Читать книгу Prince Of Darkness - Kate Proctor - Страница 5

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.