Prince Of Darkness

‘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.’