Prince Of Darkness. Kate Proctor

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