He broke off and looked toward the main door as it opened to admit his half sisters. He’d sent for them the instant he’d stalked into his front hall, having been met in the castle forecourt by Gregson, the local bailiff, with the news that the three had been discovered creeping away from the mill just after midnight. Subsequently, it had been discovered that the mill was no longer functional.

Despite the best efforts of the miller, it still wasn’t.

In the wake of the string of strange accidents that had plagued the estate for the past six months, Gervase and Gregson had set up a secret watch. But the very last culprits they’d expected to catch were the three schoolgirls who marched into the room.

Belinda, the eldest, led the small procession. At sixteen she was already taller than Sybil and bade fair to turn men’s heads with her lustrous light brown hair and long, long legs. But if the expression on her heart-shaped face was any guide, any man would have his hands full with her. Defiant determination oozed from every pore and flashed in her hazel eyes.

She lifted her chin as she halted behind the chaise, facing Gervase, meeting his hard gaze with her own Tregarth stubbornness.

Annabel, fairer in coloring, with almost blond hair and blue eyes, ranged alongside Belinda. There was less than a year between them, and barely an inch; while Belinda had started to wear her hair up, Annabel was content to let her long pale tresses ripple over her shoulders in a romantic veil.

Gervase met Annabel’s eyes, and saw the same trenchant purpose infusing Belinda repeated there.

Increasingly wary, he shifted his gaze to the third and youngest of the three, lowering it to her sweet, delicate face, still very much that of a child. Jane was barely ten, and had always been devoted to him. Confined in neat plaits on either side of her small face, her hair was a darker brown than the others’, more his coloring, but her eyes were Sybil’s blue.