The Vengeful Husband (The Husband Hunters 2)

'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 sec¬ond 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 shaki¬ly. '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 pur¬suit of it...so I planned to put the ring back the next morn¬ing.'

"That was a timely change of heart,' Darcy put in en¬couragingly, 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...I 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—'

'A/e...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 seven¬teen: 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 un¬dergone, Darcy shook her head apologetically at Luca's manservant, who was now hovering uncomfortably in the dining room doorway, obviously wondering what was hap¬pening and whether or not any of them intended to sit down and eat dinner like civilised people. She had enjoyed a sub¬stantial 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 mo¬ment'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 de¬fensive 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 in¬stant 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 Ilaria 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?