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Prince Of Darkness
A Secret Never To Be Told
Ros Bryant had been abandoned as a baby. Now grown up, she was determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her childhood. But in searching for her past she found Damian Sheridan. He was tall, dark and dangerous, and held the key to everything Ros needed to know….
Ros discovered that the truth was never simple or easy. Was Damian going to believe that she was just an innocent pawn in a game of deceit?
Ros Bryant had been abandoned as a baby. Now grown up, she was determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her childhood. But in searching for her past she found Damian Sheridan. He was tall, dark and dangerous, and held the key to everything Ros needed to know….
Ros discovered that the truth was never simple or easy. Was Damian going to believe that she was just an innocent pawn in a game of deceit?
- GenresRomance
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 11, 2018
Re Prince of Darkness - Kate Proctor's last HP outing is an HP Plus size trip to Ireland. We get an h who has vowed revenge on her maternal birth family and an Irish, broody, moody H who alternatively bullies and seduces the enigmatic h who is residing in his house under false pretenses.
The h is 24 and owns half a publishing company that has been selected to publish the biography of a famous and now deceased British politician. The h shows up as the researcher who is going to pull all the assorted facts of the politician's life together before sending the whole thing off the biographer who is going to write it.
The H is the owner of the Irish polo pony raising estate where the politician's widow lives as his adoptive grandma. The adoptive grandma is distantly related to the H and took over as guardian for him when his own parent's were killed and the two of them are exceedingly close.
The H loves his AG as a parental replacement and the AG had lost her own daughter a few years earlier in a car accident, so the H was a welcome addition to her now childless existence. So it is no surprise that the H is not particularly welcoming of the h in her research role.
He adores his AG and her politician husband was a truly horrible person. He knows that the AG and dead politician were at odds over the daughter's death and since the AG is terminally ill and close to the end, he doesn't want the h there stirring up bad memories.
So the H tries some roofie kisses and threats to make the h go away, but the h is very firm that she is there at the AG's request and even tho the treacherous body syndrome is making her knees weak, she intends to follow thru with the research.
It is at this point that we learn the real reason the h is there. She is the child of the daughter that died and a young man whose father was the owner of the publishing house that is going to publish the biography.
The dead politician objected to his daughter falling in love and marrying the publisher's son, so because the h's mother was only 17 and pregnant, he hauled her back to Ireland, made her a ward of the court and put her in a nursing home for the duration of her pregnancy. He also threatened to have the marriage annulled.
Then when the h's mother was unconscious because of pregnancy complications and delivered early, he told her the baby was stillborn and had it adopted out to a very religious couple who needed the money. The h was sent to boarding schools and pretty much shunned by her adoptive family.
Until she was discovered by her father's father - the owner of the publishing house- who tracked her down after the matron of the nursing home contacted him when her maternal grandfather finally died.
They spent two happy years being a family before he too passed away and the h is now set on denouncing the maternal grandmother who allowed such a travesty to take place. The h is very angry that her parents were lied to and then died together in the same car accident before ever learning of her existence.
So there is a bit of the H pursuing the h and the grandmother trying to draw the h out about her life, the h is cagey cause she is trying to hide her seekrit mission and the roofie kisses and the back and forth bickering take up a lot of page space.
The h starts to believe that maybe her grandmother doesn't know the truth of what her husband did and starts to question her plans for denunciation.
(KP calls it revenge on the h's part, to make the h feel bad for being deceptive, but honestly, the h wasn't really all that vengeful to my reading of the situation. It was more like she was righteously angry that such a deception took place and she felt she needed to make a statement about that.)
That the grandmother really did not know about the baby living, but may have suspected some terrible action on her husband's part becomes very evident when she gives the h his private diaries and admits she can't bring herself to read them because she has never forgiven him for his treatment of her only child and her death a few years later.
The h and H read the diaries and soon find out the truth. The dead politician acted entirely on his own and even tho it cost him his wife and any hint of familial affection, he felt he was totally right in his actions.
The h and H argue about telling the grandmother the truth that the baby lived. The grandmother had taken herself off to Dublin and is in hospital there for tests. The h knows that she needs to tell the lady about herself and now feels free to love her.
The h had been reluctantly warming to the lady, who is very nice, prior to this. But she couldn't reconcile the nice lady with the horrible lying about the baby that denied the h a loving family for twenty years.
So the H and h go to Dublin, after the h realizes that she is in love with the H and will never be able to see him again after she tells her grandmother the truth about who she is.
The h instigates a unicorn grooming license revocation on the Golden Shores of Transcendent bliss and then has a mopey moment cause the H tells her he isn't in love, but she is a banging great time.
He then announces that he is going to hire a private detective to track down the missing daughter, to the h's great dismay. She tries to dissuade him from doing so, but the H is adamant and the h knows her time is short.
She has one more night of love with the despondent H, consoling him over the grandmother's deteriorating condition and then goes off to meet her fate.
She manages to get into see her grandmother, after the H tells her to stay away from the private Dublin clinic and she reveals the truth. There is a happy little reunion that is very sad too, as the grandmother only has a very short time on this plane of existence left.
The H finds out about the h's deception at this point and there are all kinds of accusations and beratements of the h and her character that end up in a big forced seduction.
There is a huge dose of the 'poor H being so badly deceived and the h is a horrible person' theme for the next few pages and then the grandmother dies and the h is summarily shunned and kicked out by the H.
Some time passes and the h is back home having mopey moments, she does get a call from her grandmother's Dublin friends asking her to come visit them, but she is still nursing a broken heart and puts them off.
Then the H shows up, ostensibly to pass over her grandmother's estate which was left to him, but the grandmother wanted to share it between the two of them. When the H tries to give her the family jewelry too, the h rejects it and tells him to give it to his wife.
So the H tells the h to marry him and when she says no, he complains that if she really loved him, she would have leapt at the chance, no matter how badly he worded it.
That leads to a big argument where they have more nonsensical utterances, until the H finally manages to get out that he is sorry for being a nematode and that he really loves her.
The h shouts her love for the H from the rooftops at that pronouncement and we leave the two of them loving it up and planning the wedding for KP's final voyage in HPlandia before she moves over to HPsubscriptoria.
This one was okay, the H was hot and cold for most of the story, so it was hard to see the attraction. The h was too willing to take the wooden spoon smacks and guilt for what I thought was a normal reaction to finding out what had been done to her.
(Well okay, for HPlandia she was remarkably circumspect in her investigations.)
She never actually attempted any sort of revenge and she used a good cover to do her research before making any sort of move. So I did not buy into the continual insistence that she was a bad person for wanting to investigate the circumstances of her birth and meet her grandmother before she made any announcements. It just takes the H way too long and lets him have too much bad behavior before he realizes it.
Overall it is a pretty standard day at the HP office, I wouldn't hunt it down, but if you run into it, it is a decent enough HP outing.
The h is 24 and owns half a publishing company that has been selected to publish the biography of a famous and now deceased British politician. The h shows up as the researcher who is going to pull all the assorted facts of the politician's life together before sending the whole thing off the biographer who is going to write it.
The H is the owner of the Irish polo pony raising estate where the politician's widow lives as his adoptive grandma. The adoptive grandma is distantly related to the H and took over as guardian for him when his own parent's were killed and the two of them are exceedingly close.
The H loves his AG as a parental replacement and the AG had lost her own daughter a few years earlier in a car accident, so the H was a welcome addition to her now childless existence. So it is no surprise that the H is not particularly welcoming of the h in her research role.
He adores his AG and her politician husband was a truly horrible person. He knows that the AG and dead politician were at odds over the daughter's death and since the AG is terminally ill and close to the end, he doesn't want the h there stirring up bad memories.
So the H tries some roofie kisses and threats to make the h go away, but the h is very firm that she is there at the AG's request and even tho the treacherous body syndrome is making her knees weak, she intends to follow thru with the research.
It is at this point that we learn the real reason the h is there. She is the child of the daughter that died and a young man whose father was the owner of the publishing house that is going to publish the biography.
The dead politician objected to his daughter falling in love and marrying the publisher's son, so because the h's mother was only 17 and pregnant, he hauled her back to Ireland, made her a ward of the court and put her in a nursing home for the duration of her pregnancy. He also threatened to have the marriage annulled.
Then when the h's mother was unconscious because of pregnancy complications and delivered early, he told her the baby was stillborn and had it adopted out to a very religious couple who needed the money. The h was sent to boarding schools and pretty much shunned by her adoptive family.
Until she was discovered by her father's father - the owner of the publishing house- who tracked her down after the matron of the nursing home contacted him when her maternal grandfather finally died.
They spent two happy years being a family before he too passed away and the h is now set on denouncing the maternal grandmother who allowed such a travesty to take place. The h is very angry that her parents were lied to and then died together in the same car accident before ever learning of her existence.
So there is a bit of the H pursuing the h and the grandmother trying to draw the h out about her life, the h is cagey cause she is trying to hide her seekrit mission and the roofie kisses and the back and forth bickering take up a lot of page space.
The h starts to believe that maybe her grandmother doesn't know the truth of what her husband did and starts to question her plans for denunciation.
(KP calls it revenge on the h's part, to make the h feel bad for being deceptive, but honestly, the h wasn't really all that vengeful to my reading of the situation. It was more like she was righteously angry that such a deception took place and she felt she needed to make a statement about that.)
That the grandmother really did not know about the baby living, but may have suspected some terrible action on her husband's part becomes very evident when she gives the h his private diaries and admits she can't bring herself to read them because she has never forgiven him for his treatment of her only child and her death a few years later.
The h and H read the diaries and soon find out the truth. The dead politician acted entirely on his own and even tho it cost him his wife and any hint of familial affection, he felt he was totally right in his actions.
The h and H argue about telling the grandmother the truth that the baby lived. The grandmother had taken herself off to Dublin and is in hospital there for tests. The h knows that she needs to tell the lady about herself and now feels free to love her.
The h had been reluctantly warming to the lady, who is very nice, prior to this. But she couldn't reconcile the nice lady with the horrible lying about the baby that denied the h a loving family for twenty years.
So the H and h go to Dublin, after the h realizes that she is in love with the H and will never be able to see him again after she tells her grandmother the truth about who she is.
The h instigates a unicorn grooming license revocation on the Golden Shores of Transcendent bliss and then has a mopey moment cause the H tells her he isn't in love, but she is a banging great time.
He then announces that he is going to hire a private detective to track down the missing daughter, to the h's great dismay. She tries to dissuade him from doing so, but the H is adamant and the h knows her time is short.
She has one more night of love with the despondent H, consoling him over the grandmother's deteriorating condition and then goes off to meet her fate.
She manages to get into see her grandmother, after the H tells her to stay away from the private Dublin clinic and she reveals the truth. There is a happy little reunion that is very sad too, as the grandmother only has a very short time on this plane of existence left.
The H finds out about the h's deception at this point and there are all kinds of accusations and beratements of the h and her character that end up in a big forced seduction.
There is a huge dose of the 'poor H being so badly deceived and the h is a horrible person' theme for the next few pages and then the grandmother dies and the h is summarily shunned and kicked out by the H.
Some time passes and the h is back home having mopey moments, she does get a call from her grandmother's Dublin friends asking her to come visit them, but she is still nursing a broken heart and puts them off.
Then the H shows up, ostensibly to pass over her grandmother's estate which was left to him, but the grandmother wanted to share it between the two of them. When the H tries to give her the family jewelry too, the h rejects it and tells him to give it to his wife.
So the H tells the h to marry him and when she says no, he complains that if she really loved him, she would have leapt at the chance, no matter how badly he worded it.
That leads to a big argument where they have more nonsensical utterances, until the H finally manages to get out that he is sorry for being a nematode and that he really loves her.
The h shouts her love for the H from the rooftops at that pronouncement and we leave the two of them loving it up and planning the wedding for KP's final voyage in HPlandia before she moves over to HPsubscriptoria.
This one was okay, the H was hot and cold for most of the story, so it was hard to see the attraction. The h was too willing to take the wooden spoon smacks and guilt for what I thought was a normal reaction to finding out what had been done to her.
(Well okay, for HPlandia she was remarkably circumspect in her investigations.)
She never actually attempted any sort of revenge and she used a good cover to do her research before making any sort of move. So I did not buy into the continual insistence that she was a bad person for wanting to investigate the circumstances of her birth and meet her grandmother before she made any announcements. It just takes the H way too long and lets him have too much bad behavior before he realizes it.
Overall it is a pretty standard day at the HP office, I wouldn't hunt it down, but if you run into it, it is a decent enough HP outing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 20, 2012
I have just finished reading this book and I couldn't put it down. The characters are captivating and the plot is very intriguing. However, I didn't like the end of the book because the author wrote it hastily, I think.
hq-to-read
March 29, 2018A Secret Never To Be Told
Ros Bryant had been abandoned as a baby. Now grown up, she was determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her childhood. But in searching for her past she found Damian Sheridan. He was tall, dark and dangerous, and held the key to everything Ros needed to know….
Ros discovered that the truth was never simple or easy. Was Damian going to believe that she was just an innocent pawn in a game of deceit?
Ros Bryant had been abandoned as a baby. Now grown up, she was determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her childhood. But in searching for her past she found Damian Sheridan. He was tall, dark and dangerous, and held the key to everything Ros needed to know….
Ros discovered that the truth was never simple or easy. Was Damian going to believe that she was just an innocent pawn in a game of deceit?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews