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      Sylvie, in his opinion, was a very unfortunate young woman, and his stepmother would have been the first person to complain if Alex had tried to interfere in their relationship—as had been proved in the past.

      And then there had been an equally lengthy telephone call from the charitable trust, to whom his father had handed over the family’s ancestral castle in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. They had wanted to know the possible history of a tapestry which had just been discovered hidden behind a piece of Victorian panelling.

      In the end Alex had had to refer them to the archivist of the family, a second cousin of his father’s who was currently living in a house on another of the family’s estates in Lincolnshire.

      Like a good many other of the properties he owned, it was let out at a laughably nominal peppercorn rent. His financial advisors were constantly reminding him that by being so soft-hearted and housing not only several members of his family, including his stepmother, who lived in a very grand and expensive-tokeep apartment in London, but also various retired employees, and by paying for the upkeep of the properties they inhabited, he was depriving himself and, more importantly, the estate of income that was badly needed.

      Very grimly Alex had had to remind them that so far as he was concerned there were more important things in life than money—and far more important duties and responsibilities.

      The now retired employees living all but rent-free in his properties had, as he had explained to the accountants, served his family virtually all of their working lives and deserved some comfort and security in their retirement.

      ‘But, my lord, surely you can see how advantageous it would be if you were to revoke their tenancy agreements and either let out the properties on short-term leases at much higher rentals or simply sell them.

      ‘It isn’t just a matter of the revenue you are losing by allowing these people to live in them at such ridiculously low rents, there’s the additional fact that you are maintaining the properties for them. Only last year you paid for a full row of terraced farmworkers’ cottages on your Yorkshire estate to be completely modernised.’

      ‘I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to accept that I’ve made my decision so far as the tenancies are concerned and I don’t intend to change it,’ Alex had told them crisply.

      The days when inheriting an earldom had meant inheriting a life of ease and indolence were long gone—if they had ever existed. Running large tracts of land, not to mention the properties and farms that stood on them, was, these days, sometimes a nightmare of complex legislation and red tape coupled with a never-ending battle to make financial ends meet.

      Without the benefit of some very shrewd investments made by his great-grandfather, he doubted that he would have been able to afford the luxury of keeping the elegant Palladian mansion, Otel Place, which had been his father’s and was now his own principle dwelling. His great-grandfather’s money, though it might not make him wealthy, had certainly made the vital difference between his being able to keep most of his inheritance and potentially having to sell off a major part of it.

      In fact, Alex now thought, the only bright spot in an otherwise extremely fraught day had been the run-in with his fiery, feisty redhead.

      His? Momentarily he checked, and then frowned. She had certainly been furious with him, and perhaps with good reason, he acknowledged ruefully. He could have set her right earlier and explained who he was instead of helping her to dig the trap she had hurled herself into so recklessly.

      Had her eyes been topaz or gold? He closed his own eyes—the smell of her perfume, light and tantalising, still clung to his shirt. She had felt good in his arms, against his body, beneath his mouth—warm and curvaceous, vibrant and alive.

      He had known who she was, of course. Pat Lawson had told him that she was coming to interview her and he would probably have guessed anyway. Bob Fleury had informed him of her appointment when he had asked him if she could take up the tenancy of the empty cottage in the square he owned down by the river.

      He had behaved rather badly, he acknowledged, even if she had invited him to do it, and there had certainly been no excuse for the way he had reacted to her idiotic charge of him using any kind of right to droit du seigneur. No, kissing her like that had been wholly out of order—and wholly enjoyable. More, in fact, than merely enjoyable.

      She had had an effect on him that... Hastily he reassembled his thoughts. He was thirty-three, for heaven’s sake, and certainly a long way from allowing his hormones to dictate his behaviour to him.

      No. He quite definitely owed her an apology and an explanation. He glanced at his watch. It was too late to call on her now, but he had to go into town later and he would call on her then to apologise.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘GOOD.’

      Feeling highly satisfied with herself, Mollie put down the pages she had just been reading of the piece she had written following her meeting with Pat Lawson, pausing to study the view from her sitting-room window. Beyond her tiny front garden lay a well-maintained and very pretty town square, complete with its own private garden for which only the occupants of the houses around the square had keys.

      The neat early Georgian cottages had, so Mollie had learned from Bob Fleury, a certain cachet to them, and she should consider herself very fortunate to be able to rent one of them.

      The cottage certainly had a lot to recommend itself, Mollie had to acknowledge. Its location, with its long back garden backing onto the river and its frontage onto the small square, gave it an almost country feel, and its interior decoration showed not only good taste and a respect for maintaining period detail but a thorough awareness of the needs of modern life as well.

      Her mother had been extremely impressed with the kitchen and bathroom when she and Mollie’s father had driven down to Fordcaster with Mollie to help her get settled in.

      ‘It’s got a proper oven and not just a microwave,’ her mother had approved. ‘And everywhere’s so clean.’

      ‘Mmm... Apparently, according to Bob Fleury, the landlord is very particular about that sort of thing, and about who he takes on as tenants. Initially I’ve only been granted a lease for three months.’

      ‘Well, I can see his point,’ her mother had commented. ‘If this was my house I certainly wouldn’t want just anyone living here.’

      Walking into the kitchen now, Mollie went to fill her kettle and make herself a hot drink.

      Surprisingly Pat Lawson had proved to be extremely interesting to talk to, or rather to listen to, and in no time at all she had furnished Mollie not just with her great-grandmother’s much prized recipe for her famous chutney but in addition a good deal of crisply informative and very witty background information about the history of the town, including some interesting facts about its foremost family—the Villiers of St Otel—both past and present.

      ‘They go back right to the times of William the Conqueror,’ she had told Mollie. ‘The first earl came over from Normandy, although he wasn’t an earl then, just one of William’s knights. William gave him the earldom in return for his loyalty to him.

      ‘Things haven’t always been easy for them, of course. There was an earl beheaded in the time of Henry the Eighth, for supporting Anne Boleyn, and another during the Civil War; the most famous of them all, though, was probably the Black Earl—Rake-hell St Otel, they called him. He made a fortune gaming in the clubs in London and then lost it again and ended up abducting an heiress so that he could marry her for her money.

      ‘When, after six unsuccessful attempts to present him with an heir, his countess finally gave birth to a much wanted son there was a rumour abroad that her child had been another girl and that she had been exchanged at birth for a boy child fathered on one of the serving wenches by her husband...’

      Pat Lawson shook her head at this point, but Mollie was more interested in learning about the vices of the current Earl rather than his long-dead ancestor.

      ‘What

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