The Vengeful Husband (The Husband Hunters 2)

'That's a long story—' Luca began.

Darcy rushed to interrupt him. Telling the truth, or as much of it as was reasonable, would be wisest in the cir¬cumstances, rather than that silly story of her having re¬versed into his car in London and shouted at him. This was his sister they were dealing with, and Ilaria had to know that Luca would have wiped the pavement with any female that stupid.

'I met your brother almost three years ago at a masked ball here,' Darcy admitted, an anxious smile on her lips.

The effect of that simple statement stunned Darcy. To her left, Luca released his breath in a stark hiss and shot her a look of outright exasperation. To her right, Ilaria's face locked tight. She gaped at Darcy in the most peculiar way, her mouth a shocked and rounded circle from which no sound emitted, her olive skin draining to a sick pallor which made her horrified dark eyes look huge.

'I seem to have—'

'Put a giant foot in your mouth,' Luca completed grimly.

And then everything went crazy. Just as Darcy realised with a sinking heart that naturally his sister had to be aware of the theft that had taken place that night, and that she had just foolishly exposed Luca and herself to the need for an explanation that would be well nigh impossible to make, Ilaria flew upright. The focus of her stricken attention was surprisingly not Darcy, but her brother.

As Ilaria began ranting hysterically at Luca in Italian she backed away from the table. A look of astonished incom¬prehension 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 shoul¬ders. 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 flick¬ering pools of shadow and light, Luca drew in a deep, shud¬dering 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 shat¬tering 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'11 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 dis¬tress, '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 qui¬etly.

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...! was so angry with you! I was going to run away with him, but we needed money to do that—'