I just...can't.

The Hidden Heart - Laura Kinsale

I started reading this the 5th, got about halfway through it, put it down and CANNOT MAKE MYSELF pick it up again.  Why?

 

Lessee...

 

H - displaced nobility - his uncle decided to secure the title for his cousin by getting his family wiped out.  He's supposed to be dead but obviously isn't.  He's living as a blockade runner.  His last job for his patron is to see the h to England, and he's persuaded to stay there and make sure she doesn't marry a fortune hunter.  Mmmkay.

 

h - only daughter of dingbat who, upon the death of his wife, packed his bags and dragged young daughter on grand adventure into the wilds of wherever.  He caught something and upon his deathbed, realized what a dumb idea that was, so gets her promise to go forth and marry.  He too was nobility.  Not sure who the title passed to but...

 

Heroine runs into H at ball while he's under assumed name.  She KNOWS he's there under cover and yet acts surprised when chick whose family was paid to claim him as relative tells her this.  By this time, she's been proposed to by half of England it seems, including the cousin (who had dragged H off to some brothel and offered him an underaged boy).  H has told her pretty much everyone was acceptable *except this cousin*.  So what does she do when the chick presents evidence that he was there under an assumed name for reasons?  She accepts the *one man in all of England that he'd told her to avoid.

 

I pretty much gave up after that.  I know that he stormed off in a rage, and sent word to her father's friend somewhere in the Caribbean that she'd done something incredibly stupid and needed rescuing.  I know the friend came over, rescued her from herself and started annulment proceedings (but evidently didn't see them through), that the h went chasing after the H, and at the point I stopped for the night, never to pick it up again, they were on some godforsaken spit of land where she intended to seduce him and convince him to marry her.  Since apparently they did marry, yet she headed back to England and cousin's clutches... 

 

I'd guess the reason I quit was because the h was beyond TSTL.