Prince Of Darkness

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.