Remind yourself that you’re far more likely to undercharge than overcharge, my dear, because you don’t yet understand your own value and you’ve never been taught to demand your full worth.
Or perhaps I’ve already despaired – and decided that while despair is fine as an occasional indulgence, it can’t be served three times a day.
There was a great deal of skill in her smile, a smile meant to make a boy who had done nothing with his life make him feel accomplis and remarkable-vile even.
Perhaps she had always been a monster, but even the lady monsters of the world couldn’t escape the expectations that came of being women.
I love you. I will love you until the end of the world.
Now he could work her likeness into any story of his choosing. Now he could fight dragons for her. And now he could kiss her again.
But you do not need to worry, Cooper. What is mine, I keep.
What is courage but strength in the face of fear?
There was no idiocy bigger than that committed by a man who believed himself the cleverest creature under the sun.
What cricket? Grasshopper?
That the loss of a man, even if he had been the love of her life, was not the end of a woman’s existence.
Adversity didn’t improve everyone – or the world would be filled with men and women of flawless character and sublime insight.
Nothing,” he said. “Just that I have loved you, even when I was nothing and no one to you, when you didn’t know my name and barely knew my face.
She was proud one moment, covetous the next, and then fearful the moment after that. It would always be like this, wouldn’t it, being the wife of a man she loved but couldn’t trust, whose true motives were as murky as the bottom of the sea?
If God doesn’t want people to lie, he shouldn’t have given the best liars such earnest and innocent faces.
He should not, but he cupped her face and kissed her. Because they were past the point when words were any use. Because he was once again afraid to die. Because he loved her as much as he loved life itself.
You are the beginning of Eternity now, she said silently to Master Haywood. You have arrived at the end of Fear. And I will love you always, for as long as the world endures.
I only speak the truth. I quite despise myself for these desires that run amok. But run amok they do. I daresay for the rest of my life I will dream of being fondled by you.
At least once in his life, he would like for her to look at him as she would a morsel of fine French pastry. Or a slice of Victoria sandwich. Or even a humble piece of buttered bread.
He had wanted marriage, children, and an upstanding life. He still had the children, thank God, but a man who had salvaged his greatest treasures from the smoldering ruins of his home remained in the middle of smoldering ruins.