Goddess Of The Hunt

You can begin by dropping that childish nickname and addressing me in the proper fashion.

I wasn't aware that hope require a reason, any more than love. In case you have forgotten - I have no talent for hoping. I don't hope. I know. I believe. I expect.

When Beauty Tamed The Beast

I didn't realize you needed a response. When Hamlet is giving a monologue, he just goes on and on by himself.

Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown.  But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then, I feel ravishing.

God Almighty, your ruined, and you didn't even eat the gingerbread.

"I do believe that his given name is something odd. Peregrine, Penrose- Piers, that's it."

"He sounds like a dock." Lord Sundron put in.
"Mrs. Hutchins called me a light frigate this morning," Linnet said "a dock might be just the thing for me."

"Where did you go to school?" Piers inquired. "Your all together too literate for a butler. Most bulters I know say things like as you wish, my lord, and leave it at that. Our conversations should be along these lines: Prufrock, bring me a wench and the you would say, as you wish."

"There's nothing I like more than meeting velvet clad peers while wrapped in a towel."

Much Ado About Marriage

"Stop that! What were you doing, perched on the window ledge like a big chicken?"
Despite his aches and irritations, he couldn't help but grin. "I prefer to think of myself as a more noble bird, like a hawk."
"I'm sure you do. But you flew like a chicken than any hawk I've seen."

If sarcasm were gold, she would have just made her fortune.

Rules Of An Engagement

"Wouldn't you be pleased if I decided I'm becoming too old for adventuring?"
Viscount Dare frowned. "You're not too old for it. But I'd like to think you're becoming too wise for it."

Until the battle with the Revanche he hadn't thought he would ever tire of gazing at the horizon. Only since then had he noticed that the view was . . . empty.

Blue eyes held hers. “I have the oddest desire to learn what you want from life,” he continued.

Even the way he was the only man she’d ever met who both could and dared to hold up his side of a conversation with her.

Shaw grinned again, wishing mightily that he and she were alone by the fire. “I never claimed to be much of a gentleman. But whether you tote about a parasol or not, you are every inch a lady. Quite possibly the finest I’ve ever met.”

“Goodness. If you continue saying such things, I’ll begin to think you’re smitten with me.”
“I’d describe it more as being clubbed into submission,” he murmured, aware both that her palm had come to rest just over his heart, and that his men and the Mayfair mob across the fire pit could see it. “But yes, I am rather smitten with you.”


"I'm going to say a word, just for your general opinion and consideration," he said, his light blue gaze touching hers.
"I'm listening."
"Marriage."
Zephyr blinked. Had he actually just suggested a proposal? A marriage? With her? A thousand thoughts all flitted through her mind, none of them making any sense, but several of them centering on whether she was reading too much or too little into one blasted word. "I think," she stumbled, backing away from him and toward the village, "that if you mean to ask a question, you should ask it. And you shouldn't make it so stupidly ambiguous just on the chance that a negative response might embarrass you or wound your feelings."
"Is that so?" He stalked after her.
"It is so. And another thing. Before you ask such a question, consider giving me, or whoever you intend on asking, a reason to say yes."

"Come below for a moment. Please."
"Zephyr, I don't have time."
"Bradshaw, do me the courtesy of at least looking at me when I'm talking to you, or I shall punch you in the nose."
His lean jaw twitched, but he folded his arms across his chest and faced her. "What is it, then?"
She took a deep breath. This would have been so much easier in a more intimate setting and if he wasn't glaring at her. "Shaw, I just wanted to say, that is, I mean, I . . . I love you."
Something crossed his expression so swiftly that she couldn't decipher it. But then he very obviously scowled. At her. "You're only saying that now because I bullied you into it."
Oh, that was enough of that. "Idiot. You have no idea how much considering I've been doing. And you have never bullied me into anything. I said I love you because I love you."
He hesitated again. "Very well. Thank you. Now you won't have to worry that you drove me to my death if I don't return."
Zephyr narrowed her eyes. "All you did was say you loved me and then run away. I'm standing here saying it back to you, and all you can do is try to make me into a liar. It's your fault, for surprising me. I don't keep a response to that sort of thing in my pocket, ready for use."
"I know that. And I said thank you."

He sighed. "You've chosen poorly, you know. When we return to England you'll be celebrated, just as I will be. If you've decided to abandon me, you might have netted someone titled, someone with enough wealth to see you esteemed and me able to continue my botanical studies. That would have been the aim of a dutiful daughter."
"I'm not abandoning you, and I chose Shaw. You're the one who declined to attend your daughter's wedding."
"You never used to speak to me like this. A dutiful child would never have accepted a proposal from the first man who asked, simply because he did ask."
"He didn't propose to me. I proposed to him."
Finally he looked more surprised than angry and frustrated. "You proposed to him?"
"Yes, because I didn't think he believed me when I said that I loved him. I can hardly blame him, since I had to think about it for an entire day after he said it to me, but I do love him. More than I can articulate to you."

Meet Me At Midnight

Sin was a powerful temptation, indeed

The Proposal

- When one had once suffered a great hurt, there was always a weakness afterward, a vulnerability where there had been wholeness and strength before - and innocence.

- She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn.  But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction.  What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.

- "Why say something," he asked her, "if your words mean nothing?

- "Have you noticed," she asked him, "how standing still can sometimes be no different from moving backward? For the whole world moves on and leaves one behind."

- "Some things," she said, "are best not known for sure, Lord Trentham."

- He asked me not to kill myself - asked, not told. His wife had done that, he told me, and it was in a sense the ultimate act of selfishness since it left behind untold and endless suffering for those who had witnessed it and been unable to do anything to prevent it. And so I remained alive.

- I think it is more that the sea is a reminder of how little control we have over our own lives no matter how carefully we try to plan and order them. Everything changes in ways we least expect, and everything is frighteningly vast. We are so small.

- When we lash out at ourselves for having lost control, we are reminded that we never can be in total control, that all life asks of us is to do our best to cope with what is handed to us.

- Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beast if it is allowed the mastery.

- He wished he understood women better. It was a well-known fact that they did not mean half of what they said.

- But which half did they mean?

- Hugo could cheerfully have died of mortification - if such a mass of contradictions had been possible.
- "I came," he said.
Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.

- Why was it that silence sometimes felt like a physical thing with a weight of its own?

- Youthful dreams are precious things. They ought not to be dashed as foolish and unrealistic just because they are young dreams. Innocence ought not to be destroyed from any callous conviction that a realistic sort of cynicism is better.

- One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.

- "Stanbrook once told me," he said, "that suicide is the worst kind of selfishness, as it is often a plea to specific people who are left stranded in the land of the living, unable for all eternity to answer the plea

- He offered his arm and she took it. And the world was the same place.
And forever different.

- "That is the excitement of life," he said when he was finished. "The not knowing. It is often best not to know.

- "I do not believe there is right or wrong," he said. "there is only doing what one must do under given circumstances and living with the consequences and weaving every experiences, good and bad, into the fabric of one's life so that ultimately one can see the pattern of it all and accept the lessons life has taught.

- People, especially some religious people, would have us believe that it is wrong, even a sin, to love oneself. It is not. It is the basic, essential love. If you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love anyone else. Not fully and truly.

- You will find that wanting, even loving, is not enough.

- There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly.

- It was what remained to a relationship after the first euphoria of the romance had faded.

- Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. but sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.

If You Could See Me Now

Life is made up of meetings and partings. People come into your life everyday, you say good morning, you say good evening, some stay for a few minutes, some stay for a few months, some a year, others a whole lifetime. No matter who it is, you meet and then you part.

"I'm so glad I met you Elizabeth Egan; I'll thank my lucky stars for that. I think I wished for you all of my life" He whispered. "But now it is time for us to part."

The important thing is not what we look like, but the role we play in our best friend's life.

Friends choose certain friends because that's the kind of company they are looking for at that specific time, not because they're the correct height, age, or have the right hair color.

When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart when that breaks it's completely silent. You would think as it's so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world or even have some sort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it's silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain. If there is a noise it's internal. It screams and no one can hear it but you. It screams so loud your ears ring and your head aches. It thrashes around in your chest like a great white shark caught in the sea it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That's what it looks like and that's what it sounds like a thrashing panicking trapped great big beast roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions.

But that's the thing about love no-one is untouchable.

I felt that my views and philosophies had been changed overnight. The philosophies that I had gladly carved in stone, recited and danced upon.

The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.

That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them. There is no advice that I can give you, you will just have to trust yourself that when the time comes, you'll make the right decision.

Children are the ones that know exactly what's going on in the world, you know. They 'see' more than adults, 'believe' in more, are honest, and will always, 'always' let you know where you stand.

Sighs and silences and avoided conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.

Life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. The painting could be of the sea, the sky, people,buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.

Well I think its quite obvious that if you're going to rely on something to carry your wishes, you might as well know where exactly it has come from and where it intends on going.

Not like a heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she never had any say in and then yearned for them to remain there longer than they planned.

If you can't put magnolia on a wall then there are always a million other colors you can use, if you can't pay your phone bill then just write letters telling them. I'm not playing down the importance of these things, yes you need money for food, yes you need food to survive, but you also need sleep to have energy, to smile to be happy, and to be happy so you can laugh, just so you don't keel over with a heart attack.

People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don't matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn't mean concentrating on what you don't have, it's positive thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whining and moaning.

Alone because love was one of those feelings that you could never have control of. And she needed to be in control. She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it was
to dream, and had felt what it was to dance on air. She had also learned what it was to cruelly land back on the earth with a thud.

Having to take care of her sister's child had sent her love away and there had been no one since. She had learned not to lose control of her feelings again.