“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 w
ife—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.
The daughter of the previous Viscount Gascoigne, only child of his first marriage, she was the older halfsister of the current viscount, Harold, known to all as Harry, still very much a minor at fifteen. The Gascoignes held the estate of Treleaver Park, situated above Black Head, the eastern headland of the same wide bay on which the castle stood overlooking the western cove. Gascoignes had been at the Park for very nearly as long as Tregarths had been at the castle.
The two families were the principal landowners in the area. As, under the terms of her late father’s will, Madeline was the primary guardian of her three brothers, including Harry, it was she who was the de facto Gascoigne. She ran the estate and made all necessary decisions. As she’d been groomed by her father for that duty, and had performed in the role since before his lingering death eight years ago, the neighborhood had long grown accustomed to treating her as her brother’s surrogate.
Indeed, for the exemplary way she conducted her brother’s business and for her devotion to the difficult role of her brothers’ keeper, she had earned the respect of every person on the peninsula, and far beyond.
Gervase approached; hearing his bootsteps, Madeline turned, an easy smile lighting her face. Courtesy of his years abroad, he didn’t know her well, but as he’d been born at Tregarth Manor outside Falmouth, not that far away, and had spent many months throughout his childhood visiting his uncle and cousins at the castle, he’d known of her existence for most of her life.
Since his unexpected ascension to the earldom three years ago, and even more since he’d sold out the previous year and personally taken up the reins of the estate, he’d dealt with Madeline frequently, although busy as they both were, they most often communicated by letter.
She was considerably taller than the average, only a few inches shorter than Gervase. As usual when riding about the county, she was gowned in dark colors; today’s gown was a sensible rich brown. A wide-brimmed hat dangled from one hand, worn to protect her fair skin from the sun, but even more to help confine the mass of her hair. Fine and plentiful, no matter how tightly she restrained it in a knot on the top of her head, strands escaped, forming a halo of spun copper filaments about her face, rather like a Russian madonna. Her hair, however, was the only element of her appearance beyond her control; all the rest was deliberately and severely restrained, strictly business.
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.”