This current between them had once seemed born of a perfect match between souls. That it had survived so many years’ separation might indicate that it was inborn: the product of the stars’ configuration at their respective births.
It was no small talent to know how to immerse oneself in mundane pleasures. It had been a very long time since he’d experienced the feeling that he saw on her face. Curious to consider that he might have something to learn from her. Years, perhaps, since he’d found a novelty able to keep all his senses occupied. Perhaps she was such a novelty in herself.
Better to say – we’ll find you a man of discerning tastes, who knows brilliance when he sees it, and knows to treasure it, too.” She hesitated. “Gentlemen don’t want a lady who knows more than them.” “Your mother told you that?” When she nodded, he pulled a face. “Well, that isn’t quite true. Some men reckon it a very fine thing, to have a wife with a brain.
Perfection was not always beautiful: sometimes, it was terrifying.
Well. You must admit, you do need a haircut.” A faint smile ghosted over his mouth. His fingers loosened; they slipped over hers as they withdrew. “Is there anyone in this house whom I could trust to wield the scissors? I have given them all cause to aim for my throat.” Was that a joke? Miracle of miracles! “Come now,” she said hoarsely. “Be sensible. Dead men pay no salaries.
He would invent a way. Like a scientist, he would devise a way to take her apart. He would own her by the end. No one else would get the chance.
He sneers so regularly that I suspect he shaves his mustache only to spare his nose the whisker burn.
Butterflies emerged in her stomach. She promptly willed them dead.
I am as much a villain in my nature as a common thief on the high road,” he said. “Did you not know it?” His words framed a confession but he spoke it shamelessly. He did not sound sorry at all. “Here is what makes me a criminal, Nora. Righteous men conceive of an end and pray for righteous means to obtain it. But criminals do not look to prayer for their hopes. They place no faith in chance. When they see an end, they risk everything to obtain it – no matter whether it is theirs to risk or no.
Her smile gutted him. He had forgotten the trick of that smile – how it could spark a light inside a man that made him feel untethered from the earth, or gut him more deeply than a blade.
Humbleness came hard to her. She could not value it; too many unkind people had tried to force it on her in her youth. They had expected her to be ashamed, and so she had vowed never to be so.
I think you would have answered the question very cuttingly, if you felt comfortable with your reply.” Her audacity should not be able to surprise him any longer. But he still did not understand how she did this: how she shifted the balance of power between them so suddenly that he felt compelled to reply, to prove himself, to be accountable to her.
She should pretend that he had shocked her. How much more awful to admit that she envied his confidence – his refusal to be ashamed – and his indifference to God and the fate of his soul. How free it made him.
He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen.
It’s very easy to resist men, isn’t it? But managing to pick the right one – that is truly worthy of praise.
If something frightens you,” he said, “that means it’s the best place to start.
English was so heavy, so desiccated and hardened by meaning, by pain and anger and even the jests and the petty quibbles, everything under the sun that obscured the basic truth. But the sound of his voice as he spoke to her now, she heard the wind in it, the stillness of the night. Stars above. The things that had kept her going. Always in her memory they had been there.
This was banter, all right – pointed and spiky, the kind he’d expect from a bloke. A blunt tongue in an angel’s body: it was the devil’s own recipe to enamor him.
On the rare occasions she checked her thoughts before speaking them, it was a grave loss to the world, and a wasted opportunity to marvel at her.
Mr. O’Shea,” his wife said coolly. “Such language – ” “One day you’ll call me Nick.” “One day I might call you Beelzebub. What of it?