behavior, treating the three girls with a deference the girls seemed to take as their due. When the company rose from the dinner table, the boys leapt up, each drawing back one of the girls’ chairs, then attentively falling into step beside them as they followed Sybil and Muriel from the room.
The sight made her smile.
“I apologize in advance should my dear sisters lead your brothers astray.”
She turned as Gervase came up beside her. “What a strange thing to say.” She placed her hand on his proffered arm. “And here I was thinking what a civilizing influence they seem to be exerting over my barbarians.”
“Oh, they’re civil enough at the moment.” Together they ambled in their siblings’ wake. “But when they don’t get their way, they transform into hoydenish harridans.”
She laughed. “Hoydenish I might believe, given the recent incidents, but I sincerely doubt they have it in them to be harridans.”
“Trust me, they do.”
They’d reached the drawing room; entering, they discovered their juniors had decided on a game of loo. Belinda was directing Harry and Edmond in fetching and setting up the table, while Annabel, Ben and Jane were on their knees fishing in the sideboard for the cards and counters.
Sybil and Muriel were already ensconced on one chaise, heads together chatting. With Gervase, Madeline repaired to its mate, from where they could observe the card table and, if necessary, intervene in the activities around it, but could otherwise converse in reasonable privacy.
“I think we should pay a visit to Mr. Glendower tomorrow morning-before he has a chance to ride out.” She glanced at Gervase, brows rising.
He nodded. “It seems too coincidental that he recently bought the manor at Breage, with two mining leases, and then also bought two more.”
They’d discovered that a Mr. Thomas Glendower was the only person to recently purchase any mining leases in the area. Further investigation had yielded the information that he’d also bought the small manor near Breage, and was now living there. It had been late afternoon before they’d learned his direction; they’d decided not to try for an interview so late, but wait for tomorrow to approach him.
“He must be our man,” Madeline said, her tone determined. “The one behind the agent and the rumors.”
“You’ve found him?”
Madeline turned. Gervase looked up to find that Harry had slipped away from the action about the card table; he stood at the end of the chaise beside Madeline. With their attention on him, he colored faintly, but persisted, “The man behind all these rumors? If you’re going to see him, can I come?”
Gervase noted the clenching of Harry’s fists at his sides, and hoped Madeline understood.
She turned to him, brows arching.
He returned her look, not quite impassively.
Her eyes searched his, then she turned to Harry. “If you want to.”
Harry smiled; his hands unclenched. His eyes shone as he answered the question he’d correctly divined in Madeline’s tone. “If he’s the one creating all these problems in the district, well…”-he glanced at Gervase as if seeking the correct way to explain, then he looked again at Madeline-“it’s the sort of thing Viscount Gascoigne should help with, and I’m old enough to start learning the ropes.”
Madeline smiled, openly approving; reaching out, she grasped his hand and lightly squeezed. “Indeed. We’ll be only too happy to have you along.”
Gervase nodded his own, rather more masculine approval. “As your sister suggests, we should catch him before he has a chance to ride out for the day. If it is him, we don’t want him luring more unsuspecting leaseholders into his net, so we’ll need to make an early start.” He glanced at Madeline. “Best if I meet you two at the junction at Tregoose-let’s say at nine. We can ride on together from there.”
Madeline and Harry agreed. Then Harry was imperiously summoned to the card table. He quickly went to take his place.
Madeline turned to Gervase. She searched his eyes, then arched a brow. “Was that your doing, or truly his own initiative?”
“Mostly his own initiative-I just nudged him into acting on it.”
She tilted her head. “How?”
He smiled and sat back, his gaze going to the game; their conversation was drowned out by the already eager exclamations of their siblings. “By explaining how the smugglers’ days are, if not quite over, then numbered, and that for adventures they-their generation-will need to look elsewhere.”
Madeline studied him; his more relaxed demeanor in this company made him easier to read. Then she laid a hand on his sleeve, lightly gripped. “Thank you.” She, too, turned to watch the game. “They’ll accept that from you.”
He didn’t say anything for some minutes, then murmured, “I checked again to make sure the wreckers hadn’t taken advantage of that bad blow a week ago. Apparently the wind was in the wrong quarter, and so regardless of your brothers’ devotion to searching, they’re not going to find anything that will bring them into contact with the wreckers.”
“Thank you again.” She touched his hand lightly.
They both grew absorbed with the card game, although not for the same reasons that held their siblings engrossed. Again and again they shared a look, a private laugh at the interaction, the antics, and all they revealed. Belinda might be sixteen, and Harry fifteen, but under the influence of excitement both shed their superiority and became the children they’d only recently left behind, happily and noisily engaging with the others in what degenerated into an uproarious engagement.
Madeline watched, and appreciated the moment, appreciated that Gervase saw it, understood it, too. Earlier in the evening, she and Sybil had drawn him into a discussion of various aspects of the festival; she had to admit she could now see Sybil and his sisters’ point. He was so accustomed to command that he tended to ride over any but the most trenchant opposition-or, in her case, an opposing view put by someone of equally strong character unwilling to simply get out of his way.
She was also someone he had reason to wish to please, but, when she’d noted the way his sisters had been avidly watching them and had arched a brow at him, he’d reassured her with a murmur that neither the girls nor Sybil had any inkling whatever of their affair.
Which was a relief in one sense, yet it left open the question of why his sisters, and Sybil, too, were viewing her in quite such a way. Viewing her success in influencing him with something akin to smugness.
More, of approval.
She couldn’t put her finger on what it was she sensed from them. In the end, she inwardly shook her head and told herself they were simply the four people most likely to applaud any lady who could deal with Gervase.
Late that night, with the rising wind howling about the eaves of the manor, Malcolm Sinclair was quickly and efficiently packing the last of his belongings when a tap at the library French doors had him glancing sharply that way.
Recognizing the shadowy figure beyond the doors, he strode over and unlocked them, leaving Jennings to enter and follow him back to the desk.
The implication of the box into which Malcolm was loading papers was transparent.
“You’re leaving?” In the light of the lamp, Jennings’s eyes grew round.
“Yes. And so are you.” Grim-faced, Malcolm dropped in the last file, then reached for a piece of string. “Here- help me secure this.”
Jennings obediently held the box closed; while he wrapped the string around and tied it tight, Malcolm explained, briefly and succinctly, whom he had seen in Helston that afternoon, where they’d been going, and what that meant. “While everything we’ve been doing here is perfectly legal, I have absolutely no wish to meet Tregarth and be asked to explain.”
More specifically he didn’t want to explain why everyone locally knew him as Thomas Glendower, rather than Malcolm Sinclair. He definitely didn’t need Tregarth thinking back, and deciding to check for a connection between Thomas Glendower and Malcolm’s late guardian’s nefarious scheme. The connection couldn’t easily be proved, but to a man with the resources Malcolm feared Tregarth might possess, his secret might yield.
The authorities had been lenient over Malcolm’s role in his guardian’s illegal and immoral scheme, but if they
