What about my ring?” Annabelle asked, holding the mahogany box with both hands as they left the shop. “Are we just going to leave it there?” Amused, Simon arched his brow as he glanced down at her. “He’s going to resize the band and send it to the hotel later.” “But what if it gets lost?” “What happened to your objections? In the shop, you behaved as if you didn’t even want it.” “Yes, but now it’s mine,” she said worriedly, causing him to roar with laughter.
Brooding, Gabriel reached over to adjust the front brim of her hat. “What do you think, redbird?” It was a pet name that only he and their father used for her.
Amelia wondered why, when there was so much to be done, Beatrix would be so troublesome. But a smile rose to her lips as she reflected that fifteen-year-old girls didn’t choose to be troublesome. They simply were.
Gabriel’s family owned a private gaming house, ostensibly a gentlemen’s club, patronized by royalty, aristocracy, and men of influence. Before inheriting the dukedom, his father, Sebastian, had personally run and managed the club, turning it into one of London’s most fashionable gaming establishments.
At Livia’s indecisive silence, Shaw abandoned the subject, and fastened his gaze on the tousled, heavily planted cottage garden ahead of them. Long banners of honeysuckle trailed over the garden fence, its fragrance making the air thick and sweet. Butterflies danced amid bright splotches of poppies and peonies. Beyond a plot of carrots, lettuce, and radishes, a rose-covered archway led to a tiny glasshouse that was shaded by a parasol-shaped sycamore.
There’s another matter I need to discuss,” he said eventually, sitting up again. “I can’t, in good conscience, turn Theo’s sisters out of the only home they’ve ever known.” One of his brows arched as he saw her expression. “Yes, I have a conscience. It’s been abused and neglected for years, but even so, it occasionally manages to be a nuisance.
I believe fate is who we are and what we make of our chances.
They deserve the same opportunities that other young ladies of their rank enjoy. I’d like to make that possible, but I can’t do it without you staying here to bring them along.” He smiled slightly. “Of course, you would be free to train Asad as well. I suspect he’ll learn table manners before Pandora does.
Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.
As she reached the entrance hall, she saw Lady St. Vincent coming in from the back terrace, her cheeks wind-brightened, the hem of her gown littered with bits of leaves and grass. She looked like an untidy angel, with her lovely calm face and rippling red hair, and the playful spray of light gold freckles across her nose.
His face, brooding and saturnine in the shadows, could have belonged to some lesser god in a realm far below Olympus. Powerful, secretive, enigmatic. He turned his head until his lips nudged her palm with a tenderness she knew somehow was reserved for her alone.
One glance was all it took to refute Gabriel’s earlier speculation that Trenear had married her for financial gain. Or at least, she couldn’t have been the only reason. She was a lovely woman, delicately feline, with tip-tilted brown eyes. The way her ruddy curls tried to spring free of their pins reminded him of his mother and older sister.
Her heart skipped a beat, and another, as she stared into the darkest eyes she had ever seen, a brown so deep it looked black, shadowed by thick lashes and set deep in a complexion of rich umber. His brutal handsomeness unnerved her. He could have been Lucifer himself, sitting there.
I’ve never seen such eyes,” he said almost absently. “They remind me of the first time I saw the North Sea.” His fingertips followed the edge of her jaw. “When the wind chases the waves before it, the water is the same green-gray your eyes are now... and then it turns to blue at the horizon.
When one felt like a wasp, one’s main inclination was to sting.
Gossip never has to be true. It only has to be interesting.
Pandora approached Gabriel in a direct way no other young woman of her rank would have dared. She had extraordinary eyes, dark blue rimmed with black, like sapphires charred at the edges. A pair of winged black brows stood out sharply against her snowdrop complexion. She smelled like night air, and white flowers, and a hint of feminine sweat. The fragrance aroused him, all his muscles tightening like bowstrings.
The twins, who were clearly having a splendid time, had adorned themselves outlandishly. Cassandra was dressed in a green opera cloak with a jeweled feather ornament affixed to her hair. Pandora had tucked a light blue lace parasol beneath one arm, and a pair of lawn tennis rackets in the other, and was wearing a flowery diadem headdress that had slipped partially over one eye.
She couldn’t imagine how she could have forgotten a man this attractive. His features were strong and decisively formed, too masculine to be called beautiful, too striking to be ordinary. And his eyes were the rich sky-blue of morning glories, even more intense against the sun-glazed color of his skin. There was something extraordinary about him, a kind of barely leashed vitality that nearly caused her to take a step backward, the force of it was so strong.
Some people are living proof of an unjust universe.