“Some London harpy will get her claws into you, and we won’t be there to drive her off.”
That last came from Jane. Gervase looked into her eyes, hoping to see that she was joking, or to at least detect some comprehension that she was over extrapolating, some indication that she understood that he had no need of their protection, especially in such an arena. Instead, all he saw was that same dogged, unbending purpose. One glance at the other two confirmed that they, too, saw her words as a simple statement of fact.
He stared at them, feeling like he’d strayed into a reality he no longer recognized. He really couldn’t believe he was having this discussion. One part of his mind was convinced he must be dreaming. “But”-he seemed to have no alternative but to ask the obvious-“if I can’t go to London and find a bride there, where do you imagine I’ll find a suitable lady to be my countess?”
That earned him a three-pronged look that suggested he was being deliberately obtuse.
“You need to look around here, of course,” Belinda informed him.
“In the neighborhood and nearby towns,” Annabel clarified.
“So you can bring her home and show her the castle, and us,” Jane added. “Before you marry her.”
He suddenly understood-or rather, his brain finally accepted what his intellect had deduced. “You want to vet my choice?”
All three blinked at him; Sybil did, too.
“Well, of course!” Belinda said.
His expression set like stone. “No.”
That should have been the end of it. He should have said not one more word and stalked from the room. Should have realized from what had already passed that in the last ten years his sisters had grown even more like him-until he was no match for the three of them together.
They could talk rings around a philosophy professor.
The one peculiar talent he’d brought to his decade and more as a covert agent operating primarily on foreign soil, slipping in and out of the ports of France during the final years of the wars, was his ability to persuade. It wasn’t charm; it owed nothing to a smile or a glib tongue. It was more a matter of being able to twist arguments, of having the sort of mind that could see possibilities and frame connections in such a way that they seemed plausible, causal and direct. Even when they were in no way linked.
He was an expert in persuasion, in the art of framing the reasonable suggestion.
Yet every point he made, his sisters attacked. From three sides. At once. He knew where he stood, knew the rational ground beneath his feet was solid, yet no matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t seem to defend his position.
He was driven back, step by step. Onto a slippery slope that he suddenly realized led straight to abject surrender.
“Enough!” Running a hand through his hair, only just suppressing the urge to clutch the close curls, he ignored their pressing, leading questions designed to send him sliding down that slope and forced them to return to the single central point. “Regardless of anything and everything, as there is no lady anywhere near who might be suitable, I have to go to London to make my choice.”
“No,” Belinda said.
“Not without us,” Annabel belligerently declared.
“If you try to return to London alone,” Jane warned, “you’ll force us to do something terrible to bring you back.”
Gervase looked into all three pairs of eyes, each brimming with a determination equal to his own. They weren’t going to budge.
But this was his life. His wife.
And he was so tired of the mounting frustration of not being able to even start his search for her.
All, it now seemed, because of his sisters.
His temper, already tried beyond bearing, quietly slipped its leash.
“Very well,” he said.
All three girls straightened. They’d never, ever, seen him lose his temper, but knew him well enough to sense the change.
His tone cold, even and uninflected, he stated, “As you’re so convinced a suitable lady exists hereabouts, and that any such local lady will pose no real threat to you, I’ll make a bargain with you. I won’t return to London for the next three months, not until the Little Season commences. And I swear on all that’s holy that, from this moment on, I’ll marry the first suitable lady I meet-suitable on the basis of age, birth and station, temperament, compatibility and beauty. In return, you three will accept that lady without question.” He held their gazes, his own as hard as stone. “And you will not, again, indulge in any behavior designed to influence my decisions, or my life, in any way whatever.”
He paused, then said, “That’s the bargain. Do you accept it?”
They didn’t immediately answer.
All three studied him, then Belinda asked, “What if you don’t meet a suitable lady over the next three months?”
He smiled, a chilly gesture. “Then when the Little Season starts and I return to London, I’ll have to look there.”
They didn’t want to take the risk; the wariness in their eyes said so.
He pressed his advantage. “If you’re so sure that a suitable lady lies waiting in the neighborhood, then you should be prepared to let fate take her course and arrange for her to cross my path. You should be prepared to accept my bargain.”
The three looked at each other, wordlessly communing, then faced him once more. Belinda spoke. “If you promise on your honor to seriously look for, and then actively pursue, any suitable lady, then…” She hesitated, glanced one last time at the others, then looked back at him and nodded. “Yes-we accept your bargain.”
“Good.” He didn’t want to say more, much less hear any further words from them on his inability to choose his own wife. He glanced at Sybil, a silent observer throughout, and curtly nodded. “If you’ll excuse me?”
Another rhetorical question. With a last, raking glance over his sisters’ faces, he turned and strode to the door.
He had to get out-somewhere he could stride so he could let the coiled tension, the inevitable outcome of suppressing his fury, free.
By the time he reached the drawing room door, manifesting temper had infected his movements. Jerking the door open, he swung into the corridor-and nearly ran down Sitwell, his butler.
A paragon of his calling, Sitwell stepped back quickly to avoid a collision. Gervase inwardly sighed. Closing the door, he arched a brow in query.
“Miss Gascoigne has arrived and is asking to see you, my lord.”
The Honorable Miss Madeline Gascoigne. He was going to have to swallow his ire. “Where is she?”
“In the front hall, my lord. She intimated the matter wouldn’t take long and she did not wish to disturb Lady Sybil.”
Thanking Heaven for small mercies, Gervase nodded. “I’ll go to her.”
He strode down the corridor, leaving Sitwell in his wake.
His bargain with his sisters didn’t worry him; he knew beyond doubt that there simply wasn’t any suitable lady anywhere in the vicinity. He’d looked about the locality first before accepting the need to look in London. The notion that he’d choose to run the gauntlet of the London marriage mart was absurd; London was simply his only field of choice.
Which meant that for him finding a wife was postponed until the ton returned to the capital in late September. Given he’d had no intention of putting himself through the excruciating ordeal of countless house parties-the summer hunting grounds of the matchmaking mamas-that would have been the case regardless.
So his bargain with his sisters had cost him nothing he hadn’t already surrendered, namely the next three months. The point that seriously exercised his temper was that he’d had to make such a bargain at all.
Indeed, the entire subject of his wife-or more specifically his lack of same-had become a sore point, a mental bruise that throbbed every time he thought of it. Let alone spoke of it.
Turning a corner, he looked ahead, and saw a tall figure waiting by the round table in the center of the castle’s great front hall. He inwardly grimaced. No doubt Madeline had come to ask about the mill.
