Kate Proctor - Prince Of Darkness

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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.