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LadyWesley

Lady Wesley's Salon

Historical romance.

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The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie (Highland Pleasures, #6)
Jennifer Ashley
Sweet Madness (Veiled Seduction, #3) - Heather Snow Sweet Madness is the third in Heather Snow's Veiled Seduction series and for my money the best. The heroines are the true stars in each of these stories. In [b:Sweet Enemy|11126571|Sweet Enemy (Veiled Seduction, #1)|Heather Snow|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1313428262s/11126571.jpg|16049636], she's a bluestocking chemist who has no interest in marriage. In [b:Sweet Deception|12437943|Sweet Deception (Veiled Seduction, #2)|Heather Snow|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336800100s/12437943.jpg|17420670], she's a mathematical savant trying to use her skills to solve a series of murders.

In this book, Lady Penelope is neither a bluestocking nor a genius. Rather, she's a society miss (whom we met in the first book as the heroine's cousin) whose husband died six months after their wedding. With our 21st century knowledge, we quickly can see that he was bipolar, but in 1817 that disease was unknown. All that society saw was a handsome, charming, vibrant, energetic young man enjoying life, but Pen saw him during the dark times and blames herself for his suicide.

For two years she has been withdrawn from society and is still dressing in deep mourning attire. During that time, however, she has come to know several veterans of the Napoleonic wars who suffered from what then was called "battle fatigue." At the hospital set up by her cousin's husband, she has worked to help these men and has met with some success. Her therapy is based on a combination of her common sense, her deeply empathetic personality, and her study of the British “associationist” school of thinking (an early, simplistic version of today’s cognitive behavioral therapy).

Gabriel Devereaux, her late husband’s cousin, is confined in a luxurious but nonetheless brutal asylum for the insane. His mother asks Pen to discover whether she can help him, but most of Pen’s efforts are stymied by the asylum’s starchy director. When Pen gets him away from the asylum to her cousin’s country estate, her patient and dedicated work begins to help him deal with some of his traumatic war experiences. Moreover, he has no more of the sudden, violent episodes that put him in the asylum in the first place.

During their weeks together, Pen and Gabriel’s relationship becomes one of deep trust and genuine affection. Actually, for several years Gabriel has been carrying a torch for Pen, and she begins to wonder if she can perhaps love again, even though this man clearly has psychological problems. Gabriel realizes that Pen needs rescuing from her past as much as he does, so he tries to help her as she is helping him. It’s lovely to watch this story slowly unfold on the page, but the good times cannot last.

Gabriel’s younger brother and his grasping wife take steps to officially have Gabriel declared non compos mentis, and he and Pen must travel to London for the dramatic showdown. At this point the ending seemed rushed to me, but perhaps that’s because I had begun to suspect what could be behind Gabriel’s episodes. I didn’t understand it all, though, and to me the last chapter felt like the closing scene in Murder She Wrote where Jessica explains how she solved the crime.

Heather Snow always includes plenty of well-researched history in her stories, and here we learn about the horrible plight of war veterans, their widows, and their children, who were utterly without any support system after the Napoleonic wars ended.

But ultimately, this is a romantic, sometimes sad, but ultimately joyful story of two people working together to overcome obstacles – both external and those of their own making. I highly recommend Sweet Madness as well as its two predecessors. Although there is some overlap in characters among these three books, they need not be read in order.