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.”