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?”