He stared at her. “You don’t want me to find a wife?”

“We don’t want you to find a wife in London.” Belinda capped the statement with a definite nod-repeated by the other two, one after the other.

It was, indeed, as Sybil had guessed. Compressing his lips, he battled to shore up a patience that six months of mayhem-let alone all the futile racing back and forth-had worn wafer-thin. “Sybil has just told me about the situation with the Hardestys.” He managed to keep his tone even, his diction not so clipped that it would cut. He was still very fond of them, even if they’d temporarily turned into bedlamites. “You can’t seriously imagine that I would marry a lady who I would subsequently allow to send you away.”

Yes, they could. Yes, they did.

They didn’t say the words. They didn’t have to; the truth was writ large in their eyes, in their expressions.

He felt positively insulted, and didn’t know what to say-how to defend himself. The idea that he needed to was irritation enough.

“I’m older, and wiser, and far more experienced than Robert Hardesty. Just because he’s married unwisely is no reason whatever to imagine I’ll do the same.”

The look Belinda bent on him was as contemptuously pitying as only a younger sister could manage; it was mirrored to an unsettling degree by Annabel and Jane.

“Gentlemen,” Belinda stated, “always think they know what they’re doing when it comes to ladies, and they never do. They think they’re in charge, but they’re blind. Any lady worth the title knows that gentlemen, once hooked, can be led by the nose if the lady is so minded. So if an attractive London lady gets her hooks into you, and decides like Lady Hardesty that having girls like us to puff-off isn’t a proposition she wants to take on, where will that leave us?”

“Living in the North Riding with Great-Aunt Agatha,” Annabel supplied.

“So it was obvious we had to take action,” Jane concluded. Her eyes narrowed on Gervase. “Drastic action-whatever was necessary.”

Before he could even think of a reply, Belinda went on, “And there’s no use citing your age as any indication of your wisdom in such matters. You’ve spent the last twelve years out of society-it’s not a case of your skills in this regard being rusty so much as you’ve never developed the relevant skills at all.”

“It’s not the same as if you’d spent those years in London,” Annabel informed him, “watching and learning about choosing a wife.”

“This is not a battlefield on which you have any experience,” Jane declared in her most serious voice. “In this theater, you’re vulnerable.”

She was obviously reciting arguments they’d discussed at length; just the thought was horrifying. Trying to assimilate their unexpected and peculiarly female point of view was making Gervase giddy.

He held up a hand. “Wait. Just stop. Let’s approach this logically.” He cast a glance at Sybil, only to surmise from her attentive expression that however much she might deplore her daughters’ actions, she didn’t, materially, disagree with their assessment. No help there. He drew breath, and stated, “You’re worried that, like Robert Hardesty, I’ll fall victim to some fashionable London lady who will take a dislike to you and convince me to send you to live with Great-Aunt Agatha.”

All three girls nodded.

“To prevent such an occurrence, you made sure I had no time in the capital during which to meet any such lady.”

Again three definite nods.

“But you know I need a wife. You understand that I have to marry?” Not least to secure the title and the entailed estate, given he was the last male Tregarth.

“That’s obvious,” Belinda informed him. “Aside from anything else, you’re never going to manage the social obligations adequately on your own, and Mama can help only so far. Once we wed, she’ll live with us, so you should marry as soon as possible so your countess can learn the ropes.”

“Besides which,” Annabel put in, “you having the right lady as your countess will make it much easier for us to make our come-outs properly. We’re now titled ladies, and poor Mama is going to have a time of it if she has to manage our come-outs on her own.”

“And, of course,” little Jane continued, her voice lighter than the other two, “there’s the fact you need to sire an heir, or else when you die the estate will revere…” She stopped, frowned.

“Revert,” Gervase supplied.

She thanked him with a serious little nod. “Revert to that disgustingly fat, dissolute reprobate, the Prince Regent.” She met Gervase’s gaze. “And no one would want that.”

Gervase stared at her, then glanced at the other two. Clearly he didn’t need to explain the facts of his life-familial or social-to them. “If you understand all that, then you must see that in order to find the, as Annabel put it, right lady to be my countess, I need to go to London-”

He broke off as all three vehemently shook their heads. It wasn’t just the action, but the look in their narrowing eyes, and the set of their firming lips and chins, that stilled his tongue.

“No,” Belinda stated. “No London ladies. Now that you understand our position, you must see that we can’t allow you to simply swan off and search by yourself in London.”

“If you do,” Annabel prophesied, “you’ll be caught.”

“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.”