When Christian Langland, Duke of Jervaulx first appears in Flowers from the Storm, he is in the middle of a date with his married lover. Everything is going according to her unrepentant and unrepentant plan, until her lover’s husband returns home. Jervaulx suffers a mild stroke, not knowing what really happened to him. A few days later, when called into a duel, Jervaulx suffers a second, larger attack that literally leaves him speechless.
In times of lack of enlightenment, he is regarded as mentally ill, as his speech is almost completely impaired. He cannot form proper sentences, he yells and rants and becomes abusive. He cannot write or remember the names of everyday objects and his comprehension also seems impaired. Before he was a skilled marksman, athlete and nature lover, now he can’t even button his clothes anymore. The messages between your brain and your hands don’t connect and you can’t even explain this to people. As a result, his family admits him to a ‘progressive’ asylum, where he is treated like a caged animal.
Before his attacks, the Duke was a mathematical genius who, together with the blind Quaker John Timms, was working on a paper on a new mathematical theory. Timms’ daughter Archimedea (Maddy) acts like her father’s eyes and is his caretaker. She has been equally fascinated and rejected by Jervaulx and his wild and worldly ways. Maddy and her father, along with the rest of the general public, have been led to believe that the duke died in the duel.
A few months after Christian’s stroke, Maddy and her father also live in the nursing home, where Maddy will help her cousin Edward, who runs the institution for the economically affluent. When they accompany her to meet the patients, she is surprised to discover a disheveled, wild-eyed Jervaulx among the inmates. Usually a volatile patient, who in his frustration lashes out at his guardians, when he recognizes Maddy, he calms down. She is then allowed to become his caregiver for the day and he clings to her like a life saver. During their interactions, Maddy realizes that what affects His Highness is not madness, but frustration: “He is not crazy, but crazy.”
Maddy is dedicated to alleviating the duke’s fears, helping him communicate, and when she learns that she must face a competing audience (instigated by her greedy relative) or she will lose her title and freedom forever, she decides to do whatever she can to set it up. . He forces her to run away with him and even marry him, all to keep her family at bay and try to regain her empire. Misadventures, manipulations and deceptions occur along the way, with Jervaulx maintaining deadly control over Maddy, as she struggles between helping him and staying true to her Quaker ideals.
He needs her so much that he does anything to bond her with him, completely ignoring her reluctance. She loves him despite herself and feels like she’s losing her identity, and she is. He loses what he values most: his identity as a Quaker. What keeps her going is that she believes it is her duty, under the guidance of God’s light, to keep Christian out of the hell of incarceration, brutality, and humiliation of the asylum and to help him continue to regain his humanity.
Maddy is an unusual hero in the sense that she is not a teenager. He has no idea of the reality of Georgia’s aristocratic economies. When her indebted duke proposes to accumulate even more debts to be able to give a great dance, she rebels, not understanding a society where perception, not reality, rules the day.
This book is unique in presenting a hero who is not completely self-possessed, perfect, and in control. He has a hero who acquires a real vulnerability and yet allows him to be a strong protagonist. You must also overcome your disdain for all that Maddy embodies and learn to respect her humility, simplicity, and simplicity of possessions and lifestyle.
In a way, this is a mild love story, as while Maddy obviously cares for Jervaulx, some of the expected romance is missing. He cannot court her using his financial wealth and has to continually fight his Quaker upbringing. She is thrust into the rich and materialistic world of the aristocracy, but struggles to live her faith and maintain her integrity while involuntarily falling in love with this tortured Duke. The principles of frugality, honesty, and total abstinence from carnal temptations seem totally non-existent in the world of Jervaulx. Therefore, it frequently shows resistance at many different levels.
Sometimes the language in the book is difficult, between the you / you style of Quaker speech and the hero’s stroke-damaged hearing and slurred and disconnected words. That said, the dialogue that exists between Jervaulx and Maddy can be moving, frustrating, and fun.
Jervaulx manages to get Maddy out of her emotional reserve, teaching her to enjoy and appreciate physical pleasure.
Her fight in her own way mirrors his. He loses his sense of himself and so does she. They both have to fight through the processes of massive personal change. As Jervaulx says, she makes him a better man. Maddy eventually accepts that, as a Duchess, she can reach out and help many more people with her wealth, although that makes walking in Truth more complex.
The author conveys well the duke’s frustration, broken language and motor skills, as well as his needy attachment to Maddy as she matures in love. Maddy is so devoted to Jervaulx that she repeatedly tests the limits of her faith against what she believes to be correct. This is a wonderful and moving story that is so much more than a light romance.