As Gervase neared, she held out a gloved hand.

He grasped it, shook it. “Madeline.”

Retrieving her hand, she returned his easy nod. “Gervase.” Her expression turned rueful. “Before you say anything, I’m here to beg your pardon.”

He blinked, frowned. “I thought you’d come about the mill.”

Her smile widened. “No, although I did hear of your problem. It seems quite bizarre that your sisters were involved. Have you discovered why they did it? Or, as is the case with my brothers, was it simply a matter of ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’?”

He managed a rueful smile. “Something like that. But what’s your apology for?”

“In light of the mill, you’ll understand. I’m afraid my hellborn three’s latest interesting idea was to put your bull in among your dairy herd. Don’t, pray, ask me why-their logic escapes me. I’ve already had them out to see your herdsman to apologize, and I supervised them in recapturing the bull and putting him back in his field. He didn’t seem any the worse for his adventure, although I’m afraid your milk production might suffer a trifle due to the excitement.”

She paused, a frown in her gray-green eyes. “I should, I suppose, have expected something. They’re home for the summer, of course, but I had hoped they would have outgrown such schoolboy exploits.”

Gervase raised his brows, falling into step beside her as she walked slowly back to the front door. “Harry’s fifteen, isn’t he? He’ll stop his schoolboy tricks soon enough, but when he does, you might well wish he hadn’t. In this season a slight disruption to our milk production won’t even be noticed, and if that’s the worst he and your other two get up to this year, we’ll all think ourselves lucky.”

“Hmm…be careful what you wish for?” Madeline wrinkled her straight, no-nonsense nose. “In that you might be right.”

They paused in the shadow of the front porch. She glanced at him. “When do you expect the mill to be fixed?”

They chatted for several minutes, about the mill and the coming harvest, about the local tin mining in which both estates had an interest, about the latest local business news. Like all the neighborhood gentlemen, Gervase had learned to respect and rely on Madeline’s views, drawn as they were from a much wider pool of information than any of them could tap.

There wasn’t a local merchant, miner, laborer or farmer who wouldn’t readily talk to Miss Gascoigne about his enterprise. Likewise his wife. Madeline had a much deeper understanding of anything and everything that went on on the Lizard Peninsula and in surrounding districts, one no mere man could hope to match.

She glanced up at the sun. “I really must be going.” She met his eyes. “Thank you for understanding about the bull.”

“If it helps, you can tell your brothers that I was not amused. I’ll be going out to the mill shortly.”

With a smile, she held out her hand. Gervase shook it, then went with her down the steps to the forecourt, where her horse, a tall, powerful chestnut few other women could hope to control, waited, alert and ready to run.

Lifting her hat, she settled it on her head, then reached for the front of her saddle. Gervase held the horse’s bridle, watching without a blink as Madeline planted her boot in the stirrup and swung up to the horse’s broad back.

She always rode astride, wearing trousers beneath her skirts for the purpose. Given the miles she covered every day watching over her brother’s interests, not even the most censorious dowager considered the fact worth mentioning.

Madeline lifted her reins. With a smile and a brisk salute, she backed the chestnut, then wheeled and trotted neatly out of the walled forecourt.

Gervase watched her go, idly aware that her peers in the district were the other male landowners; in their councils, she was never treated as a female-as someone of different status from the men. While no one would actually treat her as a man-thump her on the back or offer her brandy-she occupied a unique position.

Because, in many ways, she was unique.

Thinking of his sisters, Gervase considered that a little of Madeline’s uniqueness could, with benefit, rub off on them. Turning back to the castle, he remounted the front steps. And turned his mind back to his temper…only to discover that it was no longer straining at the leash.

He no longer had anything to suppress. He felt calm, in control once more, confident and able to deal with whatever might come his way.

His conversation with Madeline-sane, sensible and rational-had regrounded him. Why couldn’t his sisters be more like her?

Or was that one of those things he should be wary of wishing for?

He was still pondering that point when he reached the drawing room. Opening the door, he walked in.

Belinda, Annabel and Jane turned from the window overlooking the forecourt, through which they’d obviously been observing him and Madeline. Sybil, swiveled on the chaise, had been watching her daughters, no doubt listening to their report.

Before he could frown at them, all four looked at him, their expressions identical, eager and expectant.

He stared at them. “What?”

As one, they stared back.

“We thought perhaps you might invite her in,” Belinda said.

“Madeline? Why?”

The look they bent on him suggested they were wondering where he’d left his wits.

When he didn’t spontaneously find them, Belinda deigned to help. “Madeline. Isn’t she a suitable lady?”

He stared at them, and couldn’t think of an answer. Not any answer he wanted to give. Oaths, he suspected, wouldn’t shock them.

He let his face harden, let his most impenetrable mask settle into place. “I have to go and unjam the mill. I’ll speak with you later.”

Without another word, he swung around and stalked out.


That evening, Gervase entered his library-cum-study and headed directly for the tantalus. As he poured himself a brandy, the latter events of the day scrolled through his mind.

Reaching the mill, he’d discovered the frustrated miller about to commence the laborious task of dismantling the grinding mechanism to see why “the damned thing won’t budge.” Asking him to wait, Gervase had gone outside to where the huge waterwheel sat unmoving in the narrow stream. His sisters knew nothing about gears and axles; there was no evidence they’d even entered the mill. Whatever they’d done to cripple the mechanism had been simple and ingenious-and something three schoolgirls, two of decent height and strength, could physically achieve.

The stream had been bubbling and gurgling along, covering the lower third of the wheel. After squinting into the rippling water, Gervase had called the miller and his sons to lend a hand; they’d managed to turn the wheel-enough to expose the gaps where three paddle blades ought to have been, and the anchor, doubtless purloined from the castle boathouse, that had held the wheel so that the jostling of the stream hadn’t shifted it. With the three blades missing, the water rushed freely through the gap, providing no force to turn the big wheel.

John Miller had stared at the gaps, at the anchor, and had sworn.

They’d found the blades, which for ease of replacement simply slotted into grooves in the wheel’s inner sides, tucked out of sight among some bushes. A matter of minutes had seen the anchor removed and the blades replaced-and the millstone grinding once more.

His sisters’ latest misdeed righted, he’d returned to the castle and had closeted himself in the library until dinnertime.

He’d contributed little to the dinner table conversation; the few exchanges had been of a general nature, of local affairs and local people. No one, however, had mentioned Madeline Gascoigne.

When, with Sybil, his sisters had risen and retreated to the drawing room, he’d watched them go, and then come here. Lifting his glass, he carried it to a well-padded armchair, sank down into the cushioning leather, and sighed.

He sipped, then put his head back and closed his eyes.

Despite their careful silence, his sisters were watching him like hawks. Demanding creatures. He’d made a promise, and they expected him to keep it.

And, of course, he would.

Opening his eyes, he raised his glass again, and refocused on the issue never far from his mind, his principal and continuing problem-his lack of a wife.

When he’d resigned his commission late last year, he’d had a vague notion that now peace was established and he was free to become the Earl of Crowhurst in more than name, then getting himself a wife ought to be his next step.

When a group of close comrades-six others who like him had spent the last ten and more years working behind enemy lines under the orders of the secretive individual they knew only as Dalziel-had proposed banding together and creating a private club to guard against the marauding mamas of the ton, he’d thought it an excellent idea. The Bastion Club had indeed proved useful in facilitating the search for suitable wives-for most of the others.

So much so that as of a day ago, there were only two of the original seven club members still unwed. Christian Allardyce, Marquess of Dearne, and Gervase himself.

Christian, he’d realized, had some secret that was holding him back. Some reason why, despite, of them all, having spent the most time in the ballrooms and being the most comfortable in that milieu, he seemed unable to summon any interest in any lady, not even in passing.

There was some story there, some excuse for Christian remaining detached and consequently unwed.

He, however, had no excuse. He wanted to wed, to find the right lady and establish her as his countess. As his sisters had so bluntly enumerated, there were multiple reasons he should, not least among those being them and their futures. He’d set out to find his bride in February. Nearly six months had passed and he’d achieved precisely nothing.

The failure nagged. His was a nature that thrived on achievement. He was constitutionally incapable of accepting failure.

News of the trouble with the mill had reached him just after he’d arrived at Paignton Hall in Devon to witness the nuptials of one of their small band, Deverell, and his Phoebe. So afterward, rather than returning to spend a last week or so in London in the hope that among the few tonnish families lingering in the capital he might discover his future wife, he’d had to hie back home instead. The continuing frustration, even if it had been entirely outside his control, had only exacerbated his already abraded patience-and an irrational sense of time running out and him still not having found his bride.

Courtesy of what he’d now discovered to be his sisters’ machinations, he’d spent no more than a few consecutive days in London, not since the Season had commenced, but rather than making his failure to find a wife easier to accept, the knowledge that he’d had no real time to look had only given his restless dissatisfaction a keener edge.

Six months, and he’d got nowhere. He hadn’t even managed to develop any, as Annabel had termed them, relevant skills.

And he wouldn’t get anywhere in the next three months, either.

Draining his glass, he forced himself to face that fact. To accept it, set it aside, and turn to the matter at hand, the one he could actually do something about.

The Honorable Miss Madeline Gascoigne.

He’d made his bargain with his sisters but, of course, he’d left himself an escape route. He’d slipped the loophole in between “temperament” and “beauty.” The other criteria he’d listed were ones others-his dear sisters, for example-could judge for themselves, but “compatibility” was entirely his to define.

Just as well he’d been so farsighted; Madeline qualified on all other counts.

She was, he’d calculated, twenty-nine or close to it; her father had died eight years ago and she’d been twenty-one at the time, that much he knew. A trifle long in the tooth perhaps, and she doubtless considered herself well and truly on the shelf, but as he was thirty-four, her advanced years weren’t something anyone would hold against her.

Indeed, he’d prefer a wife with more rather than fewer years in her dish, one who had weathered a little of life. God knew, he had. A young young lady would be extremely unlikely to fix, let alone hold, his interest.

And as the daughter of the late Viscount Gascoigne, Madeline unquestionably possessed birth and station appropriate to the position of his countess; there was no fault to be found there.

Although he hadn’t stipulated fortune, she was possessed of that as well, having inherited a sizable sum from maternal relatives, and the Gascoignes were wealthy, so she’d doubtless be well dowered, too.