. More bag lady than gorgeous seductress. ‘I’ve been too hasty—’

  ‘She’s cut off her hair...’ his employer interrupted in a low-pitched growl.

  After a convulsive swallow, Benito breathed tautly, ‘Are you saying that...it is the same woman?’

  ‘Was she got up like this for a fancy dress party?’

  ‘Signorina Fielding was feeding hens when that was taken,’ Benito supplied apologetically. ‘It was the best the photographer could manage. She doesn’t go out much.’

  ‘Hens...?’ Bemusement pleating his aristocratic ebony brows, Luca continued to scan the photo with hard, dark deepset eyes. ‘Yet it is her. Without a doubt, it is her...the devious little thief who turned me over like a professional!’

  Darcy Fielding had stolen a medieval ring, a museum piece, an irreplaceable heirloom. The Raffacani family had been princes since the Middle Ages. To mark the occasion of the birth of his son, the very first principe had given his wife, Adorata, the magnificent ruby ring. Yet in spite of that rich family heritage, and the considerable value of the jewel, the police had not been informed of the theft. Initially stunned by such an omission, Benito had since become less surprised...

  According to popular report within the Raffacani empire, some very strange things had happened the night of the annual masked ball at the Palazzo d’Oro. The host had vanished, for one thing. And if it was actually true that Gianluca Raffacani had vanished in order to romance the thief with something as deeply uncool for a native Venetian as a moonlit gondola tour of the city, Benito could perfectly understand why the police had been excluded from the distinctly embarrassing repercussions of that evening. No male would wish to confess to such a cardinal error of judgement.

  In spite of the substantial reward which had been dangled like bait in the relevant quarters, the ring had not been seen since. Most probably it had been disposed of in England—secretly acquired by some rich collector content not to question its provenance. Benito had been extremely disappointed when the investigator failed to turn up the slightest evidence of Darcy Fielding having a previous criminal record.

  ‘Tell me about her...’ his employer invited without warning, shutting the file with a decisive snap and thrusting it aside.

  Surprised by the instruction, Benito breathed in deep. ‘Darcy Fielding lives in a huge old house which has been in her family for many generations. Her financial situation is dire. The house is heavily mortgaged and she is currently behind with the repayments—’

  ‘Who holds the mortgage?’ Luca incised softly.

  Benito informed him that the mortgage had been taken out a decade earlier with an insurance firm.

  ‘Buy it,’ Luca told him equally quietly. ‘Continue...’

  ‘Locally, the lady is well-respected. However, when the investigator went further afield, he found her late godmother’s housekeeper mo
re than willing to dish the dirt.’

  Luca’s brilliant eyes narrowed, his sensual mouth twisting with distaste. In an abrupt movement, he reopened the file at the photograph again. He surveyed it with renewed fascination. What he could see of her hair suggested a brutal shearing rather than the attentions of a salon. She looked a mess, a total mess, but the glow of that perfect skin and the bewitching clarity of those eyes were unmistakable.

  Emerging from his uncharacteristic loss of attention, Luca discovered that he had also lost the thread of Benito’s report...

  ‘And if the lady pulls it off, she stands to inherit something in the region of one million pounds sterling,’ Benito concluded impressively.

  Luca studied his most trusted aide. ‘Pull what off?’

  ‘The late Signora Leeward had three god-daughters... possibly the god-daughters from hell.’ Benito labelled them with rueful amusement. ‘When it came to the disposing of her worldly goods, what was there to choose between the three? One living with a married man, one an unmarried mother and the other going the same way—and not a wedding ring or even the prospect of one between the lot of them!’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ Luca admitted with controlled impatience.

  ‘Darcy Fielding’s rich godmother left everything to her three godchildren on condition that each of them find a husband within the year.’

  ‘And Darcy is one of those women you described.’ Luca finally grasped it, bronzed features freezing into charged stillness. ‘Which?’

  ‘She’s the unmarried mother,’ Benito volunteered.

  Luca froze. ‘When was the child born?’

  ‘Seven months after her trip to Venice. The kid’s just over two.’

  Luca stared into space, rigidly schooling his dark face to impassivity, but it was a challenge to suppress his sheer outrage at the news. Cristo... she had even been pregnant with another man’s child when she slept with him! Well, that was just one more nail in her coffin. Luca swore in disgust. Whatever was most important to her, he would take from her in punishment. He would teach her what it was like to be deceived and cheated and humiliated. As she, most unforgettably, had taught him...

  ‘As to the identity of the kid’s father...’ Benito continued wryly. ‘The jury’s still out on that one. Apparently the locals believe that the child was fathered by the fiancé, who ditched the lady at the altar. He figures as a rat of the lowest order in their eyes. But the godmother’s housekeeper had a very different version of events. She contends that the fiancé was abroad at the time the kid was conceived, and that he took to his heels because he realised that the baby on the way couldn’t possibly be his!’

  Luca absorbed that further information in even stonier silence.

  ‘I shouldn’t think the lady will remain a single parent for long,’ Benito advanced with conviction. ‘Not with a million pounds up for grabs. And on page six of the file you will see what I believe she is doing to acquire that money...’

  Luca leafed through the file. ‘What is this?’ he demanded, studying the tiny print of the enclosed newspaper advertisement and its accompanying box number.

  ‘I suspect that Darcy Fielding is discreetly advertising for a husband to fulfil the terms of that will.’

  ‘Advertising?’ Luca echoed in raw disbelief.

  Country woman seeks quiet, well-behaved and domesticated single male without close ties, 25-50, for short-term live-in employment. Absolute confidentiality guaranteed. No time-wasters, please.

  ‘That’s not an advertisement for a husband...it’s an ad for an emasculated household pet!’ Luca launched with incredulous bite.

  ‘I’m going to have to advertise again,’ Darcy divulged grimly to Karen as she mucked out the stall of the single elderly occupant in the vast and otherwise horse-free stable yard. She wielded the shovel like an aggressive weapon. Back to square one. She could hardly believe it—and that wretched advertisement had cost an arm and a leg!

  Standing by and willing to help, but knowing better than to offer, Karen looked in surprise at her friend. ‘But what happened to your shortlist of two possibilities? The gardener and the home handyman?’

  Darcy slung the attractive thirty-year-old brunette a weary grimace. ‘Yesterday I phoned one and then the other in an attempt to set up an interview—’

  ‘In which you planned to finally spill the confidential beans that matrimony was the real employment on offer.’ Karen sighed. ‘Boy, would I like to have been a fly on the wall when you broke that news!’

  ‘Yes, well...as it turns out, I shan’t need to embarrass myself just yet. One had already found a job elsewhere and the other has moved on without leaving a forwarding address. I shouldn’t have wasted so much time agonising over my choice.’

  ‘What choice? You only got five replies. Two were obscene and one was weird! The ad was too vague in one way and far too specific in the other. What on earth possessed you to put in “well-behaved and domesticated”? I mean, talk about picky, why don’t you? Still, I can’t really say I’m sorry that you’ve drawn a blank,’ Karen admitted, with the bluntness that made the two women such firm friends.

  ‘Karen...’ Darcy groaned.

  ‘Look, the thought of you being alone in this house with some stranger gives me the shivers!’ the brunette confided anxiously. ‘In any case, since you didn’t want to risk admitting in the ad that you were actually looking for a temporary husband, what are the chances that either of those men would have been agreeable to the arrangement you were about to offer?’

  Darcy straightened in frustration. ‘If I’d offered enough money, I bet one of them would have agreed. I need my inheritance, Karen. I don’t care what I have to do to get it. I don’t care if I have to marry the Hunchback of Notre Dame to meet the conditions of Nancy’s will!’ Darcy admitted with driven honesty. ‘This house has been in my family for four hundred years—’

  ‘But it’s crumbling round your ears and eating you up alive, Darcy. Your father had no right to lay such a burden on you. If he hadn’t let Fielding’s Folly get in such a state while he was responsible for it, you wouldn’t be facing the half of what you’re facing right now!’

  Darcy tilted her chin, green eyes alight with stubborn determination. ‘Karen...as long as I have breath in my body and two hands to work with, the Folly will survive so that I can pass it on to Zia.’

  Pausing to catch her breath from her arduous labour, Darcy glanced at her two-year-old daughter. Seated in a grassy sunlit corner, Zia was grooming one of her dolls with immense care. Her watching mother’s gaze was awash with wondering pride and pleasure.

  Zia had been blessed at birth, Darcy conceded gratefully. Mercifully, she hadn’t inherited her mother’s carroty hair, myopic eyesight or her nose. Zia had lustrous black curls and dainty, even features. There was nothing undersized or over-thin about her either. She was a strikingly pretty and feminine little girl. In short, she was already showing all the promise of becoming everything her mother had once so painfully and pointlessly longed to be...

  Zia wouldn’t be a wallflower at parties, too blunt-spoken to be flirtatious or appealing, too physically plain to attract attention any other way. Nor would Zia ever be so full of self-pity that she threw herself into the bed of a complete stranger just to prove that she could attract a man. Pierced to the heart by that painful memory, Darcy paled and guiltily looked away from her child, wondering how the heck she would eventually explain that shameful reality in terms that wouldn’t hurt and alienate her daughter.

  Some day Zia would ask her father’s name, quite reasonably, perfectly understandably. And what did Darcy have to tell her? Oh, I never got his name because I told him I didn’t want it. Even worse, I could well walk past him on the street without recognising him, because I wasn’t wearing my contacts and I’m a little vague as to his actual features. But he had dark eyes, even darker hair, and a wonderful, wonderful voice...

  Beneath Karen’s frowning gaze, Darcy had turned a beet-root colour and had b
egun studiously studying her booted feet. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Indigestion,’ Darcy muttered flatly, and it wasn’t a lie. Memories of that nature made her feel queasy and crushed her self-respect flat. She had been a push-over for the first sweet-talking playboy she had ever met.

  ‘So it’s back to the drawing board as far as the search for a temporary hubby goes, I gather...’ Releasing her breath in a rueful hiss, Karen studied the younger woman and reluctantly dug an envelope from the pocket of her jeans and extended it. ‘Here, take it. A late applicant, I assume. It came this morning. The postmark’s a London one.’

  To protect Darcy’s anonymity, Karen had agreed to put her own name behind the advertisement’s box number. All the replies had been sent to the gate lodge which Karen had recently bought from the estate. Darcy was well aware that she was running a risk in advertising to find a husband, but no other prospect had offered. If she was found out, she could be accused of trying to circumvent the conditions of her godmother’s will and excluded from inheriting. But what else was she supposed to do? Darcy asked herself in guilty desperation.

  It was her duty and her responsibility alone to secure Fielding’s Folly for future generations. She could not fail the trust her father had imposed on her at the last. She had faithfully promised that no matter what the cost she would hold on to the Folly. How could she allow four hundred years of family history to slip through her careless fingers?

  And, even more importantly, only when she contrived to marry would she be in a position to re-employ the estate staff forced to seek work elsewhere after her father’s death. In the months since, few had found new jobs. The knowledge that such loyal and committed people were still suffering from her father’s financial incompetence weighed even more heavily on her conscience.