'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 dis¬possessed 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 bead¬ing 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 the 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 cal¬culated 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 ap¬palled 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, be¬cause 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.
Luca contrived to ease up each small coiled finger during the interim, and gain a hold on both of her hands. 'I prom¬ise to fulfil our agreement. No matter what happens, I will not let you down.'
Darcy snatched her hands back in a raw motion of re¬pudiation. 'I couldn't stand it!'
'I have tried to express my remorse—'
'I don't think you have it in you to feel remorse!' Darcy condemned abruptly, her oval face flushing with a return of healthier colour as she got her teeth into that conviction. 'You're sneaky, devious...and I can't abide sneakiness or dishonesty. The only two things in life that excite you are sex and money.'
A dark rise of blood had delineated the savagely taut slant of his cheekbones. 'Once there was a third thing that excited me, far more than either of those.'