'By the way, I settled your mortgage,' Luca remarked with stupendous casualness.
Darcy's lower lip parted company with her upper in shock.
Brilliant dark eyes intent on her aghast expression, Luca continued smoothly, 'As you're so independent, I imagine you'll wish to repay me once you inherit your godmother's money, but in the short term you are no longer burdened by those substantial monthly payments.'
Darcy stumbled into speech. 'But, Luca... what right—?'
'I haven't finished yet. I have also had a word with your bank manager. There is no longer a limit on your overdraft. Don't throw it all back in my face,' he urged almost roughly, openly assessing her shaken, troubled face. 'I had no right to interfere, but I had a very powerful need to offer you what help I could.'
Still reeling, Darcy swallowed hard. She understood, oh, yes, she understood. Luca felt guilty. This was his way of making amends. His intervention on such grounds filled her with pained discomfiture, but she was in no position to refuse his efforts on behalf of the estate. He was making it possible for her to survive and re-employ the staff.
'Thanks,' she said stiltedly.
'I would have liked to do a great deal more, cara mia,'
Luca admitted steadily. 'But I knew you wouldn't have accepted that.'
At that respectful acknowledgement, a slow, uncertain smile drove the tension from her tense mouth. 'Did you park your wings outside?'
'My wings?'
'You'd make a really good guardian angel.'
'I was afraid you were about to say fairy godmother,' Luca confided.
'It did cross my mind.' Darcy wrinkled her nose and laughed for the first time in weeks. And then she remembered what she still had to tell him and her face shadowed. Tomorrow, she decided, she would tell him tomorrow...
It was half past eight when the Victorian bell on the massive front door shrieked and jangled.
Luca was in the library, having excused himself to make some calls, and Darcy had gone upstairs to slide into an outfit that magically accentuated her every slender curve. Green, with a fashionably short skirt and fitted jacket. She thought it looked kind of sexy on her. She slid her feet into high heels and fiddled anxiously with her hair in the mirror. And the whole time she was engaged on that transformation she refused to think about why she was doing it.#p#分页标题#e#
When Darcy opened the door, out of breath from rushing full tilt down the stairs, her sensitive stomach somersaulted when she saw Margo and Nina standing outside. Her stepmother elegant in black, and her stepsister dressed to kill in a sugar-pink dress so perilously short it made Darcy's skirt look like a maxi.
Both women did a rather exaggerated double take over her altered image.
'Is that a Galliano?' Nina demanded in an envious shriek.
'A...a what?' Darcy countered blankly.
'And those shoes are Prada! He got you out of your Barbour and your wellies fast enough!' Nina gibed thinly.
'It's such a dangerous sign when a man tries to change a woman into something she's not.'
On her lofty passage towards the drawing room, Margo winced. 'And green simply screams at your red hair, Darcy!'
'But Darcy doesn't have red hair,' a deep, dark drawl interceded across the depth of the hall from the library doorway. 'It's Titian, a shade defined by the dictionary as a bright, golden auburn.'
Darcy threw Luca the sort of look a drowning swimmer gives to a life jacket.
Margo and Nina weren't quite quick enough to conceal their dismay and surprise at Luca's appearance.
'I understood that you were still in Italy, Luca.' Her stepmother's smile of greeting was stiff.
'I thought that might be why you were here.' As Luca strolled over to the fireplace and took up a relaxed stance there, he let that statement hang a split-second, while their uninvited visitors tensed with uncertainty at his possible meaning before continuing smoothly, 'How very kind of you to think that Darcy might be in need of company.'
'I'm sure Richard Carlton's been dropping in too,' Nina said innocently.
'Yes, and what a very entertaining guy he is,' Luca countered, smiling without skipping a beat while Darcy's fascinated gaze darted back and forth between the combatants. Margo and Nina had definitely met their match.
'Nina and I were only saying yesterday what a coincidence it is that Darcy and Maxie Kendall should have got married within weeks of each other!' Margo exclaimed, watching Darcy stiffen with suspicious eyes.
'Now what was the name of Nancy Leeward's other godchild?'
'Polly,' Darcy muttered tightly. 'Why?'
'Naturally I'm curious. That old woman left such an extraordinary will! I expect we'll be hearing of Polly's marriage next...'