Butterflies were all very pretty in a meadow. They were altogether less comfortable in her stomach.
Miss Fry had been borne off, as planned, Hugo reported, to be outfitted from head to toe for her wedding and her new life. His wife had gone with her, and so had the Countess of Kilbourne, her sister-in-law. Vincent hoped Sophia would not feel overwhelmed. “They will look after her, lad,” Hugo assured him as though he had read Vincent’s thoughts. “Woman power or something hideous like that. It is better to stay far away from it and let them do what they must do.
There is no kindness in money.
I believe,” he said gently, “we all have a perfect right to make ourselves unhappy if that is what we freely choose. But I am not sure we have the right to allow our own unhappiness to cause someone else’s. The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.
Besides, how could one apologize for kissing a woman twice? Once might be explained away as an impulsive accident. Twice suggested definite intent or a serious lack of control. His.
His years of dependency were past. It was time to grow up and take charge. It was not going to be easy. But he had long ago realized that he must treat his blindness as a challenge rather than as a handicap if he wished to enjoy anything like a happy, fulfilled life.
She was Sophia Fry, though her name was rarely used. She was known by her relatives, when she was known as anything at all, and perhaps by their servants too, as the mouse.
Yet now he felt that perhaps he had missed one of the few chances life offered to step off the wheel of routine and familiarity and duty to discover if there was joy somewhere beyond its turning.
It is impossible,” he said, “to put a label upon remembered feelings. They are colored too much by all our subsequent experiences.
I am in awe,” he said. “Where do all these ideas come from?” “I think from a lifetime of only being able to observe and never being able to do,” she said. “I have twenty years of inaction to make up for.
I am still not used to being the possessor of such a grand title. I believe I shall have to start wearing a purple satin turban and carrying a lorgnette.
He had been raised, after all, to stand alone and always to do what he believed to be right.
Some instinct told her that this was usually done in darkness and with eyes tightly shut, that usually all the pleasure was hugged tightly to oneself, the pleasure-giver shut out. Even in her inexperience she sensed that lovers did not always love with eyes open and focused on each other’s whenever it was feasible to do so.
Constance had joined him at the breakfast.
Suffering can kill. Not always physically. But it can kill dreams and it can deaden hope and the will to live.
Now was the time for now. Now was one of those rare and precious moments with which one was gifted from time to time. That was all it was. A moment. But it was one to be enjoyed to the full while it lasted and treasured for a lifetime after it was over.
And then, when I was at my lowest ebb, you came. And you somehow coaxed me into talking to you as though you were a trusted confidant. And then you flirted with me. For a few moments you bore me off with you to the sunshine above the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped together in warm furs and bound for a place far, far away. And then you kissed me.
Sometimes one does wonder if one lives quietly from choice or if in reality one is merely waiting for something that may never come.
She wanted so badly to believe him. She sat on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes. And she realized what had been happening to her over the past weeks. He had been turning – so gradually that she had scarcely noticed the transition – from her nightmare into her dream. Because.
One of the most horrible realities about the death of someone closely related, she remembered, was the necessity of going on almost immediately with the trivialities of living. As though nothing of any real significance had changed.