Read A Lady of Persuasion Online

Authors: Tessa Dare

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Regency

A Lady of Persuasion (37 page)

BOOK: A Lady of Persuasion
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She struggled against his grip. “You would—”

“Isabel, please.” Desperation frayed his voice. “Give me one moment. Afterward, I promise you, you may strike, insult, and berate me as much as you wish. I know I deserve it. But for just this one moment, pretend with me that this morning never happened. Pretend the lies were never spoken. Look at me.”

He waited until she did.

“Look at me,” he repeated slowly, “for just this moment, and see me for the man I truly am.

And know that I love you, more than I can express. More than I can comprehend. Can that be enough for you?” His heart climbed into his throat, and he swallowed hard around it. He needed to ask. “Isabel, can
I
be enough for you?”

Tears slid down her cheeks. Impossible to say whether despair or joy propelled them. Blast those enigmatic female tears.

She said, “You don’t know what you ask of me.”

He slid his hands to her face and cupped it roughly. “Yes, I do. I’m asking you to love me, the way that I love you.” He kissed her lips, needing to taste her. More tears escaped her trembling eyelids. “Completely,” he said, kissing her cheek, then her jaw, her ear. “Unreservedly, passionately, madly …”

Her body went rigid in his arms, and she made a strange sound in her throat. Planting her hands on his chest, she pushed away. “I’m sorry, Toby. Last night, I thought perhaps I… but now you’ve …” She shook her head and turned away. “I’m sorry.”

And there it was. The verdict he’d been dreading. She didn’t love him. At least, not the way he loved her. Perhaps she loved him in some dutiful, selfless, Christian way. But she did not live and breathe and burn for him, the way he lived and breathed and burned for her.

Very well, then. Now he knew.

And look, the world even kept turning.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated weakly.

“Stop apologizing. The fault is entirely mine. I understand.”

Awkward silence blanketed the room.

“Well, I won’t keep you,” he said, clearing his throat and stepping back around the desk. As he walked, his step faltered slightly. He felt off-balance, as though he were learning to walk with a javelin skewering his chest. “I know you’re busy. You must have some kind of meeting or appointment to keep. But before you go, I have something to tell you.” He picked up the urgent message he’d received that morning, fingered the broken wax seal. How odd, to think he’d read it just hours ago.

“Mr. Yorke died last night,” he said. “Or perhaps early this morning. I’m not sure. At any rate, he was here in Town, and he has no close family …” Toby made a fist and propped it on the chair’s back.
“Had
no close family. My mother and I will accompany his body back to Surrey, for the burial.”

“Oh, Toby.”

She came toward him, and he turned to look out the window. It was a revoltingly sunny day.

Isabel stopped a few paces away. “Toby, I’m so sorry. I know how fond you were of him.”

“Do you, really?” He stared hard at the wavy pane of glass. “Because I don’t think I ever truly did, until today. It wasn’t until today that I realized … Yorke was the closest thing to a father I ever had.”

She made a soft, soothing noise and reached for his hand.

He pulled it away, folding his arms over his chest. Of course,
now
she would comfort him. She could shower him in sweet, generous affection
now
, when he was down and plainly hurting and as wretched as some leper in a parable. Isabel had no shortage of pity to offer him. It was only the deep, abiding passion that he was denied.

“You’ll have everything you wanted now,” he told her. “I’ll be the MP. You’ll be Lady Aldridge, the influential MP’s wife. This house is yours, to host as many demonstrations and

Society meetings and social functions as you please. Turn it into a home for foundlings, if you wish. I really don’t care. I’ll be in Surrey for the foreseeable future.”

“You’re … you’re just leaving me here?”

Her tone was wounded.

Good. Petty though it might be, he wanted to hurt her. To inflict just a fraction of the pain she’d caused him.

“Did you have some better plan?” Toby walked around her, crossing to the doorway. “Forgive me, but I really must be off to Yorke’s town house. There’s a sort of gathering, and I promised my mother—”

“Oh, your poor mother.” Suddenly she flew across the carpet to stand before him, latching one hand over his arm. “Toby, let me come with you.”

“To Surrey?”

“Well, I meant to the town house.” Her brow wrinkled. “I mean, I do have the demonstration Friday. The invitations have already gone out. I must be here in Town for that, I couldn’t possibly cancel it now.”

“No, of course,” he said bitterly. “You couldn’t possibly. I understand you perfectly, Isabel.

You’re under no obligation to come with me to Yorke’s house, nor to Surrey …” He gave her what he hoped was a cold, unfeeling look. “I’m certain we’ll see one another soon enough.” He turned to leave.

She dodged around him, blocking the door. “Toby, please. I can see how you’re hurting. I want to help. Let me go with you.”

“No.”

She winced. “But—”

“No,” he repeated firmly, walking past her to exit the room. “You’re not welcome. This is a family matter, not a charity event.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Toby had been an infant when his father died. He had no memory of the man, nor any recollection of his mother in her year of mourning. When she referred to Sir James Aldridge she did so in respectful, dispassionate tones—and always in past tense. By all appearances, the dowager Lady Aldridge maintained a cordial relationship with her late husband’s memory.

“Cordial” had never described her relationship with Mr. Yorke. The two had argued over one thing or another—and yet another—for as long as Toby could remember. They made cutting remarks to one another’s faces and said worse behind each other’s backs. By all appearances, they were equally matched in only one respect—mutual dislike.

And never, until this day, had Toby realized the obvious.

They had been in love.

How had he missed it? Toby prided himself on his keen understanding of women, but as it turned out, he had a blind spot of mother-sized proportions. But then, she’d never been “a woman” to him, because she was his mother and he’d never looked for her vulnerabilities. He hadn’t wanted to see them. She was his only parent, the rock of their family, the strongest person he knew.

But not today. Today, she was a pale, teary shambles.

“Mother, why did you never tell me?” Toby sat at her side, holding one of her hands while she pressed a handkerchief to her eyes with the other. The two of them were tucked away in the corner of Mr. Yorke’s parlor. The room was filled with visitors, come to pay their respects before his body was taken to Surrey. People came and went, seemingly at a loss as to where to direct their condolences, considering the deceased’s lack of immediate family.

His mother wiped her eyes and whispered, “Should I have told you about my lover? Really, Toby, I know we are close. But there are some conversations a mother does not wish to have with her son.”

She had a point there. “How long had you been …”

“A very long time.”

“Years, then?”

“Decades.”

Decades
. Toby frowned at the carpet, trying to decide whether he wished to know how many.

“Not for that long,” she said, reading his thoughts. “I was never unfaithful to your father.”

“I’ve no memory of my father,” he said. He glanced up, toward the bedchamber above-stairs where Yorke’s body lay. “All my memories are of him.”

“He loved you, Toby. He told me he would have left his estate to you, were it not entailed. I know he thought of you as the son he never had.”

“Why not the son he did have? Why did the two of you never marry?”

His mother shook her head. “We would have killed each other, had we lived under the same roof. No, I was accustomed to my independence, and we were both simply too stubborn.” She released Toby’s hand and blew her nose. “His health had been failing for some time. The doctors told him to slow down. For years, I begged him to resign his seat in Parliament, but the mule-headed man wouldn’t hear of it.”

“That’s why you’ve been after me to run against him?”

She nodded.

“Mother, you should have just told me the truth. I would have—” Toby clapped his mouth shut. There was no way to complete that sentence without indicting himself as a complete and total fraud.
I would have kept the spirit of my promises. I would have accepted the duty that
accompanies my fortunate birth. I would have put someone else’s needs above my own, for a
change
. All things he should have done, regardless.

“Perhaps I should have told you,” his mother said. “But again, there’s that uncomfortable matter of discussing one’s lover with one’s son. At any rate, he came around in the end. He told me just last week, he’d decided to let you win. You were ready now, he said. He thought you and Isabel made a good team … something about lambs.”

Toby felt a pinch in his chest. So that was why the polls remained so close, and why Yorke had been in Town the other day. Toby had been right—the old man hadn’t been campaigning at all.

Just then, Jeremy entered the room, accompanied by Miss Osborne. Toby stood to greet them.

“Jem, Miss Osborne. Good of you to come.”

“We just received the news,” Jeremy said. “Lucy wanted to join us, but—”

“No, of course she couldn’t,” Toby replied. “Not with a week-old infant at home. How is little Thomas Henry Trescott, the fifth Viscount Warrington?”

“Living up to his aristocratic lineage,” Miss Osborne answered. “He has the whole house hold at his beck and call already.”

“I can’t claim to be surprised,” Toby said with a smile. He indicated chairs nearby and invited them to sit. “You’ll remember my mother.”

“Had Mr. Yorke no family?” Miss Osborne asked, scanning the room, presumably for black armbands or mourning gowns.

“No,” Toby replied. “No close family, at any rate. There are some cousins, I believe, but—”

“He had us. We’re his family,” Toby’s mother interrupted, beginning to cry anew. “Don’t make it sound as though he was alone.”

“No, of course he wasn’t.” Toby grasped her hand again. To Jeremy and Miss Osborne, he explained, “Our families have always been close. He and mother were … good friends.”

“We were lovers,” she said, impatiently wiping her tears. When the other three simply stared at her, she said to Toby, “I’m an old woman, and now he’s dead. It doesn’t matter who knows.

We were lovers.”

And now Jeremy and Miss Osborne stared anywhere
but
at her.

His mother’s outburst, however, would not be subdued. What ever dam she’d built to restrain her grief had cracked, and a tide of emotion flowed forth.

“You were right, Toby. I should have married him. He asked me, you know. So many times, but I always refused. And now”—her speech caught on a sob—“now I’ve no right to claim him. I’ve no right to wear mourning for him, no right to be buried next to him. No right to go upstairs and make certain his valet dresses him in his green striped waistcoat, not that horrid blue.”

“Mother, please don’t cry,” Toby said. “I… I’ll speak to his valet.”

Good Lord. Of all the lame attempts at comfort. His mother was falling to pieces before his eyes, and Toby hadn’t the slightest clue how to hold her together. Normally, this was his forte, making women feel better. Ladies crossed ballrooms, streets, even lines of propriety just to exchange a few words with him, because they all knew: a girl could always depend on Sir Toby Aldridge to put a smile on her face.

Suddenly, he’d lost the gift. Because now
he
knew: A girl shouldn’t depend on Sir Toby Aldridge for anything. Any trust his wife had in him had vanished the moment she saw him for his true self. His own mother had been keeping secrets from him for decades. He wanted to soothe her, make her feel better, but he didn’t know how anymore. It was a talent built on a cornerstone of arrogance, and this wretched day had knocked the foundation straight out from under him.

He spied Reginald entering the room. Behind him trailed Joss. Toby rose to his feet again, whispering, “Mother, Reginald is here.”

“Oh, let him know, too,” his mother said, wringing her handkerchief. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Yorke’s dead, and nothing matters anymore.” She broke into tears, listing sideways until her head came to rest on Miss Osborne’s shoulder.

The young woman’s eyes widened in alarm. “What do I do?” she asked Toby, gesturing discreetly toward the matron wetting her sleeve with tears.

Toby had no advice to offer her, only a helpless shrug. He’d never seen his mother in such a state. Ever.

BOOK: A Lady of Persuasion
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