Kitabı oku: «Prince Of Darkness»

CHAPTER ONE

THE knuckles of Rosanne Bryant’s hands gleamed white against the dark leather of the steering-wheel as her yellow Mini snaked its way up the long, oak-lined drive towards Sheridan Hall. It was a wide and breath-takingly beautiful drive, but its beauty was lost on Rosanne, whose normally full-lipped mouth was tightened into a grim line as her mind relentlessly rehearsed her. Her name was Ros Grant, she chanted silently to herself: she had answered to the name Grant for the best part of her life—and shortening her first name shouldn’t present too much of a problem, however unused she might be to it.

A long, shuddering sigh escaped her. She was almost there, but all she wanted to do was turn the car and head for anywhere other than the place now looming up ahead of her.

She shook her head, a look of bleak desolation marring the creamy oval of her face and filling the blue of her wide-spaced eyes with a depth of agony way beyond her twenty-four years. She would go on no matter what, she vowed grimly. She owed it to so many to do so: to the parents she had never known, to her paternal grandfather Edward Bryant, but perhaps most of all to herself.

It had been her grandpa Ted who had opened up the options for her that would one day lead her precisely here...but only if she herself made the choice. And she had made the choice, and now there could be no going back, she reminded herself, leaping out of the car before the sudden rush of panic she was now experiencing engulfed her entirely.

Her expression like that of one in a hypnotic trance, she gazed around, the wintry paleness of the March sunlight bringing the gleam of burnished copper to the wayward curliness of her short-bobbed hair.

Three storeys high and with gabled attic windows above them, there was little she sensed inviting in her first impressions of Sheridan Hall, despite the softening effect of the ivy masking most of the stern bleakness of its glittering granite façde. She gave a small shiver, half convinced that she was seeing a gleam of malevolence emanating from the windows peering down through the ivy-clad frames at her like watchful, waiting eyes.

‘May I help you?’

Only just managing to suppress a shriek of pure terror, Rosanne spun round and found the tall figure of a man striding towards her. He was a truly magnificent specimen of manhood, in his black polo-necked sweater, cream riding breeches and gleaming brown leather boots.

‘I beg your pardon?’ stalled Rosanne, the debilitating tension already hampering her now tightening to a point where the ability to reason seemed to desert her completely. The man approaching her seemed, to her stupefied mind, like a timeless apparition. Tall and perfectly proportioned, his hair thick and inky-black and his eyes the piercing blue of ice, his features so flawlessly handsome that they might have been sculpted from marble; and as he strode to a halt before her, his eyes cool in their enquiry, she felt for all the world as though she were trespassing in the realms of the Celtic princes of old.

‘I said—may I help you?’ he repeated, his cultured tone imperious despite the deceptive softness of its attractive Irish accent.

‘I’m Ros Grant,’ she stated, astounded to find that, despite the state she was in, she had actually remembered to abbreviate her name. ‘I’ve come to see Mrs Cranleigh—in fact, to stay here.’ She felt a peculiar tightening sensation in her chest as she wondered if this princely apparition could possibly be Damian Sheridan. If he was, she was face to face with only the second of her relatives—even though one only some sort of cousin umpteen times removed—she had met in her entire twenty-four years. ‘She is expecting me,’ she added with faltering confidence, as the man towering before her glared down at her for several seconds before speaking.

‘To stay here?’ he enquired, the sudden arching of his dark, boldly defined brows openly challenging her claim.

Rosanne’s heart plummeted dejectedly. It had taken all the courage she possessed to get herself this far—the last thing she now needed was a hurdle of any description.

‘I think you must have made a mistake,’ he informed her with glacial politeness. ‘Hester—Mrs Cranleigh—has mentioned nothing about expecting a guest.’

‘But I’m from Bryant Publishing,’ she protested, and instantly wished she had managed to sound at least a little assertive. ‘Mrs Cranleigh has been in correspondence with us for some time now and specifically invited me here to help with preparations for her late husband’s biography.’

His reaction—a string of torrid oaths muttered partially beneath his breath—threw her completely.

‘I’m sorry!’ he exclaimed, no hint of apology in the dazzling blue of the eyes now glowering darkly down at her, and promptly uttered another oath.

Having all but decided that turning and fleeing was the only option open to her, Rosanne hesitated as the man before her moved and, with a gesture of total exasperation, dragged his fingers through his hair—hair so many shades darker than her own, she found herself observing, yet with a tousled hint of curl quite similar to her own, she reasoned fancifully.

‘Look— I really am sorry, Miss...what did you say your name was?’

‘Grant—Ros Grant.’

He reached out a hand. ‘Damian Sheridan.’

Her hand seemed to become lost in the tanned hugeness of his and her senses scattered as she became bathed in the dazzling brilliance of his unexpected smile.

Her feelings when she had first met Grandpa Ted had overwhelmed her too, she reminded herself shakily—but in a way not quite the same as this...and this man was so distant a relative that it scarcely counted.

‘It’s just that Mrs Cranleigh doesn’t enjoy good health,’ he said in that lovely, drawly voice that she was finding incredibly attractive.

‘Mrs Cranleigh has been very frank with us about the state of her health,’ replied Rosanne, once again experiencing that indefinable feeling she had had on first learning that the woman who was her maternal grandmother was probably terminally ill. ‘And she cited that as one of the reasons she wanted me here as soon as possible.’

‘Damn it—no doubt to sift through a few million of the fifty-odd million bits of paper that old devil stashed away!’ exploded Damian Sheridan. ‘The man seems to have kept old bus tickets, for God’s sake!’

‘But he was also a highly respected public figure in England and, I believe, here in Ireland,’ stated Rosanne woodenly, confused to feel satisfaction rippling through her on discovering that this man was obviously not one of the legions worshipping the memory of the late politician-cum-philanthropist-cum-uncanonised saint that her late maternal grandfather was generally regarded as being.

‘George Cranleigh was, at best, a sanctimonious prig,’ snapped Damian Sheridan, with the candour of one plainly not given to mincing his words. ‘Of course people here, and those over in England, regarded him as a great man—he used his wealth to make damned sure they did!’

‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that his widow wants his biography written—nor that I’ve been sent here to give her assistance to that effect,’ pointed out Rosanne, while noting that this carelessly self-assured and outspoken man would, had circumstances been different, have been one whose brain she would have given her right arm to pick, despite the fact that he could only be in his very early thirties at the most.

‘I doubt it’s what she wants,’ he retorted with open bitterness. ‘It’s what he demanded of her.’ There was a look that was almost pleading softening a little of the arrogance from his compelling features. ‘It’s been over four years since he died and she’s put it off all that time...now it’s as though she sees it as her last duty to be carried out before she herself dies.’

Feeling herself falter in the face of such genuine concern, Rosanne found herself having to dredge up the savage hatred normally so ready to gnaw at her whenever the name Cranleigh entered her thoughts.

The gentle loveliness of her face tightened briefly to bitter harshness. ‘Mr Sheridan, I have a job to do and I intend doing it. And don’t you think you’re being a touch melodramatic?’

‘Melodrama’s the engine that pumps Irish blood—or didn’t you know that, darling?’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘I take it you have bags?’ he added, frowning impatiently as Rosanne took some time responding, distracted by the realisation that some of that same blood, to which he had so bitingly referred, no doubt pumped in her own veins—albeit vastly diluted.

‘They’re in the boot,’ she muttered, turning abruptly towards the car as she felt the colour rush to her cheeks.

He lifted her two bags from the boot, shaking his head as she made to remove the case containing her word processor.

‘I’ll send someone out for that.’

‘I’m quite capable of carrying it for myself,’ she protested.

‘But you won’t,’ he informed her coolly. ‘You see, liberation hasn’t yet come to the women on my estates—so accept the fact that here you’ll be waited on hand and foot.’

Her cheeks now stained with patches of scarlet, Rosanne followed his tall, broad-shouldered figure, empty-handed, to the vast, iron-studded front door—which he immediately kicked open with one elegantly booted foot. She had no idea whether or not he had been joking, but something warned her that this was one Irishman all too capable of using his gift with words to wound rather than to charm.

‘James, get the rest of Miss Grant’s things from the car, will you?’ he muttered to the elderly retainer now appearing in the doorway. ‘And try not to drop that case—it’s no doubt filled with a load of high-falutin gear the likes of us would never understand,’ he added with a careless chuckle.

‘Bridie’s got the lavender room ready for the wee girl,’ James called over his shoulder as he tramped somewhat arthritically towards the car.

‘Seem’s as if I was wrong—you are expected,’ shrugged Damian, striding across the gleaming wood of the huge galleried hallway and up its massive central staircase.

Quickening her steps in order to keep pace, Rosanne followed him up the thickly carpeted stairs. The place was enormous, she thought, feeling thoroughly overwhelmed, yet it gleamed with the attention so obviously lavished on it...and the money too so obviously lavished on it, she decided as her feet seemed to float on the extravagant pile of the sandy-coloured carpeting beneath them.

He took the right branch where the central staircase divided in two, leading her down a wide corridor, along the walls of which hung innumerable portraits. She quickly averted her eyes from those sombre, oil-painted faces peering down at her from their huge gilt frames, then immediately began berating herself for being so foolish. She had to draw a line somewhere! If these were indeed his ancestors, they weren’t necessarily any he had in common with her.

‘This is it,’ he announced, depositing one of her bags at his feet to enable him to open the door outside which he had halted.

Rosanne found herself having to bite back a gasp of pleasure as she stepped in. It was a huge, high-ceilinged room and exquisitely furnished—and less like anything she would describe as merely a bedroom than she had ever seen, despite the large, canopied bed to the left of it.

‘Why on earth is it called the lavender room?’ she asked, unable to prevent her pleasure at the sight of her white and gold surroundings from entering her tone.

‘Ah, yes—I’m glad you asked,’ murmured her companion, amusement dancing in his eyes. ‘I used to ask similar questions about this and other rooms when I was a child—and never really did get a satisfactory answer.’

‘Perhaps lavender was its original colour,’ offered Rosanne, oblivious of the spontaneous smile suddenly softening the grave beauty of her face.

‘Heaven help us—there’s a brain beneath the beauty,’ murmured Damian Sheridan, his eyes flickering over her slim body in a manner she found deflatingly non-committal given his casually fulsome reference to her looks.

Disconcerted, she turned her back on both him and the bed, her eyes wary as they surveyed the rest of the room. There was a welcoming fire blazing in the grate beneath a gold and marble mantelpiece, and before it, cosily arranged on either side of a low, beautifully carved rectangular table, were two dainty yet invitingly comfortable-looking armchairs. The writing-bureau in the far corner, to the right of the second of two huge, three-quarter-length windows, was of the same pale, intricately carved wood as the table. As she stood there gazing around her she was aware of a curious reluctance within her to accept how much she liked what she was seeing—not just the beauty and the exquisite taste surrounding her, but the actual feel of it all.

‘The door to the left of the bed leads to the dressing-room,’ muttered Damian Sheridan, ‘and the one on the right to the bathroom.’ He turned at the sound of a knock on the door and opened it to the elderly retainer. ‘James, what possessed you to carry that thing up all those stairs?’ he demanded exasperatedly, relieving the man of the case holding Rosanne’s word processor.

‘Damian, would you stop fussing?’ muttered the man irritably. ‘You’re getting worse than Bridie!’

Rosanne turned, desperate to hide her amusement as her own murmured thanks were greeted by an almost baleful look. There was a lot more to the arrogant and aristocratic Damian Sheridan than first met the eye, she was deciding. Not only did his staff, or at least the elderly James, call him by his first name—but he didn’t seem to object in the least to a bit of plain speaking, which James was now giving him in plenty by the door.

‘And you want to do something about Joe,’ James was grumbling. ‘Have you seen what the lad’s doing to your grass with yon horse?’

Damian Sheridan strode towards the window furthest from her, letting out a string of audibly ripe oaths as he dragged up the lower half of the sash-window and seemed about to hurl himself out through it.

‘Joe, would you get that damned animal off my lawn, for God’s sake?’ he roared.

Helplessly intrigued, Rosanne walked over to the second window, which she discovered looked out over a vast expanse of immaculately tended lawns that seemed to slope to the white-flecked turbulence of the sea beyond. Right below her on the lawn, she spotted what had to be the object of Damian Sheridan’s wrath. He was a slim, wiry young man of around her own age, mounted on a plainly high-spirited small horse.

The young man was grinning up at the window.

‘Just watch this, will you, Damian?’ he called up pleadingly.

Rosanne leaned her head against the window-pane, trying frantically to stifle her laughter as, to the exasperated roar of the man hanging perilously out of the adjoining window, Joe turned the horse and raced it at startling speed right down the centre of the lawn. Then, turning at an impossibly tight angle, he raced the horse back to where they had started.

‘Now tell me,’ demanded Joe triumphantly, ‘did you see any trace of lameness?’

‘Not a trace,’ chuckled the man at the window, his easy laughter confounding Rosanne—his beautiful lawn was virtually in ruins right down its centre! ‘Give him another run in the sea—and get someone to see to that damned grass, before you end up lamed by Bridie!’

Still grinning proudly, the rider saluted and rode off.

Rosanne drew back from the second window as the first was slammed shut, information she had been given about Damian Sheridan, but which hadn’t interested her in the least at the time, now returning to her.

‘I hear you breed polo ponies,’ she stated as he approached her and remembered also hearing that he had been a top player himself until a bad accident had forced him to give up competitive play.

‘Do you, now?’ he drawled with not a trace of the warmth and laughter so evident in him scant seconds ago.

‘When may I see Mrs Cranleigh?’ asked Rosanne, determined not to be goaded into lowering herself to the level of his rudeness and ignoring his taunting words.

‘Did you come here expecting one of those warm Irish welcomes you’ve no doubt heard about?’ he enquired with soft malevolence, sauntering right up to her. ‘Because if that’s the case you’re in for a big disappointment.’

‘For your information, I also happen to have Irish blood in me—so you can drop that line of needling,’ flashed Rosanne angrily, then immediately wondered what on earth had possessed her to come out with a claim like that, no matter what its technical truth. ‘And I came here expecting absolutely nothing of you, Mr Sheridan,’ she added, anger still blazing in the eyes meeting his despite the calmness she had managed to inject into her tone. ‘I’ve already told you, I—’

‘Yes, as you say, you’ve already told me,’ he interrupted brusquely, then strode past her and flung himself down on one of the deceptively dainty armchairs—most deceptively dainty in that it didn’t, as Rosanne had half hoped, collapse beneath him. ‘Come over here and sit down,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘We need to talk.’

If ever there was a time for her to cut her losses and run, this was it, she told herself desperately, but her legs were already carrying her towards the second chair and by the time she had sat down she knew that the opportunity was gone forever.

‘Mr Sheridan—’

‘Damian.’

‘All right—Damian,’ agreed Rosanne—then racked her brains for what it was she had been about to say. ‘You wanted to talk,’ she added for want of remembering.

Whatever its deceptive strength, the armchair into which he had flung himself was far too small to accommodate a man his size. He hunched his broad shoulders slightly, easing his body down as he lifted his booted feet and plonked them, ankles crossed, on the low table between them. There was no shred of friendliness in the dark—now almost navy—blue of the eyes regarding her.

‘Bryant Publishing—how long have you been with them?’ he demanded.

It took all the control she possessed for Rosanne not to flinch from the total unexpectedness of that question—nor the others it instantly conjured up within her.

‘Six months,’ she replied, with no trace of the turmoil stirring within. It was six months since Grandpa Ted had died and left her all he possessed, part of which had been a fifty per cent share in Bryant Publishing.

‘The name rang a vague bell in me when you mentioned it earlier,’ stated Damian pensively. ‘It’s just now occurred to me why.’

Rosanne forced her features into an expression of polite interest while her mind churned frantically. When, some months before her grandfather’s death, Hester Cranleigh had put her first tentative feelers out to Bryant’s regarding the biography, Rosanne had been stunned, to put it mildly.

‘It’s futile to try to guess why,’ her grandfather had said. ‘It’s up to you alone whether you choose to seek the answer.’

‘I didn’t like it when Hester first started on it,’ Damian was muttering as though to himself, ‘and now I’m liking it even less.’ His eyes flashed accusation into hers. ‘I suppose you regard this as simply another job and that it wouldn’t occur to you that there are a number of hornets’ nests this sort of thing will disturb.’

‘I’m sure any widow contemplating her late husband’s biography is aware that memories both good and bad are bound to be revived,’ replied Rosanne. She had felt no need for answers when Grandpa Ted was alive, but now he was gone there was a desperate yearning in her for them—all of them!

‘Believe you me, I doubt if many of them will be good,’ he retorted with a harsh laugh, raising his hands behind him and gripping the back of the chair. ‘Are you aware that Hester had a daughter?’ he demanded.

She had done all she could to prepare herself for this, the first mention of her own mother, sensing that it could possibly be her most testing. But nothing could have prepared her for this indescribable mixture of fear and exhilaration tearing through her.

‘Yes, I know that the Cranleighs had a daughter—and that she died tragically young,’ she stated, her words controlled and almost expressionless.

‘Faith was barely nineteen when she died,’ muttered Damian. ‘She ran off with the lad she was in love with—only for the pair of them to be killed in a plane crash on the way to some far-flung refuge or other.’

Kenya, filled in Rosanne silently: the Bryants had had a property there, which was to have been her parents’ haven.

‘Why...?’ She gave a small cough, trying to clear the sudden distorted croak from her voice. ‘You say they ran off...’ The words petered to a halt, alarming her. If she was in danger of losing control at this early stage it was pointless even attempting to go on.

‘Apparently the saintly George wasn’t happy with his daughter’s choice of man,’ explained Damian, anger and disgust in his tone. ‘So the poor girl had no choice but to run. George Cranleigh was a man who liked to have his own way—no matter what it cost.’

Rosanne felt her head begin to swim; could Damian Sheridan possibly know? His hatred for George Cranleigh seemed almost to match her own, though his, unlike hers, most certainly didn’t encompass George’s widow.

‘You hated him, didn’t you?’ she heard herself say.

‘Did I?’ he asked with a shrug. ‘They still talk of Hester Sheridan around here. They talk of her as one of the most beautiful and vivacious women in all Ireland...as she was when she met and married her dour English politician.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘They say she worked wonders on him—that some of her sparkle rubbed off on him and enhanced his political stature.’ He shrugged, as though doubting even that claim. ‘They came here often; Hester had spent a lot of time in this house as a child and regarded it as her home. I remember those visits from when I was a very small child...that is to say, I remember Hester—he seemed no more than a dark shadow.’ He glanced across at her, the ice in his eyes reaching out to chill her. ‘I couldn’t have been more than about eight when Faith and her young man were killed in that crash, but I was old enough to sense how much of Hester had died with them when she came back here.’

Rosanne felt her hands clench in her lap as she fought back the helpless rage threatening to burst from her. Why should anything of Hester Cranleigh have died with the daughter and son-in-law she and her husband had so cruelly deceived? Damian had referred to her father as Faith’s ‘young man’, yet he was the husband she had defied her parents by running away to marry when she was only seventeen. And he was the man she had gone on loving even when her father had used his position to have them separated and her made a ward of court. Hester and George Cranleigh had lost their daughter long before the tragedy that had killed her...but at least they had known her, protested Rosanne in silent torment. Grandpa Ted had broken down and wept when he had told her of the heartrending grief suffered by his son Paul and his daughter-in-law Faith that their daughter, conceived in such joyous love, had been stillborn during their terrible months of separation.

Rosanne leapt to her feet, certain that she would betray herself if she didn’t allow herself the distraction of movement.

‘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.