A Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare

Author:Tessa Dare [Dare, Tessa]
Language: ind
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Romance, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780345506887
Google: VGDvzmT8YdMC
Amazon: 034550688X
Goodreads: 6087884
Publisher: GagasMedia
Published: 2009-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Bloody hell. She did. Toby silently cursed his thoughtlessness.

“Isabel, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’d forgotten your mother’s illness.” Her fingers slipped in his grasp, but Toby tightened his grip. She wouldn’t get away from him that easily. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean—”

“How do you know about my mother’s illness?”

“Gray told me. Before we were married.”

“Truly?”

He nodded.

“And it didn’t disturb you at all?” she asked.

“Why should it disturb me, that your mother contracted brain fever?”

She gave him an incredulous look, as though the answer ought to be obvious. “Because she went mad. No one wants to marry into a family with a history of insanity.” Her eyes fell to the carpet of grasses and wildflowers. “I should have told you myself, but I was afraid you …”

“Afraid I would change my mind?”

She nodded.

Toby pulled her close and wrapped an arm about her waist. He wasn’t certain how to reassure her. He could tell her that of all the potentially objectionable things about her family—their precarious social standing, her connections in trade, her bastard half-brother Joss, her other half-brother Gray, who was his own brand of bastard … not to mention the fact that her sister-in-law was the woman who’d jilted him not one year ago—the information that her mother had narrowly survived a tropical fever would hardly have tipped the scales.

But he suspected that little speech wouldn’t help.

“Darling, I can assure you—your mother’s condition never gave me a moment’s pause.

Everyone’s family has some sort of madness in it. If you think there’s none in my own …

well, you simply haven’t spent enough time around my sister Fanny yet.”

She smiled. It wasn’t quite the girlish laugh he’d been trying for, but it was an improvement.

Soon she grew thoughtful again. “Sometimes I wonder if my mother truly was touched in the head, as you call it. Perhaps she was simply heartbroken and angry. She loved my father, and he …”

Her voice trailed off. Curious as he was to hear the end of that sentence, Toby suspected prompting would not result in its completion. They covered a good bit of ground before she finally continued.

“Anyway, my mother disagreed with the doctors. She did not believe she was mad. Not from a fever, at any rate.”

“But mad people never know they’re mad. That’s part of their illness. Do you think Colonel Montague believes he’s mad?”

“I suppose not.” She frowned.

“Of course he doesn’t. He wouldn’t stand for election if he did. That’s the paradox of it—if you’re aware that you’re mad, then you’re not mad.”

“But that’s nonsensical.”

“Precisely.” He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Montague’s nephews don’t accept the extent of his illness, either, or they wouldn’t have put on that display today. It’s only natural, for people to believe the best of their loved ones. Their affection blinds them to the truth. Love is its own form of madness.”

“Yes. My mother said that, too.”

She fell into a ponderous silence. They walked on together, joined at the hip.

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