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?”

“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.