Every time you wake up, you let fly the most marvelous string of curses. It’s never the same twice, do you know that? It’s so intriguing. You’re like a rooster that crows blasphemy.
Love me. Don’t ever stop. You hear me? It won’t be this good with anyone else. Only me, Min. Only me.
Surely it can’t be,” he said, his hand stealing over her thigh, “that this intrepid explorer of underwater caverns hasn’t explored her own little cove?
Then she sighed. Just the faintest, softest release of breath. The sound swept through his chest like a hurricane, with the force to topple trees.
More to the point, I am fifty-eight. I need grandchildren before my decline. It’s not right for two generations of the family to be drooling at the same time.
I need to know,” he said. “I need to know, right now, if you’re mine. I’ve been patient for years, and if need be, I can wait years more. I’ll do anything in my power to win you, to keep you. But I need to know, this moment, if you’ll be mine in the end.
You’re a grown woman, and a clever one. I believe you understand the situation. And I’m going to trust that you know your own mind.
You’re a powerful man,′ she went on. ‘And it’s not only to do with your money or your title. You have the ability to make people feel valued, when you’re not making them feel like rubbish.
The dark scares you because it seems boundless. But it isn’t as vast as it seems. You can explore it, learn the shape of it, take its measure – just as you can see a room with your eyes. You have your hands, nose, ears.
There was good in him. Raw, molten goodness, bubbling deep in his core. But he didn’t possess the charm or manners to control it. It just erupted periodically in volcano fashion, startling anyone who happened to be nearby.
But when the sun goes down? We’re all just stumbling through the darkness, trying to outlast another night.
Cleverness is like rouge – liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.
Is it truly so unfathomable, that an imperfect girl might be perfectly loved?
So odd. Most women of his acquaintance relied on physical beauty and charm to mask their less-pleasant traits. This girl did the opposite, hiding everything interesting about herself behind a prim, plain facade. What other surprises was she concealing?
After spending all of her girlhood fervently wishing she could run away from home – she’d actually done it.
Jesus. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Judith, Eve. Trouble, every last one. Add Minerva Highwood to the list.
One more minute of this, and she’d be a certifiable simpleton.
She’d always wondered what it would feel like to stand on one end of a ballroom and watch a handsome, powerful man make his way to her. This was as close as she’d ever come to it, she supposed. Standing at Diana’s side. Imagining.
Amazing, then, how with that one remark, he made a mortifying situation thirteen times worse.
This is the normal way with birthdays, see? Amazingly enough, they arrive on the same day, every year.