The Counterfeit Heiress (Lady Emily, #9)

by Tasha Alexander

Our boys challenged two of Cécile’s long-held official positions. First, that she believed no man alive could prove interesting before age forty. Second, that she found children sticky and generally reprehensible. She had avoided her own nieces and nephews with deft skill until they turned twenty, insisting to her sister, their mother, that no one could be depended upon to be rational before then and that she had no inclination for dealing with anyone so lacking in mental capacity.

“I realize how dreadful it sounds, that you must think me a monster, but have you ever dealt with a situation like this? At first it consumes you, and you are desperate to fix things. In time, however, you start to realize you have almost no power whatsoever, and you begin to find yourself inured to it. Your helplessness becomes callousness, and before long you hardly remember having emotions at all.”