A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)

“Isabel.” He groaned as she worked her hands under his collar and her fingernails raked against his bare flesh. “You have to stop me. God knows, I can’t stop myself.”

“Don’t. Don’t stop.”

Three more arousing syllables were never spoken.

He had so much energy coursing through him—the fuel of resolve and desperation and veinchilling fear. And now that there was nothing to fear, no desperate crisis… all that energy simmered inside him, building, rising, needing release. He wanted nothing more than to get inside her and let it all explode. Right here, on this stone wall—which seemed to be just the perfect height, God bless the world.

And God bless his wife, she pulled up her skirts so he could nestle his hips between her thighs and test that theory.

Yes. A low moan escaped them both as he pressed the hard ridge of his erection against her feminine core. Just exactly the perfect height. Now it was only a matter of removing these bothersome layers of fabric …

He snaked one hand under her petticoat. Her thigh went rigid beneath his palm.

“Toby, someone’s coming.”

He rested his brow on her shoulder and cursed. Someone’s coming. Oh, why, why, why, why couldn’t it be him?

“It’s the coachman,” she said. “Oh, I’m glad he’s alive.”

“So am I,” Toby said. Stepping back, he released her thigh and rearranged her skirts with sullen tugs. “Now I can kill him.”

Here came that gently reproving Isabel look, and the matching patient tone. “Toby—”

“No, no. I know you’re right. I’ll sack him. Without a reference. And then I’ll kill him.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

No, it was mine, Toby thought ruefully. He should never have let her stay. He should have anticipated the melee. He should never have agreed to run for office in this blighted borough in the first place. “Are you well enough to drive home?” he asked.

She paled. “Must we?”

“Well—”

“Please, Toby. I can’t get back in that carriage right now, not with those horses. Not today. I just can’t.” Tears welled in her eyes, catching on the ebony fringe of her lashes.

“No, of course not. I understand, darling.” He cast a glance over her shoulder, out at the countryside. “Wynterhall is only about two miles’ distance, if we cut across the fields. Would you prefer to walk?”

“Oh, yes.” Her face brightened. “I would prefer it. In fact, I suspect I’d enjoy it.”

Toby suspected he would, too. There were any number of stone borders between here and his estate. Haystacks, too, and smooth-barked trees. Yes, walking could prove a very enjoyable alternative to traveling by carriage.

He exchanged a few words with the driver and then vaulted the wall before swinging Isabel around and helping her down the other side. She laughed. It was a giddy, girlish sort of laugh that he didn’t recall ever hearing from her before. He liked it.

He took her hand, and together they started off across the field.

For some time, they did not talk. It seemed too soon to speak about what had happened in the square, but also too soon to think of anything else. So they simply walked in silence. They walked like children, letting their linked hands swing between them as they made large, purposeful strides past the knee-high grain. First fast, then slow, then quickly again as they gathered momentum coming down a slope.

When they reached the opposite edge of the field, Toby helped her squeeze through a gap in the hawthorn hedgerow.

“Just a moment,” he said, once they’d both made it through. “You’ve a bit of bramble in your hair.” He disentangled the offending twig and held it up for her inspection before tossing it aside.

“Thank you.” She blushed, popping up on her toes to kiss him.

It was lovely, that kiss. Petal-soft, and innocent. And it told Toby instantly that he would not be tumbling his wife against a tree, somewhere along the journey home. All that sensual urgency between them earlier—they’d lost it somewhere in that barley field. Now it was comfort that warmed the place where his fingers grazed her wrist. Comfort, and companionship, and a general sense of all being well with the world. Toby couldn’t honestly say it was better than sexual release. But neither could he say it was worse.

It was different. Different from anything he’d known with a woman before. He was still pondering it minutes later, when Isabel gasped and drew to a halt in the center of a pasture.

“Good Lord, what is it?”

“Your speech!” She clapped her free hand over her mouth and turned to him, smothering a burst of giddy laughter with her palm. Lowering her hand, she continued, “Oh, Toby. You never made your speech.”

“Never you mind.” Chuckling, he squeezed her hand as they continued walking. “It’s not as though anyone would have listened after that uproar, now is it?”

“But… but what happened? That Colonel Montague and his strange speech, the musket fire …

I still don’t understand it.”

“Colonel Montague is our local war hero. He stands for every election and has done for decades. Always runs on a platform of subduing treasonous rebellion in the American colonies.”

Isabel slanted a look at him. “Haven’t the American colonies been independent for—”

“Thirty-five years? Yes. He’s not called Madman Montague for nothing. The old soldier’s a bit touched in the head, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I had. And I thought it was horrid, how his illness was exploited for the public’s amusement. The poor man.”

Toby refrained from noting that the “poor man” had very nearly got her killed today. Just like his sweet wife, to look back on the afternoon’s horror and feel nothing but sympathy for the decrepit sot. “It’s not so mean-spirited as you might think. The old fellow enjoys the attention; the crowd enjoys his enthusiasm. He never gets any votes that don’t come from those oafish nephews of his; but one could say he achieves his goal just the same.”

She gave him a skeptical look.

“He rallies the borough,” Toby explained. “For an entirely fictional cause, to be sure, but the unity he engenders is real. It can’t be a completely bad thing, for the townspeople to gather every few years and answer the call of duty, honor, vigilance.” He recited the words with gusto and gave her a wide grin.

She was not amused. “I take it the musket salute is not usually part of the routine.”

“No, no. That part was a surprise, I assure you. And I’m certain this will have been Montague’s last candidacy. Wild-eyed speeches are one thing, but he’ll not be permitted to pull a stunt like that again.” Toby shook his head. “Don’t know what the old fool will live for now. It’s a bit tragic, really.”

Isabel replied hotly, “What’s tragic is a man stripped of his dignity. If he’s touched in the head, as you say, he should be pitied and protected. Not paraded before the town every few years as a laughing stock.” Her accent grew increasingly pronounced as she spoke; her strides became clipped. “Madness is a serious condition, not a joke.”

Toby couldn’t recall ever seeing her so agitated. Was this some misdirected reaction to the day’s distressing events? The way she defended Montague so vigorously, one would think she had a personal reason to take offense.

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 sisterin-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.

“What will happen now?” she asked, as they entered a copse of beech trees. “With the election?”

“Colin Brooks—” He kicked a stone out of their path. “He’s the returning officer …”

“The one in the horrid yellow coat?”

“God, yes.” Toby laughed. “He’ll set a date for the polling to begin, probably a few days hence. There’ll be speeches at the hustings every day, and the accumulated votes tallied each afternoon. When one candidate has a clear majority, they’ll close the polls.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” she said, shuddering.

“I wouldn’t allow you to return, if you did. Even I don’t have to attend. Some candidates stay away from the hustings entirely, and let their supporters speak for them.”

“Oh, but you must attend! How else will you persuade the electors to give you their votes?

You never had a chance to address them today.” She looked up at him through her lashes.

“Though if your heroics with the horses did not convince them of your suitability, I don’t know what will. The way you leapt onto that moving horse …”