have stopped walking altogether if Lucian hadn’t tugged her gently forward by the grip he had on her arm. With no other choice, she allowed herself to be pulled along, and made herself examine the man who had made her life such a hell.
Juan Villaverde was a beautiful man. With full black hair, golden-brown eyes, and a face only the angels could have chiseled, he could make any woman’s heart race. And the suit he wore couldn’t hide the fact that he also had the body of Adonis, she acknowledged, and wondered that she’d never noticed these things two hundred years ago. But she supposed she’d been too anxious and nervous around him to notice much more than that he made her feel incredibly uncomfortable. It was that hungry look he was eyeing her with even now. As a child, it had scared her silly. Now . . . well, actually it still made her uncomfortable and a bit confused. It held none of the rage that had contorted his face that last time in the alley.
“There,” Lucian said abruptly, and Ildaria glanced at him and then followed his gesture to another sofa at the end of the room, as far from the one Juan was standing in front of as you could get. He was directing G.G. and his parents to sit there, she realized when Robert urged Mary to the sofa.
G.G. didn’t follow them right away. His gaze shifting between her and Juan, he hesitated until she gave a slight nod. She’d rather he was closer, right at her side would be good, but she wouldn’t risk Lucian making him leave if they didn’t obey him. Ildaria tried to convey that in her expression. She wasn’t sure if he understood, but he did follow his parents to the couch. None of them looked relaxed, however. They were all perched on the very edge of the sofa, looking stiff and grim and as if they were ready to jump up and intercede if Juan did anything not to their liking.
Ildaria heard Lucian sigh next to her and then he urged her around in front of the sofa facing the one Juan now stood in front of. A coffee table was all that separated them, she saw unhappily. When she didn’t sit at once, Lucian pressed down on her shoulder, making her sit.
“Now,” Lucian said once she’d dropped onto the couch. “Tell her what you told us.”
Juan finally dragged his gaze from Ildaria. First he shifted it to Lucian, and then to the Guiscards and he scowled. “Who are these people, and why are they here? Why are any of you here? You said I could see her alone.”
Ildaria stiffened at those words until Lucian countered with, “I said you could see her, I did not say it would be alone.”
“I want to see her alone,” Juan insisted.
“That’s not going to happen, Juan,” Lucian said sounding almost regretful, and Ildaria glanced at him quickly, wondering whose side he was on here.
Juan cursed with frustration. “I have waited two hundred years, Luc. I deserve to—”
“You messed up two hundred years ago, Juan. You attacked her. Now she does not feel safe with you. And I will not make her face you alone and afraid.”
Ildaria scowled and sat up straight at that, annoyed with Lucian for revealing the anxiety she was presently feeling.
“I never meant for that to happen, I told you it was the—”
“Now tell her,” Lucian interrupted. “You can either do it in front of everyone, or give her up and leave.”
Give her up? Ildaria peered at Lucian, but he ignored her and simply stared at Juan, waiting for him to decide what he was going to do. Giving up on getting an answer to her silent question, Ildaria tore her gaze from Lucian’s stern face and turned her eyes down to her hands as she acknowledged to herself that there was a bright side to all of this, whatever this was. It was looking less and less like she had been brought here to be executed.
Ildaria actually felt the scowl Lucian turned on her. “Of course, you are not going to be executed. You are to hear what Juan has to say. There are things about the past that you do not know, and should.”
“You thought you had been summoned for execution?” Juan exclaimed, sounding upset. “Madre de Dios,” he muttered and then paused and said with wonder, “And yet you still came. You are brave, mi amor.”