I do not know what do make of the cover model’s hairstyle, which looks very 2008 to me. Similarly, I had some trouble with this book, which in my view did not compare favorably to its two predecessors in this series. Let’s dig in:
A Lady of Persuasion is about the spurned Sir Tobias Aldridge, whose then-fiance Sophia (from Surrender of a Siren) ran off and married some seaworthy fellow, and now Toby is put out over it and trying find comfort in his partyboy lifestyle. When he meets Isabel Greyson, sister of aforementioned seaworthy fellow, he senses the opportunity for revenge, by wrapping her up in a gossip-fueled marriage that notes his own scandalous reputation and pokes at her virtue. The problem is, after making his proposal and public declaration, he shortly afterward finds himself genuinely liking “Bel” and becomes very invested in actually trying to win her over.
Toby has a few problems in this mission, though. The first problem is Bel herself, who is the regency version of every sanctimonious animal-rights activist you’ve ever met who looks at you sideways for drinking milk or something. I’m a month behind on reviewing this, so I may be not remembering everything or mis-remembering some, but I do recall the following about Bel: she wants a loveless society marriage with some peer so that she can be a professional Lady of Influence and use her position for social reform and charitable work. That’s all fine and good, but she takes this position out to its most obnoxious possible extent, chiding and shaming Toby if his actions and purchases aren’t sufficiently cost-conscious and he doesn’t know exactly where every ingredient of his food is from. She refuses to reciprocate any outward affection, because passion and love are extravagances that she disdains. Even after enjoying the pleasures of her marriage bed she still insists on maintaining some kind of distance, not because of any concerns about the concept of propriety, but because she personally feels guilty about experiencing the selfish delight of true affection while there are chimneysweeps getting stuck in chimneys elsewhere in London.
The second problem is that even with his heart being in the right place, despite some initial ulterior motives, Toby is still pulling some major deception on Bel. She only really agrees to marry him because he promises her he can take a seat in the House of Lords, thereby giving him political influence, and her as well by proxy. Meanwhile, he is working behind the scenes to ensure that the man he is running against for a seat in fact wins the seat, because he doesn’t want to be in Lords at all, but he wants to at least make it look like he is trying for Isabel before “Oh, sorry love, I guess it just didn’t work out this election.” By which time, he supposes, Bel may have learned to love him on his other merits.
In any other book, where the heroine was less of an infuriating wet blanket, Toby’s flaky ass would have pissed me right off. But here, somehow, I felt bad for the guy, because Bel’s cold fish routine gives him major, legitimate confidence issues. He’s not just (fake) running for office to try to win her over; he’s trying to do all of the other courtship-type stuff he thinks she might like that better demonstrates his feelings for her on a personal level, but she’s not receptive at all. And yeah, I get it: she told him what she wanted out of a marriage, and Toby is kind of trying to pull a bait-and-switch on her expectations, but when her expectation is “Let’s just be political leftist mouthpieces who occasionally have perfunctory intercourse” and his is “Hey, what if we actually might fall in love and have pretty great voluntary sex?” well, I know why I’m reading a romance and it’s not for Bel’s definition of a relationship. Furthermore, it’s the very fact that Bel does have feelings for Toby, and does enjoy some of their more intimate moments, but doesn’t allow herself to bear those feelings out or express them to Toby that makes her culpable for his feelings, in my opinion. That she occasionally opens up before retreating really messes with his head, especially after already practically getting left at the altar once already. He’s wondering what’s so wrong with him that women only want him for friendship, or for one night.
In the end, it’s jilter Sophia who clues him in a bit about his woman-on-a-pedestal complex that lionizes Bel at the expense of his own confidence. But Bel has to have a moment of humility (or several) before she finally realizes that a servant to the needs of others can’t so clearly broadcast that she thinks she’s better than everyone else.
I think Tessa Dare was trying to do a lot here. It’s a very untidy relationship and I think she was trying to show an example of how often, it’s the smaller obstacles — omissions, assumptions, misguided promises — that keep people apart even after they’ve supposedly committed to each other. I think she went just too far with Bel as a caricature and as a result some of the more subtle marital discord Dare may have been trying to address was lost in the typhoon of Bel’s overbearing martyrdom.
