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

She spoke slowly now. Gently. “I know the way I fled our wedding was wrongheaded and thoughtless, and you can’t know how sorry I am for causing you pain. But would you have me regret it? Would you wish I hadn’t left?”


Now it was Toby’s turn to evade answering. “I think you shouldn’t ask me that today.”

“What’s happened?” she asked. “Did you and Bel have some sort of row?”

He dismissed her question with a shake of his head. There was no way he was going to explain Hollyhurst to her. Instead, he tapped his knuckles against the coach side to signal the driver. It took several smart raps before he caught the man’s attention and could direct him to the Grayson residence. If he’d only had his walking stick, he would have had an easier time of it.

“No real purpose, my eye,” he grumbled.

“What?” Sophia asked.

“Nothing.” He heaved an exasperated sigh. “No, there is something. I don’t want to ask it. I don’t want to hear the answer. But I simply have to know.”

“Yes?”

Toby crossed his legs, then uncrossed them. There was no way to say it but to say it. “Why couldn’t you have loved me? What does Gray have that I haven’t?”

“Oh, Toby. Please understand. It wasn’t like that at all.” She crossed the carriage to sit beside him. “This may not be what you want hear, but it’s the truth. My leaving had very little to do with you, and everything to do with me.”

“Good Lord. I can’t believe you’re giving me that line. Have you forgotten to whom you’re speaking?” He adopted a patronizing tone. “‘It’s not you, darling, it’s me.’ I’ve used that excuse a hundred times if I’ve used it once. It’s never the truth.”

“I know …” She wrung her hands in her lap. “I’m trying my best to explain it.”

“Try harder.” Toby didn’t even attempt to mask the bitterness in his voice. He was hurting. No, it wasn’t entirely her fault, or even mostly her fault, but she was the one nearby. Even though he had no hope of saving his marriage to Isabel, for some self-punishing reason he needed to understand why the first one had failed before it had even begun.

“Toby, I knew you admired my good qualities. My genteel accomplishments, my beauty … my considerable dowry.”

“I wasn’t some impoverished fortune-hunter,” he objected. “I didn’t need to marry for money.”

“Can you tell me honestly it wasn’t an inducement?”

Toby sighed. He couldn’t. It wasn’t so much the dowry itself, but simply the suitability of the match. With her fortune and accomplishment and beauty, Sophia had seemed the sort of lady he ought to marry. The sort of lady who ought to want to marry him. She continued, “I never felt like you truly knew me. At first, your praise was flattering. You were so charming, and you said all the things a girl most wants to hear. But after a while, those little compliments made me feel like a fraud. You always treated me as though I were perfect—

and I wasn’t. No one is. I feared I’d be living a lie for the rest of my life—that if you knew my

true nature, any regard you had for me would disappear.” She looked up at him. “Can you understand? I had no shortage of people to admire my best qualities. What I needed was a man who understood me, and loved me even at my worst. Gray is that man.”

“I understand,” he told her. “I understand perfectly.” Some help this conversation had been. She hadn’t shed any light on Isabel’s feelings, just made him even more acutely aware of his own. That was all he wanted, to be loved at his worst. And he’d married a woman who just couldn’t do it.

Bollocks.

The carriage rolled to a halt at the Grayson house. “It’s late,” he said. “I’m anxious to be getting on to Surrey. Will you be offended if I don’t see you in?”

“Not at all.” The carriage door swung open, and Sophia reached for the footman’s hand. At the last moment, she stopped. She said, “I know I don’t have to tell you, Bel is very invested in goodness. If I was anxious about revealing my worst to a husband, I can only imagine her fear. It must be ten times what mine was.”

Silly woman, talking about Isabel as though she had something to fear from him. He loved that woman, body and soul. He’d told her so, time and again. She was the one rejecting him.

“Sophia, my wife has nothing to worry about. Isabel doesn’t have a worst. She’s a selfless, perfect angel.”

“Toby.” Sophia’s blue eyes flashed at him in the dimming twilight. “Do you honestly want to know what drove me to jilt you?”

He nodded mutely.

“Statements like that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On Friday morning, Bel waited for her guests in the Rose Parlor.