A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)(54)

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.