‘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.
‘I doubt it’s what she wants,’ he retorted with open bitterness. ‘It’s what he demanded of her.’ There was a look that was almost pleading softening a little of the arrogance from his compelling features. ‘It’s been over four years since he died and she’s put it off all that time...now it’s as though she sees it as her last duty to be carried out before she herself dies.’
Feeling herself falter in the face of such genuine concern, Rosanne found herself having to dredge up the savage hatred normally so ready to gnaw at her whenever the name Cranleigh entered her thoughts.
The gentle loveliness of her face tightened briefly to bitter harshness. ‘Mr Sheridan, I have a job to do and I intend doing it. And don’t you think you’re being a touch melodramatic?’
‘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