by Lynne Graham
Brilliant dark eyes intent on her aghast expression, Luca continued smoothly, ‘As you’re so independent, I imagine you’ll wish to repay me once you inherit your godmother’s money, but in the short term you are no longer burdened by those substantial monthly payments.’
Darcy stumbled into speech. ‘But, Luca...what right—?’
‘I haven’t finished yet. I have also had a word with your bank manager. There is no longer a limit on your overdraft. Don’t throw it all back in my face,’ he urged almost roughly, openly assessing her shaken, troubled face. ‘I had no right to interfere, but I had a very powerful need to offer you what help I could.’
Still reeling, Darcy swallowed hard. She understood, oh, yes, she understood. Luca felt guilty. This was his way of making amends. His intervention on such grounds filled her with pained discomfiture, but she was in no position to refuse his efforts on behalf of the estate. He was making it possible for her to survive and re-employ the staff.
‘Thanks,’ she said stiltedly.
‘I would have liked to do a great deal more, cara mia,’ Luca admitted steadily. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t have accepted that.’
At that respectful acknowledgement, a slow, uncertain smile drove the tension from her tense mouth. ‘Did you park your wings outside?’
‘My wings?’
‘You’d make a really good guardian angel.’
‘I was afraid you were about to say fairy godmother,’ Luca confided.
‘It did cross my mind.’ Darcy wrinkled her nose and laughed for the first time in weeks. And then she remembered what she still had to tell him and her face shadowed. Tomorrow, she decided, she would tell him tomorrow...
It was half past eight when the Victorian bell on the massive front door shrieked and jangled.
Luca was in the library, having excused himself to make some calls, and Darcy had gone upstairs to slide into an outfit that magically accentuated her every slender curve. Green, with a fashionably short skirt and fitted jacket. She thought it looked kind of sexy on her. She slid her feet into high heels and fiddled anxiously with her hair in the mirror. And the whole time she was engaged on that transformation she refused to think about why she was doing it.
When Darcy opened the door, out of breath from rushing full tilt down the stairs, her sensitive stomach somersaulted when she saw Margo and Nina standing outside. Her stepmother elegant in black, and her stepsister dressed to kill in a sugar-pink dress so perilously short it made Darcy’s skirt look like a maxi.
Both women did a rather exaggerated double take over her altered image.
‘Is that a Galliano?’ Nina demanded in an envious shriek.
‘A...a what?’ Darcy, countered blankly.
‘And those shoes are Prada! He got you out of your Barbour and your wellies fast enough!’ Nina gibed thinly. ‘It’s such a dangerous sign when a man tries to change a woman into something she’s not.’
On.her lofty passage towards the drawing room, Margo winced. ‘And green simply screams at your red hair, Darcy!’
‘But Darcy doesn’t have red hair,’ a deep, dark drawl interceded across the depth of the hall from the library doorway. ‘It’s Titian, a shade defined by the dictionary as a bright, golden auburn.’
Darcy threw Luca the sort of look a drowning swimmer gives to a life jacket.
Margo and Nina weren’t quite quick enough to conceal their dismay and surprise at Luca’s appearance.
‘I understood that you were still in Italy, Luca.’ Her stepmother’s smile of greeting was stiff.
‘I thought that might be why you were here.’ As Luca strolled over to the fireplace and took up a relaxed stance there, he let that statement hang a split-second, while their uninvited visitors tensed with uncertainty at his possible meaning before continuing smoothly, ‘How very kind of you to think that Darcy might be in need of company.’
‘I’m sure Richard Carlton’s been dropping in too,’ Nina said innocently.
‘Yes, and what a very entertaining guy he is,’ Luca countered, smiling without skipping a beat while Darcy’s fascinated gaze darted back and forth between the combatants. Margo and Nina had definitely met their match.
‘Nina and I were only saying yesterday what a coincidence it is that Darcy and Maxie Kendall should have got married within weeks of each other!’ Margo exclaimed, watching Darcy stiffen with suspicious eyes. ‘Now what was the name of Nancy Leeward’s other godchild?’
‘Polly,’ Darcy muttered tightly. ‘Why?’
‘Naturally I’m curious. That old woman left such an extraordinary will! I expect we’ll be hearing of Polly’s marriage next...’
‘I doubt it,’ Darcy slotted in. ‘When I last saw her, Polly had no plans to marry.’
Nina directed a brilliant smile at Luca and crossed her fabulous long legs, her abbreviated dress riding so high Darcy wouldn’t have been surprised to see pantie elastic. ‘I bet you haven’t a clue what we’re talking about, Luca.’
Margo chimed in, ‘I’m afraid it did cross my mind that Darcy might—’
‘Might marry me to inherit a measly one million?’ Sardonic amusement gleamed in Luca’s steady appraisal. ‘Yes, of course I know about the will, but I can assure you that an eccentric godmother’s wishes played no part whatsoever in my desire to marry your stepdaughter.’
‘Yes,’ Darcy agreed, getting into the spirit of his game with dancing green eyes. ‘I believe Luca would say that when he married me, he had his own private agenda.’
‘Ouch,’ Luca breathed for her ears alone, and her cheeks warmed.
But Margo was not so easily silenced. ‘I don’t know how to put this without seeming intrusive...but frankly I was concerned when I learnt from friends locally that Darcy had come home alone after spending only forty-eight hours with you in Venice—’
‘Mummy...it’s hardly likely to be her favourite place,’ Nina said with a meaningful look.
‘I love Venice,’ Darcy returned squarely.
‘I know you gave your poor child that silly name—Venezia—but I notice you soon gave up using it,’ Margo reminded her drily.
‘Venezia?’ Luca queried abruptly.
Darcy’s sensitive insides turned a sick somersault. She encountered a narrowed stare of bemusement from Luca and turned her head away abruptly.
‘Such a silly name!’ Nina giggled. ‘But then Darcy never did have much taste or discretion.’
Darcy felt too sick to glance again in Luca’s direction. Her nerves were shot to hell. She wanted to put a sack over Nina and suffocate her before she said too much.
‘Your sense of humour must often cause deep offence,’ Luca drawled with chilling bite, studying Nina with contempt. ‘I have zero tolerance for anything that might distress my wife.’
Two rosy high spots of red embellished Nina’s cheeks. Heavens, Darcy thought in equal shock, he sounded so incredibly protective. Her strain eased as she realised that Nina had abandoned her intent to make further snide comments about Zia.
‘Yes, you were very thoughtless, Nina,’ Margo agreed sharply. ‘That’s all in the past now. I actually came here today to express my very genuine concern over something Darcy has done.’
‘Really, Margo?’ Darcy was emboldened by the supportive hand Luca had settled in the shallow indentation of her spine.
‘You brought Luca to the engagement party I held and not one word did you breathe about his exalted status,’ Margo returned thinly.
Too enervated to be able to guess what her stepmother was leading up to, Darcy saw no relevance whatsoever to that statement. -
‘So what on earth persuaded you to do this?’ Her stepmother drew a folded magazine from her capacious bag, her face stiff with distaste and disapproval. ‘Is there anything you wouldn’t do for money, Darcy? How could you embarrass your husband like that?’
Instant appalled paralysis afflicted Darcy. Her green eyes zoomed in on the magazine which contained that dreadful gushing interview, and in the same second
she turned the colour of a ripe tomato, her stomach curdling with horror. Embarrassment choked her.
Margo shook her blonde head pityingly. ‘I was horrified that Darcy should sell the story of your marriage to a lurid gossip magazine, Luca.’
‘Whereas I shall treasure certain phrases spoken in that interview for ever,’ Luca purred in a tone of rich complacency, extending his arm to ease Darcy’s trembling, anxious length into the hard, muscular heat of his big frame. ‘When I read about Darcy’s “mystical sense of wonder” and her “spiritual feeling of soul-deep recognition” on first meeting me, I envied her ability to verbalise sensations and sentiments which I myself could never find adequate words to describe.’
‘Luca?’ Darcy mumbled shakily, shattered that he had actually read that interview and absorbed sufficient of her mindless drivel to quote directly from it.
But Luca, it seemed, was in full appreciative flow. ‘Indeed, I was overwhelmed by such a powerful need to be with Darcy again I flew straight here to her side. I shall always regard that interview as an open love letter from my wife.’
For the space of ten seconds Margo and Nina just sat there, apparently transfixed.
‘Of course, I’m very relieved to hear that the interview hasn’t caused any friction between you. I was so worried it would,’ Margo responded unconvincingly.
‘You surprise me.’ Fabulous bone structure grim, eyes wintry, Luca studied their visitors. ‘Only a fool could fail to see through your foolish attempts to diminish Darcy in my eyes. She is a woman of integrity, and how she contrived to hang onto that integrity growing up with two such vicious women is nothing short of a miracle!’
‘How dare you talk to me like that?’ Margo gasped, rising to her feet in sheer shock.
‘You resent my wife’s ownership of an estate which has been within her family for over four hundred years. You’re furious that she has married a rich man who will help her to retain that home. You hoped she would be forced to sell up because you planned to demand a share of the proceeds,’ Luca condemned with sizzling distaste. ‘That is why I dare to talk to you as I have.’
‘I’m not staying here to be insulted,’ Margo snapped, stalking towards the door.
‘I think that’s very wise.’
Luca listened to the thud of the massive front door with complete calm.
Stunned at what had just transpired, Darcy breathed. ‘I need to check on Zia...’
‘Venezia,’ Luca murmured softly, catching her taut fingers in his as she started up the stairs. ‘Obviously you chose that name because it held a special significance for you. You were happy with me that night in Venice?’
‘Y-yes,’ Darcy stammered.
‘But we met in what was clearly a troubled and transitional phase of your life.’ His lean, strong features were taut, as if he was selecting his words with great care. ‘I understand now why you so freely forgave Carlton for jilting you. Evidently he wasn’t the only guilty party. You went to bed with someone other than him before that wedding.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Angry chagrined colour warmed Darcy’s face as she stopped dead in the corridor.
‘Accidenti! What’s the point of denying it?’ Luca demanded in exasperation. ‘You may well not have been aware of the fact that night, but you were pregnant when you first met me!’
‘No... I wasn’t,’ Darcy told him staunchly, pressing open the door of Zia’s bedroom. ‘You’re still barking up the wrong tree!’
‘You must’ve been pregnant,’ Luca contradicted steadily, as if he was dealing with a child fearfully reluctant to own up to misbehaviour. ‘Your daughter was born seven months later.’
‘Zia was premature. She spent weeks in hospital before I could bring her home...’ Darcy held her breath in the silence which followed, and then steeled herself to turn and face him.
Luca had a dazed, disconcerted look in his dark, deepset eyes. He stared at her. ‘She was premature?’ he breathed, so low he had to clear his throat to be audible.
‘So you see, now that you’ve been through the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker, as they say in the nursery rhyme, we’re running out of possible culprits,’ Darcy pointed out unsteadily, her throat tight, her mouth dry, her heart thumping like mad behind her breastbone. ‘And to be honest, there only ever was one possibility, Luca.’
In the dim light, his eyes suddenly flashed pure gold. ‘Are you trying to tell me that...that Zia is mine?’ he whispered raggedly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DARCY’S voice let her down when she most needed it. As Luca asked that loaded question she gave a fierce, jerky nod, and she didn’t take her strained gaze from him for a second.
Black spiky lashes screened his sensational eyes. He blinked. He was stunned.
Darcy swallowed and relocated her voice. ‘And there’s not any doubt about it because Richard and I never slept together. We had decided to wait until we were married.’
‘Never?’ Luca stressed with hoarse incredulity.
Darcy grimaced. ‘And, since we didn’t get married, we never actually made it to bed.’
‘That means...but that means that I would’ve been your first... impossible-!’ Luca broke off and compressed his lips, studying her with shaken dark eyes.
Darcy reddened. ‘I didn’t want you to guess that night. You said virgins were deeply unexciting,’ she reminded him accusingly.
‘We both said and did several foolish things that night...but fortunately making Zia was not one of them.’ With a roughened laugh that betrayed the emotions he was struggling to contain, Luca closed his hands on hers to draw her closer while he gazed endlessly down at Zia, and then back at Darcy, as if he was being torn in two different directions. ‘Per amor di Dio...the truth has been staring me in the face from the start,’ he groaned. ‘The fact that nobody knew who the father of your child was. You wouldn’t say because you couldn’t say...you didn’t even know my name!’
Her anxious eyes were vulnerably wide.
Slowly Luca shook his glossy dark head. ‘I saw that photo of Carlton, and he’s dark as well. I assumed he was her father and that you still loved him enough to protect him. Then, when you said he wasn’t, it still didn’t occur to me that she could be my child!’
‘You didn’t know Zia was born prematurely. She arrived more than six weeks early.’
‘I want to wake her up to look at her properly,’ Luca confided a little breathlessly as he suddenly released Darcy to look down at his daughter. ‘But that’s the first lesson she taught me. Don’t disturb her when she’s asleep!’
‘She sleeps like the dead, Luca.’
‘Where were my eyes?’ he whispered in unconcealed wonder. ‘She has my nose—’
‘She got just about everything from you.’ As she hovered there Darcy was feeling slightly abandoned, and, pessimist that she had been, she was unprepared for Luca’s obvious excitement at the discovery that he was a father.
Excitement? No, she certainly hadn’t expected that. But then nothing had gone remotely like any of her vague imaginings of this scene. Luca had been shocked, but he had skipped the mortifying protest stage she had feared and gone straight into acceptance mode.
‘She’s really beautiful Luca commented with considerable pride.
‘Yes, I think so too,’ Darcy whispered rather forlornly.
‘Per meraviglia ... I’m a father. I’d better get on to my lawyer straight away—’
‘I beg your pardon? Your lawyer?’
‘If I was to drop dead tonight before I acknowledge her as my daughter, she could end up penniless!’ Luca headed straight for the door. ‘I’ll call him right now.’
Drop dead, then, Luca. Darcy’s eyes prickled and stung. She sniffed. Of course she didn’t mean that. In fact just thinking of anything happening to Luca pierced her to the heart and terrified her, but it was hard to cope with feeling like the invisible woman.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Luca glanced back in at her again.
She sat in the library, watching him call his lawyer. Then he called his sister, and by the sound of the squeals of excitement Ilaria was delighted to receive such a stunning announcement.
‘Zia is mine. Obviously it was meant to be,’ Luca drawled, squaring his shoulders as he sank down into the armchair opposite her. ‘Now I want to hear everything from the first minute you suspected you might be pregnant.’
‘I was about five months gone before I worked that out.’
‘Five months?’ Luca exclaimed.
‘I didn’t put on much weight, didn’t have any morning sickness or anything. I was eating a lot, and I got a bit of a tummy, and then I got this really weird sort of little fluttery feeling...that’s what made me go to the doctor. When he told me it was the baby moving I was shocked rigid!’
‘I imagine you were.’ Luca’s spectacular dark eyes were brimming with tender amusement. Rising lithely from his chair, he settled down on the sofa beside her and reached for her hand to close it between his long fingers. ‘So you weren’t ill?’
‘Healthy as a horse.’
‘And how did your family react?’
‘My father was pretty decent about it, but I think that was because he was hoping I’d have a boy,’ Darcy admitted ruefully. ‘He didn’t give two hoots about the gossip, but Margo was ready to kill me. She went round letting everyone believe the baby was Richard’s because, of course, that sounded rather better.’
‘What did you tell your family about Zia’s father?’
‘More or less the truth...ships that pass...said I’d forgotten your name,’ Darcy admitted shamefacedly.
‘How alone you must have felt,’ Luca murmured heavily, his grip on her small hand tightening. ‘But that night you gave me to understand that you were protected.’
‘I honestly thought I was. I didn’t realise that you had to take those wretched contraceptive pills continuously to be safe...and, of course, I’d tossed them in the bin the first morning I was in Venice!’
‘If only you hadn’t run away from the apartment—’
‘You’d have stuck the police on me instead.’
