Prince Of Darkness
‘That’s all very sad,’ she stated tonelessly, walking to the nearest window and gazing sightlessly out through it, ‘but it really has no bearing on the fact that Mrs Cranleigh—’
‘You’re a cold-hearted little bitch, aren’t you?’ demanded Damian Sheridan, beside her before she was even conscious of his having moved and grasping her painfully by the shoulders to swing her round to face the scowling darkness of his features. ‘I’m nowhere near finished with what I have to say. Hester Cranleigh is one of the most decent women I’ve ever known and she has remained so despite all the dirt life has thrown up at her! I was fifteen when my parents were killed in a road accident, and it was Hester who returned here to live so that there would be a loving home for me to come back to during my school holidays and later from university. It was Hester who did all in her power to help fill the gap left by my parents’ death. And it’s Hester I’ll protect from any more hurt with my last breath, if needs be!’
Rosanne’s eyes dropped from the fury blazing in his. She had spent so long psyching herself up for this...yet now she was here she was encountering obstacles she could never have envisaged. She would do everything in her power to hurt the woman who had deprived Faith and Paul of even knowing of the existence of the daughter they had so mourned; and for depriving her paternal grandmother of the granddaughter she would have adored; and, most of all, for having cheated Grandpa Ted of all but two years of the life of the granddaughter for whom his unstinting love had been like the elixir of life. And for that, she was certain, this beautiful, passionate Irishman would do all in his power to destroy her.
‘Has it never occurred to you that she might not want this protection you so threateningly offer?’ asked Rosanne quietly. ‘After all, undertaking this biography was Mrs Cranleigh’s choice ultimately, despite it having been her husband’s wish. And she must know better than anyone what the research will entail emotionally.’
His hands dropped from her shoulders, then he took a step nearer the window and rested his forehead against the glass.
‘Paul Bryant—that was the name of the man Faith ran away with,’ he muttered hoarsely.
The man she had married almost two years previously, Rosanne wanted to cry out to him.
‘So why, of all places, would Hester choose a publishing company of that same name?’
‘Perhaps because of that name...I just wouldn’t know,’ replied Rosanne. Grandpa Ted had never shown any animosity towards Hester, but neither had he shown any desire to contact her—the decision as to whether or not to delve into the darkness of Rosanne’s maternal roots was one he had made plain was hers and hers alone. But one thing she now remembered so vividly was how her grandfather’s bitterness and loathing had always been concentrated solely on George Cranleigh.
‘Perhaps!’ he exclaimed with harsh bitterness, turning from the window and facing her. ‘I’m wasting my breath trying to change your mind, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, you are.’
His eyes flickered over her slim figure with cold distaste.
‘You realise, don’t you, that, this being my property, I can have you slung off it whenever I choose?’
‘And I suppose you choose now,’ stated Rosanne, refusing to acknowledge that her immediate reaction, if it came to that, would be one of colossal relief.
‘No—as it happens—I don’t choose now,’ he drawled, his look now one of deliberate offensiveness as his eyes lazily perused her body. ‘As long as you agree to my conditions.’
‘It depends what they are,’ replied Rosanne, colour rising treacherously in her cheeks as she wondered what she would do if the blatant sensuality of the message in his eyes had any bearing on those conditions.
‘Hester’s grown quite weak of late and she’s virtually bedridden now—so you’ll be working very much on your own,’ he stated brusquely, blanking the heat from his eyes. ‘I take it that your job here is to sift through the papers for relevant material?’
Rosanne nodded, feeling edgy and uncertain. Perhaps the strain was getting to her already...perhaps she had only imagined that arrogant sexuality in his eyes.
‘But it’ll be Hester sifting through your findings to decide what really is pertinent,’ he continued.
Again Rosanne nodded.
‘You will report to me, on a daily basis, with all your findings in clear note form...and you will do so before you have any contact with Hester regarding your day’s work.’
‘You think I’m likely to unearth things—’
‘What I think is immaterial,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘Do you agree—or do you leave?’
‘Obviously I have no choice if I’m to do my job,’ she retorted angrily.
‘With a brain as quick as yours you’ll go far, Ros,’ he murmured sarcastically. ‘What’s that short for—Rosamund?’
Rosanne eyed him warily, then shrugged non-committally.
‘Rosamund—it doesn’t suit you in the least,’ he murmured, suddenly giving her a smile that seemed to reach out and warm her with its dazzling brilliance.
‘That’s why I prefer Ros,’ she muttered, conscious of the colour rising yet again in her cheeks. For whatever reason, and she couldn’t for the life of her even begin to guess why, Damian Sheridan had decided to switch on the charm. The fact that her every sense was responding to that charm as though plugged into high-voltage electricity was something she found profoundly disturbing...which only went to show the terrible tension she was under, she reasoned with edgy uncertainty.
‘Ros,’ he murmured, almost caressingly, then tilted his head to one side, frowning slightly. ‘It’s funny, but suddenly you remind me of someone.’ He reached out, taking her chin in his hand and angling her face towards the light from the window. ‘I can’t think who, just now...but it’ll come to me.’
‘When will I be able to see Mrs Cranleigh?’ asked Rosanne hoarsely, her beleaguered mind unable to decide which was having a more devastating affect on her—his troubling words or his equally disturbing touch.
‘When she’s feeling up to it, she likes to have tea in the blue drawing-room...the one that’s now green,’ he murmured, his hand a charged warmth against her skin.
She was still trying to decide whether she would only make a complete fool of herself by asking him to remove his hand when he pulled her against him with a swiftness that left her mind still grappling with the problem of his hand. And her mind was still several steps behind when he lowered his head to hers and kissed her. It was a kiss not only completely unexpected, but one so electrifyingly exciting, so disconcertingly assured of its welcome, that her lips momentarily parted, not so much in acquiescence, but with eager spontaneity to the demands of the mouth coaxing them open with practised ease.
It was the movement of her own hands, spreading for no other reason than to revel in the solid expanse of chest beneath them, that sent a jolt of confounded awareness through her.
It brought her little comfort that, the instant her hands began pushing against him in protest, he immediately released her. And it brought her even less comfort to hear the soft rumble of laughter growling from deep within him as she let out a belated gasp of outrage.
‘For a while there I’d thought I’d found a woman with guts enough to say, “To hell” and give in to her instincts,’ he chuckled.
‘If you so much as lay one finger on me again, I shall give in to my instincts,’ retorted Rosanne hoarsely, her eyes dropping in utter mortification from the mocking amusement in his. ‘Which tell me to slap your face,’ she added furiously.
‘Liar,’ he laughed with lazy self-assurance. ‘Tell me, Ros—are you absolutely sure you won’t change your mind about staying?’
‘Absolutely,’ she spat, her cheeks crimson.
‘Well, if that’s the case, we really should consider moving your things into my room—because that’s the place those irresistible instincts of yours will sooner or later lead you.’
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS turning into a complete nightmare, thought Rosanne frantically, her eyes refusing to meet the mockery gleaming openly in those of Damian Sheridan as he held open the door of the blue drawing-room...the one that was in fact green. And it was a nightmare that was completely self-inflicted, she reproached herself futilely as she forced her reluctant legs forward.
For two years, the most intensely happy in her entire life, she had been a whole and contented person, cocooned in the love so unstintingly lavished on her by her grandfather. And it had been a mutual love, so sure and safe in its joyous strength that even her gradual learning of the cruel treachery perpetrated on her in the past had been powerless to taint it with its evil darkness.
‘I’m an old man who has received the most precious jewel—one he never dreamed was rightfully his,’ he had told her. ‘Yet when I first learned of your existence I was like a madman, filled with a murderous need for revenge on those who had perpetrated this monstrous evil. And, God forgive me, had George Cranleigh been alive that day, I think I could have killed him with my bare hands.’ Even the embers of that hatred, flashing momentarily in his eyes as he had spoken, had been awesome. ‘But the instant I found you love freed me from that destructive hatred...can you understand that, my darling child?’
Oh, how she had understood, cherishing each precious moment of those glorious months into which they had crammed a lifetime of loving. But even the powerful legacy of that love he had lavished on her had been unable to prevent the anger and bitterness rampaging alongside her anguish once he had gone—just as he had always tried to warn her it would. And, because he had foreseen the need that would one day drive her, he had done all he could to ease her way along the hazardous path that would eventually lead her here.
And here, she told herself, her heart pounding, was to this exquisitely elegant room in delicate greens and to the frail, bird-like woman almost lost in the moss-green hugeness of a fan-backed velvet chair...and to feelings akin to terror.
‘Miss Ros Grant to see you, Hester,’ teased Damian, striding over to the tiny woman and kissing her upturned cheek. ‘I know how you hate abbreviated names, but I’m afraid Ros is all she’ll answer to.’
Ros, an anguished voice cried out inside her, because Rosanne was a name she dared not utter—the name her mother had vowed to give a daughter if she ever had one.
‘Stop prattling, Damian,’ scolded Hester Cranleigh affectionately, ‘and bring her over here so that I can see her.’
As Damian beckoned her, Rosanne took several steps forward, her knees like jelly, her eyes lowered from the woman they could not bring themselves to examine.
‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed Hester Cranleigh, her words freezing the now terrified girl.
Grandpa Ted had told her that it was because she was such a perfect blend of her mother and father that her likeness to either one wouldn’t immediately strike anyone who had known them...but that had been Grandpa Ted’s opinion.
‘You’re just a child!’ exclaimed the old lady. ‘I was expecting someone a lot older.’
‘But I’m twenty-four...I mean, twenty-five,’ stammered Rosanne, almost collapsing with relief.
‘Any advance on twenty-five?’ drawled Damian, his look taunting.
‘I keep forgetting,’ muttered Rosanne. ‘You see, I’ve only recently had a birthday.’ Her twenty-fourth, she reminded herself angrily—unnecessary lies were bound to tie her up in knots. She had to get a grip on herself!
‘Damian, stop browbeating the poor child,’ chided Hester, smiling sympathetically up at Rosanne, ‘and draw up a chair for her—nice and close to me.’
Damian did as requested then, as Rosanne gingerly sat down, flung himself full-length on the sofa beside them, linking his hands behind his head as he gazed over at the two women.
‘You’d better be Mother, Ros,’ he said, indicating the laden tea-trolley beside him. ‘I tend to be accident-prone around china.’
‘Damian tends to be accident-prone around anything he doesn’t feel like doing,’ murmured Hester drily, flashing Rosanne a warmly conspiratorial look that had the effect of freezing the blood in her veins. ‘Darling, haven’t you some horses or something to attend to?’ she enquired pointedly of the supine man.
‘No,’ he replied uncooperatively, flashing her one of his megawatt smiles.
‘Damian, I won’t have you being difficult,’ warned Hester with a sigh. ‘And I’m sure you know perfectly well why Ros is here.’
‘Oh, I do, darling,’ he murmured. ‘I had to horse-whip the information out of her—since you omitted to tell me we were expecting her. And, to make things even simpler, I’ve let her know exactly how I feel about all this—so we’ve absolutely nothing to hide.’ He rose to his feet, his movements languidly graceful, then smiled cherubically. ‘And just this once I’ll be Mother,’ he said, then added, ‘though another point I felt it only fair to warn our guest about is my feudal attitude to women.’
Hester Cranleigh’s eyes twinkled as they met Rosanne’s.
‘And just you keep that warning in mind, my dear,’ she whispered, loud enough for the man she plainly adored to catch. ‘I’d like to be able to tell you it’s because of his scandalous behaviour towards you girls that he’s still a single man at almost thirty-two, but I’m afraid I can’t. Despite the appalling way he treats them, the poor fools queue up in their droves to have their hearts broken. I do so hope you don’t turn out to be one such fool, my dear,’ she murmured, then startled an almost paralysed Rosanne into shocked awareness by winking broadly at her.
‘Now who’s prattling?’ demanded Damian with an unconcerned smile, placing a tray on her lap.
‘Thank you, darling,’ murmured the old lady, smiling up at him. ‘And, by the way, I was thinking it would be rather nice to have the Blakes over for dinner again soon.’
Damian’s reaction was to scowl blackly at her, then return to the tea-trolley.
‘Gerry Blake is Damian’s vet—such a nice man,’ murmured Hester. ‘And his daughter Nerissa—’
‘What do you take in your tea?’ cut in Damian rudely, addressing Rosanne. ‘Or perhaps you’d rather pour it for yourself?’
‘I’d pour it myself, if I were you, my dear,’ murmured Hester, raising a slice of cake to her mouth. ‘He’s slopped mine in the saucer.’
Rosanne rose, in the thrall of a terrible sense of unreality as she poured herself some tea. Reason had always warned her it was impossible to prepare herself for this—especially for what sort of person her grandmother might turn out to be. But what now confused and distressed her was the realisation that, in different circumstances, she could have so easily fallen under the spell of this outgoing and, to be completely honest, delightfully humorous old lady.
‘You might as well pour me one while you’re up,’ muttered Damian, once more sprawled along the length of the sofa.
Rosanne hesitated, strongly tempted to tell him to pour his own.
‘Well, well,’ chuckled the old lady delightedly. ‘It seems as though Ros is actually contemplating not complying with that graciously worded request of yours, my lad. Nerissa Blake, on the other hand, would already be pouring you your second cup.’
Startled to find herself having difficulty keeping her face straight, Rosanne poured him a cup and took it to him.
‘And Nerissa would have put a level spoon of sugar in it for me,’ he complained, laughter glinting in his eyes.
‘And no doubt stirred it for him too,’ murmured Hester, when Rosanne presented him with the sugar bowl.
‘What about some cake?’ he demanded.
‘Thanks, I’d love some,’ replied Rosanne, cutting herself a slice of the tempting Madeira and returning to her seat.
‘Could it be that you’ve at last met your match, my fine young heart-breaker?’ chortled Hester, her eyes twinkling as he rose disgruntledly and got himself some cake.
‘I doubt it, darling,’ he murmured, his eyes suddenly catching Rosanne’s and bringing hot colour flooding to her cheeks with their taunting challenge. ‘I doubt it very much.’
‘Well, that remains to be seen,’ muttered Hester, plainly sensing the sudden tension. ‘Anyway, Ros,’ she continued brightly, ‘tell me all about yourself. You’ll be delving into my life, during the next weeks, as few others have, so I feel it only fair that I should be allowed a little delving of my own to even things up a bit.’
Desperately playing for time in which to gather her once again hopelessly scattered wits, Rosanne took a mouthful of cake. She had expected to be asked a few personal questions and had prepared herself for them...but this disarming demand for her life history was the last thing she was prepared for.
Lies were out, she warned herself frantically, remembering the fairly innocuous lie she had told about her age, and her fears that it would rebound on her.
‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ she muttered uncomfortably as she swallowed the last of her mouthful. All she could do was stick with the truth as far as possible.
‘You’d be amazed by what Hester can extract from even the most apparently humdrum of lives,’ stated Damian, the narrowed shrewdness of his watching eyes terrifying her.
‘Don’t be so rude, Damian,’ Hester rebuked him. ‘Ros has a very interesting job and I’m sure her family is very proud of her.’
‘Hester, you might think it’s interesting to plough through George’s bits and pieces,’ he drawled. ‘Frankly, I’d get more of a thrill mucking out stables.’
‘Well, you’re not Ros,’ snapped Hester, looking slightly shocked. ‘And I’m sure your people are very proud of you, and rightly so,’ she added, smiling apologetically at Rosanne.
‘I haven’t got any people,’ blurted out Rosanne before she could stop herself. ‘I mean...I...my grandfather died last year.’
She wanted to leap to her feet and run—to escape this ordeal and to leave behind this stricken, inarticulate creature who had taken her over and was making her sound such a fool.
‘My dear, how sad!’ exclaimed Hester Cranleigh, reaching out a frail hand to her in reflex sympathy. ‘Was he all the family you had?’
‘Yes—he was,’ said Rosanne, her body tensing with the effort it took not to flinch from the hand patting solicitously on her arm. How could this woman possibly care? she asked herself savagely as hatred, hot and harsh, seared through her. ‘I was adopted when I was a baby, but my adoptive parents moved to Australia a few years ago.’
‘Was it your real or adoptive grandfather who died?’ asked Hester, removing her hand from Rosanne’s arm as though conscious of its lack of welcome.
‘He was my real grandfather,’ replied Rosanne, an edge of desperation in her tone. ‘The person I loved more than anyone else.’
‘Damian, would you mind taking my tray, there’s a dear?’ murmured Hester, the sudden frailness in her voice inexplicably cooling the heat of hatred within Rosanne.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, convinced that they must think her deranged, ‘but I still find it difficult talking about my grandfather.’
‘Of course you do, my dear,’ sympathised Hester, as a granite-faced Damian towered above them and took the tray. ‘And I’m sure that, missing him as you do, you find it hard to realise how lucky you were to have had him—most adopted children don’t have a blood relative around to whom they can turn to ask all those questions that must inevitably crop up in their minds.’
There was an expression of dazed disbelief on Rosanne’s face as she turned and looked at the small, frail figure seated beside her... How could she possibly have allowed herself to make such a statement with a secret as dark as hers festering inside her?
‘Ros—would you like more tea?’ Damian’s tone was harsh as his words interrupted her reeling thoughts and his look, when she dazedly turned to face him, openly hostile.
‘No—no, thank you,’ she muttered, then addressed the woman beside her without looking at her. ‘Believe me, I know exactly how lucky I was to have had my grandfather.’
‘It’s sad that you didn’t get on with your adoptive parents,’ stated Hester quietly.
‘Now you’re being fanciful, Hester,’ teased Damian, while flashing Rosanne a scowling look. ‘She said nothing about not getting on with them.’
‘She didn’t have to,’ replied Hester, a questioning sadness in her eyes as they met Rosanne’s.
Rosanne hesitated, feeling strangely compelled to answer that questioning look, her nervousness in the face of such a compulsion exacerbated by the almost threatening look to which Damian was subjecting her from the sofa.
‘No—I didn’t get on with them,’ she eventually stated tonelessly. ‘But now that I’m older I can see that much of the fault for that lay with me.’
It was her discussions with her grandfather about her life with John and Marjory Grant that had opened her eyes to that fact and had made her realise that the Grants’ openness about her having been adopted had, in many ways, been her salvation. In a conservative, God-fearing household—with two much older natural daughters who were carbon copies of their parents—she would have stood out like a sore thumb anyway with her vibrant looks and fiery temper. But it was the sum of money for her future education that George Cranleigh had handed over together with his baby granddaughter that had set her so totally apart from the Grant family. From the age of six she had been sent to boarding-schools, as opposed to the local school the other two Grant girls attended, isolating her completely and compounding totally her sense of being the odd one out. In trying to salvage what faint conscience he might have had by providing for the future education of the baby granddaughter he had otherwise dumped as unwanted baggage, George Cranleigh had only ensured that she would always feel alienated and insecure.
‘A bit of a rebel, were you?’ asked Hester, her tone implying approval.
‘Caused, no doubt, by that Irish blood she was telling me about earlier,’ drawled Damian in tones that were neither approving nor in the least friendly. ‘You’re looking a little tired, Hester—how about another cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you, darling,’ replied the old lady. ‘But perhaps Ros would now, to help wash down Bridie’s cake.’
Rosanne flushed guiltily as she glanced at the piece of cake, on the small table beside her, out of which she had only managed a single bite—the nervous tension churning inside her making her feel almost nauseous.
‘No, I shan’t, thank you very much,’ she said, reaching over and breaking off a small portion of the cake.
‘Perhaps it’s time we showed Ros George’s study—where she’ll be doing her work,’ suggested Damian. ‘Then we can get you tucked up for a rest,’ he added gently. ‘You look as though you could do with one.’
‘I think it might be an even better idea for you to take me up now—then you can show Ros the study.’ Hester turned to Rosanne, the exhaustion that had so swiftly overtaken her now etched plainly on her face. ‘I do hope you’ll forgive me, my dear. This wretched business of being an invalid can be such a nuisance. No—you stay there and relax,’ she protested, as Ros made to rise to her feet. ‘Damian will see me to my room,’ she added, reaching for the stick propped against her chair as Damian rose and strode over to help her. ‘And he’ll show you around George’s office and help you get settled in—or he’ll have me to answer to,’ she chuckled up at the man easing her to her feet.
‘You’ll have me quaking in my breeches if I don’t,’ he teased affectionately, slipping his arm around her as she leaned heavily on her stick.
‘And that’s another thing,’ chided Hester, as they made their laborious way across the huge room. ‘I’m not having you appear at the dinner table in your riding breeches—do you hear? Whatever will young Ros think of us?’
Their sparring remarks liberally interspersed with loving laughter, they made their slow progress towards the door—the stooped and fragile old lady and the tall, powerfully built, yet gracefully slender man against whose arm she leant.