The Vengeful Husband(26)
Unexpectedly, another, younger man stood beside Luca. Slim and dark, he looked tense, his eyes slewing away from Darcy as she gave him a friendly nod of acknowledgement.
The ceremony began. Only at the point where Luca took her hand to put on the ring did Darcy register that she had totally overlooked the necessity of supplying one. Relief filled her when Luca produced a narrow gold band and slid it onto her wedding finger.
"Thanks...' she muttered, only half under her breath, reddening at the vicar's look of surprise at that unusual bridal reaction.
When the brief marriage service was concluded, the register was signed. Karen and the other man, whom Luca addressed as Benito, performed their function as witnesses. All formalities dealt with, Darcy rubbed her still damp and stinging eyes, and accidentally dislodged one of her contact lenses. With an exclamation of dismay, she dropped to her knees. 'Don't move, anyone...I've lost one of my lenses!'
Luca reached down and flicked up the tiny item from where it glimmered on the stone floor. He slipped it into his pocket, evidently aware that without the aid of cleansing solution she could not immediately replace the lens. 'Relax, I have it...'
Amazed by the speed of his reactions, Darcy skimmed a glance up at him. At the same time he bent down to help her upright again. As she focused myopically on him through one eye, she closed the other in an involuntary attempt to see better. In that split second his features blurred, throwing his strong facial bones into a different kind of prominence that lent them a stark, haunting familiarity. Darcy froze in outright disbelief. Her Venetian lover!
In that instant of incredulous recognition shock seized her by the throat and almost strangled the life force from her. 'You...y-you?' she began, stammering wildly.
Darcy gaped at Luca in an uncomprehending stupor. Her head pounded sickly and he swam back out of focus again. As she blacked out, Luca caught her in his arms before she could fall.
CHAPTER FIVE
'Take a deep breath...' Luca's deep, dark drawl instructed with complete calm.
Whoosh. The air flooded back into Darcy's constricted lungs. Perspiration broke out on her clammy brow. Her eyes fluttered open again. She found herself seated on a hard wooden pew.
'See...' Karen was soothing Zia, several feet away. 'Mummy's all right.' And then, in a whispered aside to Luca, 'I bet Darcy fainted because she's exhausted—she works eighteen-hour days!'
As Darcy lifted her swimming head everything came hurtling back to her. She simply gawped at Luca, still doubting the stunning evidence provided by that one myopic glance. Shimmering dark eyes held her bemused gaze steadily, and all over again that frantically disorientating sense of frightening familiarity gripped her.
'You can't be...you can't be!' she gasped abruptly, impervious to the presence of the others.
'Take it easy, Darcy,' Karen advised, evidently unaware that anything was seriously wrong. 'You passed out and you're confused, that's all. Look, I'll keep Zia with me until you're feeling better. You should lie down for a while. I'll call over later and see how you are.'
Still in a world of her own, Darcy moved her muzzy head as if she was afraid it might fall off her neck. Luca Raffacani could not be the man with whom she had spent the night in Venice; he could not possibly be the same man! And yet, he was! It made no sense, it seemed beyond the bounds of even the wildest feat of imagination, but those strong promptings of familiarity which had troubled her apparently had their basis in solid fact.
'Can you stand?' Luca enquired.
'I'm fine...really,' Darcy whispered unconvincingly as she fought to focus her mind. She got up on legs that felt like cotton wool sticks. She shook hands with the vicar, who was anxiously hovering. Then she stared at Luca again with a kind of appalled fascination and knew she would never feel fine again, knew she felt, rather, as if she had lost her mind in that devastating moment of recognition.
"The car's outside, sir.' Benito spoke for the first time as he turned from the window.
Darcy's attention swivelled to the younger man. Sir? She encountered a fleeting look of pity in Benito's gaze. The sort of pity one experienced for someone sick when all hope had gone, Darcy labelled with a bemused shudder.
What on earth was going on? Who was Gianluca Fabrizio Raffacani? And whoever he was, whatever he was, she had just made him her husband!
'Calm yourself,' Luca urged before they walked back out of the church to face the crowd of well-wishers waiting to see them off.
'But I recognised you...' she told him shakily.
'You mean you finally shuffled the memory of one face out of the no doubt countless one-night stands you have enjoyed?' Luca murmured in a silken smooth stab, making her shrink in stricken disbelief at such a charge. 'Am I to feel honoured by that most belated distinction?'