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Peregrine Alexander Kavanagh Stewart Villiers, Earl of St Otel.’

      Mollie gaped at him.

      She had heard Bob Fleury mention his name in terms of revolting awe and admiration—to her at least; she knew he owned vast tracts of land not only locally but elsewhere in Britain as well, and that he was the holder of several ancient hereditary titles—none of which had impressed her in the least when she had heard Bob Fleury talking about him. But now...

      She gulped and swallowed hard on her chagrin and the impulse to deny what he was saying and accuse him of deceiving her—something, some hitherto slumbering instinct, told her that would not be very wise.

      She couldn’t allow him to think he had totally routed her, though; it would not only go against the grain but would allow him to think that she was cowed, or even worse impressed, when the truth was that if anything the discovery of who he was had made her dislike him even more.

      An earl. Well, she had no time for anything like that. She only accorded other people respect when she felt they merited it, and if he thought for one moment that just because he had flaunted his precious title...

      ‘Well, I don’t care who you are,’ she told him defiantly, well beyond listening to any inner voice of caution or restraint. ‘And if you think for one moment that I’m going to be intimidated by having you standing there like...like some Jane Austen character threatening to exercise some kind of...of droit du seigneur...’

      The dark eyebrows shot up, the blue eyes gleaming with something that Mollie did not dare to try to analyse as he interrupted her suavely to say, ‘I somehow doubt that Jane Austen ever bestowed upon her male characters any kind of rights of that nature... In fact, I suspect she would have strongly disapproved of any such suggestion.’

      ‘Unlike you,’ Mollie retorted dangerously.

      ‘That depends... But since you seem so determined to cast me in the role of villain and rake...’

      Before she could guess what was happening he had closed the distance between them and Mollie found she was locked firmly against his body—a body which felt far too robustly male for her feminine susceptibilities. He smelled of fresh air and the wind, and beneath the protesting defensive hand she had put out too late to ward him off she could feel the firm thud of his heartbeat and the crisp roughness of the body hair covering his skin.

      He was all man. There was no doubt about that, she acknowledged weakly.

      Whilst she was trying to control her unwanted and treacherous thoughts he was busily using one hand to keep her secured against his body as the other cupped her face and turned it to just the right angle for the downward descent of his mouth. He was so skilful that her last thought before his lips touched hers was that it was a manoeuvre at which he was extremely practised.

      As though he had read her mind, she felt him whispering against her lips.

      ‘I once had to play the villain in the village pantomime...’

      ‘I doubt there was much playing necessary,’ Mollie managed to mouth back through gritted teeth, before the firm pressure of his lips on hers made further speech not just difficult but downright dangerous. To even try to open her mouth now, whilst it was being caressed so...so...by his, would be to invite...to...

      ‘Mmm...’ Giddily Mollie breathed a soft, appreciative sound of bliss as his lips stroked hers, and her own lips, her body, her ravished senses responded hedonistically to the delicious sensual mastery.

      ‘Mmm...’

      ‘Mmm...?’

      To her chagrin Mollie recognised that he was repeating her soft sound of appreciation—not in confirmation of his own corresponding enjoyment of the kiss they were now sharing, but in fact as a question.

      Immediately she stopped kissing him. Not that she had actually been kissing him, she tried to reassure herself as she primly filmed her kiss-softened lips against the provocation of the warmth of his breath and the tantalisingly gentle movement of his lips on hers... No, what she had been doing had quite simply and surely excusably been making an instinctive and automatic female response to the erotic mastery of a man who quite plainly knew far more about how to coax a woman into responding to him than was good for him—or for her.

      Determinedly Mollie told herself that it wasn’t disappointment that was chilling her blood as he allowed her to put some distance between them.

      ‘How dare...?’ she began shakily.

      ‘How dare you, sir? Unhand me!’ he finished for her promptly.

      Mollie glared at him. Now he was quite definitely making fun of her.

      ‘You had no right to do that,’ she told him angrily, now that she was safely out of range of the strange and highly dangerous effect he had on her senses when he was close up against her. Talk about close up and personal—but she was not the sort of woman to be misled or deceived by her hormones. Just because he was skilled at the kind of kissing that made her feel as soft and squishy inside as—

      ‘No? I thought you just said I had the right of droit du seigneur,’ he reminded her softly.

      He was laughing at her, Mollie decided—enjoying a very male-orientated joke at her expense. Now she really was angry.

      ‘You do realise that what you’ve just done could be construed as sexual assault?’ she began heatedly, only to have the fire really taken out of her argument.

      ‘Is that why I’m going to have nail-marks on my arm from where you were holding onto me...?’ he returned blankly.

      Nail-marks. Mollie’s eyes widened in a combination of embarrassment and fiery protest.

      ‘I did not...’ she began, only to stop as he started to roll up the sleeve of his shirt.

      ‘You’re in my way,’ she told him instead, ‘and I’m already late for my appointment with Mrs Lawson.’

      ‘Pat won’t mind,’ he assured her easily. ‘She’ll be busy looking after her grandchildren.’

      Pat Lawson might not mind but Bob Fleury would if news of her tardiness ever got back to his ears, Mollie recognised.

      ‘If you won’t move that...that thing,’ she told him heatedly, tossing her curls in the direction of his Land Rover, ‘then I’m just going to have to walk.’

      As she started to turn determinedly away from him she thought she heard him laughing, but the next moment he was striding back to his Land Rover and climbing into it, throwing the engine into reverse and allowing her to drive her own car further up the lane to where there was a convenient passing place.

      Arrogant brute, Mollie mentally slated him when she actually drove past, assiduously avoiding looking at him, her nose firmly in the air. And if he thought for one moment that she had actually enjoyed his odious and unwanted kiss, then...then...! Hot colour flooded her face as she missed a gear and heard the harsh. grating sound her car engine made in protest.

      

      Half an hour later, standing in his study in the library of Otel Place drinking a coffee he had just made himself, Peregrine Alexander Kavanagh Stewart Villiers, or Alex as he was known to his close friends and associates, reflected ruefully on his recent run-in with Mollie and mentally admitted that he hadn’t behaved very well.

      His only excuse was that he had had a so-and-so of a morning, starting with a long-winded and petulantly plaintive telephone call from his stepmother complaining about the fact that her daughter—his stepsister—had announced that instead of completing her university course she had decided to take to the road with a band of travellers.

      ‘Alex, you’ll have to do something,’ his stepmother had insisted. ‘She’s always listened to you.’

      ‘Belinda, she’s twenty and an adult,’ Alex had wearily reminded her, forbearing to mention that the main cause of Sylvie’s rebellion was her own mother, and the clinging possessiveness

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