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.