Marriage! Christien still shuddered at that degrading recollection. His meteoric IQ rating had not done him much good while the urge to indulge his powerful libido had overruled every other restraint. The shattering discovery that he had been making love to a schoolgirl had blown him away. A schoolgirl of seventeen, who was a compulsive liar!

While Veronique had been agonising over how best he might protect himself from the threat of a horrendous scandal, Christien had still been so lost in lust that he had decided that he could cope with a teenage wife whom he would teach to tell the truth and keep in bed most of the time anyway. But, the next day, he had seen his potential child bride behaving like a slut with a spotty youth on a motorbike and, all rage, disbelief and disgust aside, he had immediately broken free of his obsession…

‘If that Burnside girl sets foot on Laroche soil, it will dishonour your father’s memory!’ Matilde Laroche protested.

Drawn from his brooding recollections with a vengeance, Christien almost winced at the tearful note in his mother’s overwrought exclamation. ‘There is no question of that happening,’ he asserted with soothing conviction. ‘She will receive an offer to sell the property back to the estate and she will naturally accept the money.’

‘This matter is so unpleasant for you to deal with,’ Veronique remarked in a sympathetic and discreet murmur at his side. ‘Allow me to take care of it for you.’

‘As always you are generous, but in this case there is no need.’ Christien surveyed the beautiful, elegant brunette he planned to marry with open appreciation.