My specs were steaming up: “I love you, Madeline,” sighed the dashing Earl of Tregellas. “For all my denials, I think that I’ve loved you since first I waltzed with you at Lady Gilmour’s Ball.”

The electronic reader I had borrowed from Sony had come preloaded with the bodice-ripping Wicked Earl from Mills & Boon. I was as powerless in the grip of this stormy Cornish romance as the lovely Madeline was in Earl Lucien’s sinewy arms.