'I hoped that you might want to meet Darcy. I'm sorry that we've kept you waiting,' Luca murmured levelly.
Ilaria vented a thin laugh. 'Why didn't you give me the opportunity to meet her before you got married?'
'I left several messages on your answering machine. You never call back,' Luca countered calmly.
The combination of aggression and hurt emanating from Ilaria was powerful. But then her big brother had married a total stranger. In those circumstances, her hostility was natural, Darcy conceded. Tugging free of Luca, she walked over to his sister, a rueful look of appeal in her eyes. 'You have every right to be furious. And I don't know how to explain why—'
'We got married in a hurry,' Luca slotted in with finality as he thrust open the door of the dining room. Atmospheric pools of candlelight illuminated the beautifully set table awaiting them. 'There's not much else to say.'
'I can't imagine you doing anything in a hurry without good reason, Luca,' Ilaria gibed. 'Have you got her pregnant?'
Darcy froze, and then forced herself down into the seat Luca had spun out for her occupation. While Luca shot a low-pitched sentence of icy Italian at his sister, Darcy drowned in guilty pink colour and glanced at neither combatant. The suggestion had been chosen to insult, but it was more apt than either of her companions could know.
However, she recognised the position Luca had put himself in, and she wanted to help minimise the damage to his already strained relationship with his sister.
'We had a quiet wedding because my father died recently.' Darcy spoke up abruptly. 'I have to admit that we were rather impulsive—'
'Impulsive? Luca?' Ilaria derided, unimpressed. 'Who do you think you're kidding? He never makes a single move that he hasn't planned down to the last detail!'
'In this case, he did,' Darcy persisted quietly. 'But it was selfish of us to just rush off and get married without letting our families share in the event.'
'Your family wasn't there either?" The younger woman looked astonished, but was visibly soothed by the admission. 'So where did you meet...and when?'
'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 circumstances, rather than that silly story of her having reversed 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 incomprehension 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 shoulders. 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 flickering pools of shadow and light, Luca drew in a deep, shuddering 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.