Though I suppose it’s better to marry an idiot than someone who thinks you’re an idiot.
He was silent. She hoped she’d injured his feelings – assuming he had feelings to injure in the first place.
The entire point of life was the ability to make one’s own choices. Foreknowledge of anything – especially the circular kind, such as Kashkari’s presence at Eton because he’d dreamed of it – was terribly limiting and ran counter to the concept of free will.
To be thought of as the perfect woman for a man isn’t a compliment to a woman, it’s more about how a man sees himself. Should we marry, either I will be exhausted trying to keep his illusion intact – or Lord Bancroft will be severely disappointed in his choice. Likely both.
Are you sure? I might take it as permission to further push my company on you.
She wanted to run her hands over him as he whispered the impassioned corollaries of non-Euclidean geometry.
Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about leaving things alone. But then there will always be this wall between us.” “It’s all ugly things behind the wall,” I said, not looking at him. “I’m not afraid of what’s behind the wall, only the wall itself.” But the wall was my exoskeleton. It was what held me up. Sometimes it was the only thing that held me up.
He stopped and looked at her. “Your laughter is the same,” he said. “I used to think you all sophisticated and worldly, until you laughed. You still laugh like a little girl getting tickled, all hiccupy and breathless.
Some people never meet the right person in life. They, on the other hand, met when they were too young to realize what they had found in each other. And when they did at last see the light, it was too late.
Someone loved this girl, this utterly useless girl, loved her enough to go on wooing her, even though she was being paraded before all of Europe for takers. A moment of stark despair descended upon her that she would never know such love, that she would go through life sustained only by her facade of invincibility. Then she came to her senses. Love was for fools. Gigi Rowland was many things, but she was never a fool.
He kissed the shell of her ear. “Then let me tell you this: I live for you and you alone.
For a journey like theirs, Love was the only thing that would make him strong enough.
Well, I always enjoy a case more once witnesses start quoting Shakespeare, don’t you?
She should laugh at such ambitions on his part: nothing about him held any romance for her, not his crown, not his black heart, not his beautiful liar’s face.
You were the moon of my existence; your moods dictated the tides of my heart.
Mum – my real mum, not Mrs. Cornish – always told me that men hate it when women bring up their menses. I thought it was ridiculous. They love to moan about their own aches and pains, why should they begrudge us a little complaining about ours?
Charlotte sighed inwardly. The problem was not that she didn’t always understand the full spectrum of human emotions. It was that even when she did, she still gave those close to her the opposite of what they wished for.
Usually one feels aimless because one isn’t sure yet what one wants – until one does, a proper strategy can’t be formulated.” Charlotte studied Livia a moment. “But in your case, it’s possible you know exactly what you want, but you’re afraid to want it, let alone pursue it.
Mrs. Watson feeds me ’round the clock and I haven’t turned anything down. But at the rate I’m going, within the week I’ll reach Maximum Tolerable Chins. Then I’ll be obliged to give up this reckless dining.
Certainly it’s admirable for any given woman to learn to appreciate her own worth, despite all the countervailing forces. But it cannot be enough for those who are treated as lesser to feel better about themselves. That they are treated as lesser is an injustice. And that injustice itself must be rooted out and eradicated.