Prince Of Darkness
Kate Proctor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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.

‘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.

They were part of her family—the family she had dreamed since childhood that she would one day find, thought Rosanne, the memory an ache within her that mirrored itself in the eyes that followed them.

But the Cranleighs had made certain she would find no one, she reminded herself bitterly. Paul and Faith Addison were the names entered as her parents on her birth certificate. She closed her eyes, reliving the rage of anguish that had been her grandfather’s when he had seen that document.

‘My God, not only was Cranleigh heartless, he also criminally falsified the records!’ he had raged. ‘Addison was your grandmother’s maiden name—we gave it to Paul as his middle name. Dear God, how could anyone cut off an innocent child from her roots so brutally?’

It had always been George against whom Grandpa Ted’s helpless rage had been directed...but he was a chivalrous old gentleman who would never speak ill of a woman, no matter what he might think of her. Yet now Rosanne found herself wondering if that really was the case. Her every instinct recoiled from the idea of Hester Cranleigh being involved in such cruel deception.

Wishful thinking would change nothing, she told herself harshly, her eyes opening to gaze down at the hands clenching and unclenching agitatedly in her lap. She was a Bryant and needed nothing from the Cranleighs, she reminded herself in an attempt to lessen the black despair engulfing her; she had had all the love, and more, she could ever have asked for from her darling grandfather.

‘Hester won’t be coming down for dinner this evening,’ announced Damian, his face like a thunder-cloud as he strode across the room towards Rosanne. ‘And that harrowing little orphan-Annie scenario to which you subjected her probably set her back months. Just what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

Rosanne leapt to her feet, her reason deserting her.

‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ she demanded hoarsely, resentment and loathing burning in her eyes. ‘You know absolutely nothing about—’ She broke off, her lips clamping tight with the horrified realisation of what she had been about to hurl at him in thoughtless rage.

‘What is it I know nothing about?’ he demanded, scowling down accusingly at her.

‘Nothing—just forget it,’ she muttered defeatedly. ‘I came here to do a job, not to be harassed and shouted at by you—so just leave me alone!’

‘One thing I have no intention of doing is leaving you alone, my unwelcome Ros,’ he retorted with a grim travesty of a smile. ‘Hester Cranleigh happens to be one of those exceptionally rare creatures among mankind—a generous, warm-hearted and indiscriminately loving person who would never knowingly do even her worst enemy harm. I’d move heaven and earth to ensure her last days are spent in relative peace—and the chances are I’ll end up having to move both, given the memories this work on her husband’s biography will inevitably resurrect. But what she doesn’t need is harrowing tales of your ghastly childhood to—’

‘I never said anything about having had a ghastly childhood,’ cut in Rosanne indignantly. ‘And I certainly don’t go round telling harrowing tales about myself!’

‘Well, they’re harrowing to a woman who’s been forced to relive her past and who could well have had a grandchild around your age, had her daughter not lost the baby. You prattling on about how wonderful your relationship was with your grandfather—how the hell do you think that must have made her feel?’

‘And how was I supposed to know any of that?’ demanded Rosanne, trembling with rage and disbelief. If only he knew, she kept asking herself, what would his reaction be?

‘Well, you know now,’ he snapped, his eyes dark and unyielding as they glared down into hers.

‘What I do know is that you seem to have an extremely fertile imagination,’ she informed him coldly. ‘But you needn’t worry because, as I tried to make clear earlier, I’m not given to talking about my private life to strangers, so Mrs Cranleigh won’t be subjected to any voluntary disclosures from me that are likely to upset her.’

‘And they sure as hell wouldn’t be involuntary, would they, Ros?’ he demanded harshly. ‘It’s only when you lose that so-called Irish temper of yours that you ever let anything slip, isn’t that so?’

Rosanne tried to take a step back from the man towering accusingly above her and found her legs wedged against the edge of the chair.

‘Yet when you’re in control of yourself,’ he continued ruthlessly, ‘I get the feeling that not a single word passes those delightfully tempting lips of yours without having first been coldly weighed up and calculated.’

‘As I said before—you have an extremely fertile imagination,’ said Rosanne hoarsely. She had been here scant hours, she thought dazedly, and already she had been subjected to far more than she had ever dreamed she could take—and the vast majority of it from someone she had never even considered as a potential threat.

‘Ah, so you deny you feel the world owes you something, do you?’ he challenged softly.

‘Why on earth do you think I feel that?’ she protested, aghast.

‘Because it’s written all over you,’ he replied. ‘And I must say I find the idea of your becoming an embittered, shrivelled-up harridan most disturbing,’ he added, placing his hands on her shoulders and drawing her towards him with a casual ease that stunned her into immobility.

‘You do?’ she croaked dazedly.

‘Oh, I most certainly do, darling,’ he chuckled, his hands sliding lightly down her arms. ‘That’s why I feel almost duty-bound to light that fire just begging to be lit inside you—and to do so before it’s too late.’

‘You mean before I become that shrivelled-up harridan you’re so worried I’ll turn into?’ asked Rosanne, the scepticism she had intended not manifesting itself the least satisfactorily in her tone. He was being outrageous and they both knew it, but she desperately hoped that the disturbingly sensuous effect that his nearness and the teasing lightness of his touch were having on her was something of which she alone was aware.

‘I was right—you do have a brain,’ he murmured with an exaggerated sigh of contentment, then suddenly pulled her against the length of him.

‘Well, you can’t have much of a brain if you think I’m going to fall for a line as blatant as that,’ she said, but her intended laugh deteriorated into a choked gasp as she quickly turned her head to avoid the confidently smiling mouth descending towards hers.

‘You’d be surprised, the number of women who respond to that sort of drivel,’ he murmured unabashedly, his lips sending disconcertingly sharp shocks of pleasure through her as they played against her cheek. ‘And frankly, if I were a woman, I’d be inclined to use my fists on the likes of me,’ he added with a chuckle, while his arms slid slowly around her.

‘A thought something along those lines had just crossed my mind,’ said Rosanne, appalled to hear breathless excitement instead of dismissive lightness in her tone. She was almost immediately distracted from that problem by yet another—the fact not so much that his mouth seemed to be making rapid progress towards hers, but that her every instinct now was to turn her head that fraction that would unite their mouths.

‘You know, that’s the second time today that a woman has had me quaking in my breeches,’ he chuckled, his lips now nuzzling against hers with such electrifying effect that Rosanne was incapable of even considering whether or not she had accommodatingly moved her head. ‘Oh, hell, that reminds me,’ he sighed—a sigh that mingled their breaths in a way Rosanne was finding every bit as inflammatory as a full-blown kiss. ‘Hester will skin me alive if I don’t obey her orders.’

His abrupt release of her came so unexpectedly that for a moment he had to put out a hand to steady her.

There was a half-smile playing against his lips as he gazed down at her.

‘Well, at least we got that problem sorted out,’ he murmured. ‘So now I’d better lead you to the great man’s study.’

He turned and began strolling across the room.

‘And what exactly was that problem we’ve allegedly just sorted out?’ Rosanne called after him, a strange lightness—almost a feeling of frivolity—dancing through her.

He paused mid-stride, then spoke without turning. ‘As you didn’t use your fists on me this time—I’ll not insult your intelligence the next time.’

The teasing softness of his laughter sent a shiver through her, a shiver that was anticipatory, yet almost as pleasurable as those she had experienced so sharply in those brief moments in his arms.

She was smiling as she began walking after him. Damian Sheridan as an enemy was a frighteningly daunting prospect, whereas Damian Sheridan in romantic pursuit of her...

His steps slowed as he reached the door, then he turned. The eyes that swept her from head to toe as she walked towards him were predatory eyes, dark with the promise of desires in which romance would play no part.

And the shiver that rippled through her, as he turned once again, was one suddenly filled with foreboding.

CHAPTER THREE

ROSANNE watched Damian as he read her day’s notes, the unpalatable truth striking her that she actually looked forward to these daily meetings of theirs.

Perhaps its apparent preoccupation with Damian was her mind’s way of trying to bring a little respite to the constant pressure she was under, she reasoned half-heartedly, and once again found herself wondering how they might have got on had there not been that in-built wall of hostility between them. She knew the Irish were renowned for their way with words, yet Damian’s wit was razor-sharp and cutting and, despite so often finding herself on the receiving end of it, she still found it almost mesmerisingly attractive...just as she did the softly drawled inflexions of his speech. In fact, she found just about every aspect of Damian Sheridan disproportionately fascinating, she informed herself dejectedly, and gained little comfort from reminding herself how sorely in need of mental distraction she was—not only from unrelieved pressure, but from the fact that the actual work she was doing was boring beyond reason!

‘Riveting,’ drawled Damian, tossing the notes on to the desk and leaning back in the chair he had drawn up beside hers. ‘It’s a wonder you manage to keep awake, having to sift through all that dross. It’s hardly likely to leap into the bestsellers list once it’s published, now, is it?’

Rosanne flashed him an uncertain look, his words triggering off something that had been niggling at the back of her mind. Perhaps she should have rung Lawrence Hastings, her co-owner in Bryant Publishing and its managing director, she thought nervously, and asked for his opinion.

He being one of her grandfather’s oldest friends and, she had often suspected, one whom he had confided in totally, it was Lawrence who had overseen her having the training that had made it possible for her to do this job.

But her overall knowledge of publishing was minimal and it was, she suspected, simply her own ignorance causing her to feel as puzzled as she did by her professional dealings with Hester Cranleigh.

‘Don’t you think it’s about time you got around to spitting it out?’ demanded Damian sourly, his demeanour indicating, as it so often did, that he was here only reluctantly—an attitude Rosanne found infuriating, given that it was he who had insisted on such meetings.

‘To spitting what out?’ she asked coldly, her face tightening with the effort it took to control her anger.

‘Whatever it is you’re so laboriously turning over in your mind,’ he replied. ‘For one so inclined towards secrecy, you can be extraordinarily transparent at times.’

‘I’m not secretive,’ she denied hotly, then almost groaned aloud as she realised that during the past couple of weeks her fear of giving herself away must have made her seem almost paranoidly secretive.

‘How exactly do you see yourself, darling—as an open book?’ he murmured derisively. ‘Dinner after dinner, I’ve listened in awe to your masterly parrying of every single question Hester has put to you. In fact, I’m so nearly convinced you’ve something to hide that I’m toying with the idea of putting a private detective on you—just for the heck of it,’ he finished off casually.

Rosanne struggled to keep a grip on herself as she heard her own sharp intake of breath.

‘Feel free,’ she retorted with as much careless concern as she could muster. ‘Though it seems criminal to waste that sort of money merely to have it confirmed I’m a normal, humdrum sort of girl doing a job she enjoys and who happens to have a perfectly healthy penchant for privacy.’

‘Now that was a minefield of a statement, if ever I’ve heard one,’ he stated softly, his narrowed eyes coolly assessing. ‘Humdrum your life may be, but normal it most certainly isn’t, judging by what little Hester has managed to worm out of you in these past couple of weeks.’

Rosanne gritted her teeth in frustration with herself for having so rashly placed herself at the mercy of his incisive tongue.

‘In fact,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘that primly virginal picture you’ve managed to paint of yourself has put ideas into her head—if I’m not mistaken, she harbours the delusion we could be turned into an item.’

‘Into a what?’

‘Into a couple,’ he replied, eyeing her coldly. ‘Or rather into a billing and cooing couple of lovebirds— Hester’s constantly on the look-out for the girl of her dreams for me,’ he added morosely.

‘Forgive me if this sounds obtuse,’ said Rosanne, only just resisting a strong urge to pick up her keyboard and smash it over his head, ‘but your terribly subtle approach to me on the day I arrived led me to believe that you had every intention that we should become what you refer to as an item.’

‘Yes, but not the sort of item Hester has in mind,’ he replied, without so much as a flicker of embarrassment. ‘I’ve a nasty feeling she has Bridie standing sentry outside your bedroom door by night,’ he added with an exaggerated sigh.

‘Bridie?’ echoed Rosanne, having difficulty keeping her face straight.

‘She’d hardly entrust something like that to James, now, would she?’ he murmured innocently, while his eyes twinkled lasciviously.

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ replied Rosanne. She really had to admire his gall, she thought weakly. He had made it quite plain that, whatever dreams Hester might have on his behalf, she herself didn’t feature in his own—yet now he was flirting with her! ‘Anyway, I thought Hester had plans for you and the slavishly adoring Nerissa,’ she added as an uncharacteristically demure afterthought.

‘You really are most unobservant, Ros,’ he sighed. ‘That threatened dinner invitation to the Blakes hasn’t materialised since you arrived on the scene—to my mind a most ominous development.’ He suddenly flashed her the most wicked of smiles. ‘You know how I live in terror of Hester—not to mention Bridie—and wouldn’t, therefore, dare lay so much as a finger on you without extreme provocation.’

‘Very wise,’ murmured Rosanne, more than a little surprised to find herself responding so easily in kind to this almost indolent flirtation in which he was indulging.

‘So how about your sneaking along to my room tonight? I’m in sore need of a dose of slavish adoration.’

Rosanne managed to compose her face into a look of deep contemplation, then shook her head with a sigh of regret.

‘It’s not that there would be any problem in my getting to your room undetected,’ she murmured, straight-faced and earnest. ‘It’s the slavish adoration I’d fall down on—you see, I’ve only ever been on the receiving end of that sort of thing.’ She gave an apologetic little shrug to round off her words.

‘So, you actually do possess a sense of humour,’ he murmured with a deep, rumbling chuckle.

‘Who says I was being humorous?’ queried Rosanne innocently, while a censorious voice from within warned her that, however much in need she might feel of distraction from the pressures she was under, kidding herself that she could get away with a bit of mild flirtation with a man like Damian Sheridan only went to show how dangerously naïve she could be where men were concerned.

His broad shoulders rose then fell in the merest of shrugs. ‘You still haven’t got around to telling me what was bothering you a few moments ago.’

Caught off guard, Rosanne accepted that she would only flounder unconvincingly if she didn’t opt for honesty.

‘It’s not exactly bothering me,’ she began—and realised exasperatedly that she was in danger of floundering anyway. ‘It’s probably my lack of experience in this job—this is the first time I’ve done this sort of work on my own...I’ve always been an assistant to someone experienced until now.’

‘So—what’s your problem?’ he demanded with no trace of sympathy.

‘I haven’t a problem,’ she retorted sharply. ‘It’s just that Mrs Cranleigh—’

‘Hester!’ he cut in exasperatedly. ‘Everyone calls her Hester and I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s asked you to do likewise.’

‘And I try to remember!’ exclaimed Rosanne defensively. ‘It’s just that I’m not used to calling someone of her age by her first name!’ Especially not her own grandmother, she reminded herself in silent resentment.

‘So—what’s Hester’s problem?’

‘I didn’t say she had a problem either,’ protested Rosanne. ‘It’s just that I find her attitude to her husband’s biography a little unusual. I mean, I thought she’d be doing the actual writing herself, but she tells me she’s not.’

‘Cedric Lamont’s agreed to do that for her,’ stated Damian, very much to her surprise. ‘Hester’s no writer.’

‘So why am I working here with Mrs...with Hester, instead of with Mr Lamont?’ she asked in bemusement.

‘You’re the one who works for Bryant’s, not me,’ he retorted with a shrug, then added, ‘But I do happen to know that Lamont’s adored Hester from afar ever since they were kids—and I’m damned sure a biographer of his stature wouldn’t have touched the saintly George’s life history with a barge-pole if it had been anyone other than Hester asking him to do so. He’s obviously made it plain, though, that he’s not prepared to do any of the donkey work.’

‘Yes, but—’ Rosanne broke off with a sigh of frustration, leaning back heavily in her chair. ‘Perhaps you’re right; her heart isn’t really in it.’

‘And that’s causing you problems, is it?’ he queried in tones of biting sarcasm. ‘How terribly inconsiderate of the old dear.’ There was scorn burning in his eyes as he continued. ‘I warned you from the start no good would come from raking up old hurts, so don’t be looking for my shoulder to cry on now that Hester’s started coming round to my way of thinking.’

‘I can’t think of any reason for you to say she’s coming round to your way of thinking,’ snapped Rosanne. ‘And, as for raking up old hurts, you know perfectly well that nothing I’ve covered really touches Mr Cranleigh’s private life in any depth—’ She broke off, frowning slightly, then added, ‘I suppose she’ll be arranging with Mr Lamont for the inclusion of the more personal aspects of his life?’

‘I’ve already told you, Lamont’s not interested in doing any of the donkey work,’ he muttered. ‘And besides, what’s wrong with this simply being a record of George’s public achievements?’

‘Because it’s meant to be a biography of the man,’ retorted Rosanne impatiently. ‘And a biography—’

‘I’m perfectly capable of defining the word for myself, thank you,’ he interrupted caustically. ‘Though it appears that a sanitised version of his public life is all his faithful is going to get,’ he continued, his expression almost smug. ‘I say that with some confidence because Hester hasn’t handed the personal diaries over to you—and, not having done so by now, I can’t see her ever doing so.’

‘Are you talking about Hester’s own diaries?’ asked Rosanne, her uncertainty betrayed in her voice.

He gave a humourless laugh as he shook his head.

‘What you’ve got are little more than the old boy’s desk diaries—even his secretaries, you must have noticed, made jottings in them!’ he exclaimed derisively. ‘But the saintly George was given to “Dear Diary” sessions of a much more private nature. And it’s in those that you would find the truth—if ever you got your eager little hands on them.’

‘What do you mean—the truth?’ demanded Rosanne, her head reeling, though not entirely from the shock of learning there were further diaries, the existence of which Hester had never even hinted at. So much seemed to be hinted at in Damian’s sneering words.

‘For God’s sake, the man was a politician!’ he exclaimed dismissively. ‘Yet one, according to those records you’ve been going through, whose career flowed onwards and upwards without so much as a ripple of any form of contention to ruffle its smooth progress.’

‘Are you saying he was dishonest in some way?’ challenged Rosanne, the barely acknowledged hope that at last she might hear something concrete dying in her as she realised that this was probably yet another example of his venting his spleen against the man he so disliked.

‘Yes! Use your head, damn it, Ros!’ he exclaimed exasperatedly. ‘I’m not for one moment suggesting he was a crook. But can you think of a single prominent politician who hasn’t, at one time or another during his career, been through a sticky patch?’

‘No, but—’

‘No—precisely,’ he snapped. ‘It’s common knowledge there were members of his own party who would have happily lynched him over the farm subsidy fiasco. Then there was—’

‘All right, you’ve made your point,’ cut in Rosanne impatiently. ‘But you can’t label him dishonest just because he viewed his political career through the same lavishly tinted spectacles all politicians tend to wear!’ My God, she thought weakly, they were discussing the man she loathed above all others—and she was virtually reduced to sticking up for him!

‘I obviously made a serious error when I judged you to possess a brain,’ he informed her disgustedly. ‘For God’s sake, woman, can’t you see that the claptrap politicians come out with is one thing, but that dishing up that same claptrap in a biography is an entirely different matter?’

‘You may consider it your God-given right to speak to people in that manner,’ exclaimed Rosanne angrily, leaping to her feet, ‘but I have no intention whatever of listening to any more of it!’

‘Sit down!’ he roared, on his feet and towering above her with a speed that startled her. He placed his hands on her shoulders, their weight forcing her back down on to the chair. ‘How the hell else do you expect to be spoken to?’ he demanded aggressively, leaning back against the desk-top as he removed his hands and glowered down at her. ‘You should know me well enough by now to know that I’m not in the least interested in the ups and downs of George Cranleigh’s career...but I’m darned sure Bryant Publishing is.’

Rosanne’s flashed him a murderous look.

‘If I were you, darling,’ he murmured silkily, ‘and I wanted to hang on to this job for a little longer than six months, I’d be letting Bryant’s know they’re wasting their time—and you can be sure wasting their time is all they’re doing when the subject’s widow refuses to give you access to the necessary material.’

‘I’m most touched by your concern for my future employment,’ stated Rosanne from between clenched teeth. ‘But it isn’t exactly as though Hester’s refused me access to anything yet.’

‘You didn’t even know of the existence of those diaries until I mentioned them just now,’ he taunted, then hooked his thumbs into his pocket vents and gazed morosely down at his feet. ‘Did you?’ he demanded forcefully when she made no reply.

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