Married by Morning

"You seem to think you have a choice," Cam said. "But you have it backwards. Love chooses you. The shadow moves as the sun commands."

"It's the perfect solution. We argue all the time. We can't stand each other. It's like we're already married."

"Cat doesn't have to work. She's a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she'd accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience.
"Of course not," Leo said acidly. "My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I'm sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was."

"They (mothers-in-law) never leave when they say they will. When my mother-in-law visits, the mice throw themselves at the cat, begging to be eaten."

And then to Leo's surprise, Catherine smiled at him. A sweet, natural, brilliant smile, the first she had ever given him. Leo felt his chest tighten, and he went hot all over, as if some euphoric drug had gone straight to his nervous system.
It felt like happiness.
He remembered happiness from a long time ago. He didn't want to feel it. And yet the giddy warmth kept washing over him for no reason whatsoever.

"Thank you," Catherine said, the smile still hovering on her lips. "That is kind of you, my lord. But I will never dance with you."
Which, of course, made it the goal of Leo's life.

"I love you, Marks. My heart is completely and utterly yours. And unfortunately for you, the rest of me comes with it."

"Oh, I have a very pure soul. It's only my private parts that have gotten me into trouble."

"No, no..." She shook her head for emphasis. No.
His lips twitched.
"One 'no' is enough, darling." 

Mine Till Midnight

She shook her head as she confessed, "I want it so much, I'm afraid to hope."
"Never be afraid to hope," Rohan said gently. "It's the only way to begin."

Rohan, one of us is an unmarried man with superior mathematical abilities and no prospects for the evening. The other is a confirmed lecher in an amorous mood, with a willing and nubile young wife waiting at home. Who do you think should do the damned account books?" And, with a nonchalant wave, St. Vincent had left the office.

...whether he stayed or left, whether they walked the same path or not.  They could live on opposite sides of the world, and she would still be his.

"The Rom believe you should take the road that calls to you, and never turn back. Because you never know what adventures await. ...So we're going to take this road," he murmured, "and see where it leads.

I think in a moment of weakness, you might surprise yourself.

And then another letter had come from Christopher, so devastating that Amelia wondered how mere scratches of ink on paper could rip someone's soul to shreds. She had wondered how she could feel so much pain and still survive.

But the absence of tears wasn't the same as an absence of feeling.

"I'm not the marrying kind."
St. Vincent snorted. "No man is. Marriage is a female invention."

The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.

A slow smile had curved St. Vincent's lips.  'Wives are a different case altogether.  They require a great deal of effort but the rewards are substantial.  I highly recommend wives.  Especially one's own."

"You are an interesting woman Amelia."
Gooseflesh rose wherever his breath touched. "I can't f-fathom why you would think so."
His playful mouth traced the wing of her brow. "I find you thoroughly, deeply interesting. I want to open you like a book and read every page." A smile curved the corners of his lips as he added huskily, "Footnotes included."

Cam held her closer. "Marry me, Amelia. You're what I want. You're my fate."
One hand slid to the back of her head, gripping the braids and ribbons to keep her mouth upturned. "Say yes."
He nibbled at her lips, licked at them, opened them. He kissed her until she writhed in his arms, her pulse racing. "Say it, Amelia, and save me from ever having to spend a night with another woman. I'll sleep indoors. I'll get a haircut. God help me, I think I'd even carry a pocket watch if it pleased you."

Amelia stopped before him, her skirts crowded between his parted knees. The clean, salty, evergreen scent of him drifted to her nostrils. "I have a proposition for you,” she said, trying for a businesslike tone. "A very sensible one. You see," She paused to clear her throat. "I've been thinking about your problem.
"What problem?" Cam played lightly with the folds of her skirts, watching her face alertly.
"Your good-luck curse. I know how to get rid of it. You should marry into a family with very, very bad luck. A family with expensive problems. And then you won't have to be embarrassed about having so much money, because it will flow out nearly as fast as it comes in."
"Very sensible." Cam took her shaking hand in his, pressed it between his warm palms. And touched his foot to her rapidly tapping one. "Hummingbird," he whispered, "you don't have to be nervous with me."
Gathering her courage, Amelia blurted out, "I want your ring. I want never to take it off again. I want to be your romni forever"”she paused with a quick, abashed smile, "whatever that is."
"My bride. My wife." Amelia froze in a moment of throat-clenching delight as she felt him slide the gold ring onto her finger, easing it to the base.
"When we were with Leo, tonight," she said scratchily, "I knew exactly how he felt about losing Laura. He told me once that I couldn't understand unless I had loved someone that way. He was right. And tonight, as I watched you with him . . . I knew what I would think at the very last moment of my life."
His thumb smoothed over the tender surface of her knuckle. "Yes, love?"
"I would think," she continued, "Oh, if I could have just one more day with Cam. I would fit a lifetime into those few hours."

"A lack of desire is something I've never experienced. I'd have to be on my deathbed before I stopped wanting--no, never mind, I was on my deathbed in the not-too-distant past, and even then I had the devil's own itch for my wife."

Love Story

Love means never having to say you're sorry.

What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked.
"I wouldn't go for coffee with you, " she answered.
"Listen -- I wouldn't ask you."
"That, "she replied "is what makes you stupid."

And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.

He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.
"Which one is that?" I asked her.
"Do not bullshit thy father," she said.

I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons.

The pain of not knowing what to do was exceeded only by that of knowing what I had done.

Please, if one of us cries, let both of us cry. But preferably neither of us.


What term do you employ when you speak of your progenitor?"
I answered with the term I'd always wanted to employ. "Sonovabitch."
"To his face?" she asked.
"I never see his face."
"He wears a mask?"
"In a way, yes. Of stone. Of absolute stone.

Her handwriting was curious - small sharp little letters with no capitals. Who did she think she was? E. E. Cummings?

"But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?" Jenny asked.
"Make me", I replied.
"Beg pardon?"
"Make me", I repeated.
Her eyes widened like saucers. "You mean like incest?" she asked.
"Don't give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own."
"Like what, Oliver?" she asked, "like just what is it he makes you do?"
"The 'right things'", I said.
"What's wrong with the 'right things,'"she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.

Now would you do me a favor?' From somewhere inside me came this devastating assault to make me cry. But I withstood. I would not cry. I would merely indicate to Jennifer - by the affirmative nodding of my head - that I would be happy to do her any favor whatsoever.
'Would you please hold me very tight?' she asked.
I put my hand on her forearm - Christ, so thin - and gave it a little squeeze.
'No, Oliver,' she said, 'really hold me. Next to me.'I was very, very careful - of the tubes and things - as I got onto the bed with her and put my arms around her.
'Thanks, Ollie.'
Those were her last words.

"I think the Peace Corps is a fine thing, don't you?" he said.
"Well," I replied, "it's certainly better than War Corps."

What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?

Either way I don't come first, which for some stupid reason bothers hell out of me, having grown up with the notion that I always had to be number one. Family heritage, don't you know?

Ten Ways to be Adored when Landing A Lord

   Lord Nicholas St. John was their only hope, and she had been on the roof when he arrived, for heaven's sake. Ladies did not go traipsing about on rooftops.
And certainly gentlemen did not frequent the homes of those ladies who did traipse about on roortops.
It did not matter if the rooftop in question was in dire need of repair.
Or that the lady in question had no choice.

   But it did not stop her from wishing that it had all been different.
Wishing that she had had the chance to be everything daughters of earls were born to be. Wishing that she'd been raised without a care in the world. Without a doubt in her head that it would someday be her day to sparkle; that she would one day be courted properly - by a man who wanted her for her, not as a spoil from a game of chance.
Wishing that she were not so very alone.
Not that wishing had ever helped.

   "You must be mistaken," Isabel said, unconcerned by the insult that the words carried.
"I assure you I am not. Voluptas is nearly always portrayed wrapped in roses. If that were not enough, her faces confirms her identity."
"You cannot tell a goddess from a face carved in marble," she scoffed.
"You can tell Voluptas by her face."
"I've never even heard of this goddess, and you know what she looks like?"
"She is the goddess of sensual pleasure."
Isabel's mouth fell open at the words. She could not think of a single thing to say in response. "Oh."

   "And... as long as they need me, it's easier to forget that I am alone."

  He raked his fingers through his hair. "She doesn't need me."
Ralston smirked. "You are laboring under that mistaken impression that it is their job to need us. In my experience it is almost always the other way around."

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing A Rake

"You cheated!"
He looked at her, wide-eyed with feigned outrage.
"I beg your pardon. If you were a man, I would call you out for that accusation.
"And I assure you, my lord, that I would ride forth victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and  righteousness.
"Are you quoting the Bible to me?"
"Indeed," she said primly, the portrait of piousness.
"While gambling?"
"What better location to attempt to reform one such as you?"

"My mother, she's desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person."
"He joined her on the bench, asking, "How old is your sister?"
"Eight," she said, mournfully.
"Ah. Not ideal."
"An understatement."

"My choices are rather limited."
"How so?"
"I seem able to have my pick of the impoverished, the aged, and the deadly dull."

Nick continued, unable to keep the smug smile form his lips. "Shall I tell you what I would do if I discovered I'd been a royal ass and had lost the only woman I'd ever really wanted?"
Ralston's eyes narrowed on his brother. "I don't imagine I could stop you."
"Indeed not," Nick said, "I can tell you I wouldn't be standing in this godforsaken field in this godforsaken cold waiting for that idiot Oxford to shoot at me. I would walk away from this ridiculous, antiquated exercise, and I would find that womand tell her that I was a royal ass. And then I would do whatever it takes to convince  her that she should take a chance on me despite my being a royal ass. And once that's done, I would get her, immediatley, to the nearest vicar and get the girl married. And with child."

"Oh, Callie-mine," Anne said, her voice taking on a tone she'd used when Callie was a little girl and crying over some injustice, "your white knight, he will come."
One side of Callie's mouth kicked up in a wry smile. Anne had said those words countless times over the last two decades. "Forgive me, Anne, but I'm not so certain that he will."
"Oh, he will," Anne said firmly. "And when you least expect."
"I find I'm rather tired of waiting." Callie laughed half-heartedly. "Which is probably why I've turned my attentions to such a dark knight."

"Kisses should not leave you satisfied."

"I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself."

"I enjoyed every bit of the evening. I may not drink scotch or smoke a cheroot again, but I shall always cherish the fact that I did those things. The adventure is well worth the disappointing experience."

"She did not want to be that woman - the one of whom they spoke. She had never planned to be that woman. Somehow, it had happened, however...somehow, she had lost her way and, without realizing it, she had chosen this staid, boring life instead of a different, more adventurous one."

Nick spoke again. "Her legitimacy will be questioned."
Gabriel thought for several moments. "If our mother married her father, it means that the marchioness must have converted to Catholicism upon arriving in Italy. The Catholic Church would never have acknowledged her marriage in the Church of England."
"Ah, so it is we who are illegitimate." Nick's words were punctuated with a wry smile.
"To Italians, at least," Gabriel said. "Luckily, we are English."
"Excellent. That works out well for us."

"You plan to be a challenge, do you?"
Juliana smiled angelically. "I agreed to remain, my lord. Not to remain silent."

"She winced, knowing what was to come, "Calpurnia." She closed her eyes again, embarrassed by the extravagant name - a name with which no one but a helplessly romantic mother with an unhealthy obsession with Shakespeare would have considered saddling a child."

"He smiled, setting his forehead to hers. "you are very bad for me. I am trying to turn over a new leaf--I am trying to be more gentlemanly."
"But what if I want you to stay a rake?" she teased, her fingers trailing down his neck and chest, fingering the buttons on his waistcoat. "A libertine, even?" she slipped one fastening from its seat and he grabbed her errant hand, bringing it to his lips for a swift kiss.
"Callie," he said, his voice thick with warning as she set her free hand to the second button on his coat.
"What if I want the rogue, Gabriel?" the question was soft and sweet.
"What are you saying?"
She kissed across the firm square line of his jaw and whispered to him, shyness in her shaking voice, "Take me to bed, Gabriel. Give me a taste of scandal."

"If I am an empress, he is the only man worthy of being my emperor."

"How is it that one woman is enough for three men?"
"I don't know."
"She must be a very talented courtesan."
"Callie."
"Well, that was what she was. Wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"How very fascinating!" She smiled brightly."I've never met a courtesan, you know.
"I could have surmised as such."
"She looked just as I imagined they did! Well, she was rather prettier."
Ralston's eyes darted around the room as though he was looking for the quickest escape route.
"Callie. Wouldn't you rather gamble than talk about courtesans?"

"But she had dreamed of being his for too long.  He had quite ruined her for a marriage of convenience.  She wanted everything from him: his mind, his body, his name and, most of all, his heart."

"Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she had found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic plan to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do...who even FIGHTS duels anymore?!"

"It was a terrifying feeling. And if it was love, he wanted none of it.

"The most confident of women are those who believe in every scrap of fabric they wear.  They are the ones who are as happy wih their drawers as they are with their gowns.  You can tell the difference between a woman who wraps herself in beautiful silks and satins and she who wears...otherwise."

"It didn't matter the quality of the writing - Callie's fantasies about her fictional heroes were entirely
democratic."

"Why now? Why not wait for a man to come along and sweep you off your feet?"
She gave a short laugh. "If the man you speak of had ever planned on coming, my lord, I'm afraid he has
obviously lost his way. And, at twenty-eight, I find I have grown tired of waiting."

"Benedict looked to the ceiling as though begging for divine patience. Or for the Lord to strike his sister
down. Callie couldn't quite discern which. "I forbid you from frequenting taverns, public houses, or other establishments of vice."
She snorted in amusement. "Establishments of vice? That's a rather puritanical view of things, isn't it? I
assure you, I was quite safe."
"You were with Ralston!" he said, as though she were simpleminded.
"He was perfectly respectable," she said, the words coming out before she remembered that the
carriage ride home was anythingbut respectable.
"Imagine, my sister and the Marquess of Ralston together. And he turns out to be the respectable one,"
Benedick said wryly, sending heat flaring on Callie's cheeks, but not for the reason he thought. "No more
taverns. I do not like this taste for adventure you have developed, sister."
"I am afraid I cannot guarantee I shall be rid of it anytime soon."

"Before I merely daydreamed about Ralston. Now I find myself actually with him. Actually talking to
him. Actually discovering the real Ralston. He is no longer a creature I invented. He is flesh and blood
and now I can't help wondering," She trailed off, unwilling to say what she was thinking.What if he were mine?
She did not have to say the words aloud; Anne heard them anyway. When Callie opened her eyes and
met Anne's gaze in the looking glass, she saw Anne's response there. "Ralston is not for you, Callie."
"I know, Anne," Callie said quietly, as much to remind herself as to reassure her friend.

"If I were anyone else, your opera singer, the woman across the hall would you have apologized?"
He looked confused. "No, but you are neither of those women. You deserve better."
"Better," she repeated, frustrated. "That's just my point! You and the rest of society believe that it's better for me to be set upon a pedestal of primness and propriety, which might have been fine if a decade on that pedestal hadn't simply landed me on the shelf. Perhaps unmarried young women like our sisters should be there. But what of me?" Her voice dropped as she looked down at the cards in her hands. "I'm never going to get a chance to experience life from up there. All that is up there is dust and unwanted apologies. The same cage as hers,” she indicated the woman outside "Merely a different gilt."

"How could she go on without him? And, at the same time, how could she go on knowing that every
moment of their time together had meant so little to him She'd so believed he could, that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long."

"That was perhaps the hardest truth of all - that Ralston, the man she'd pined over for a decade, had never been real. He'd never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he'd never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood. Even as she'd come to know the real Ralston, the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth, Callie
had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not
with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston."

New Moon

     Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

     The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time.

     And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine.

     Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.

     What happens when you lose your heart's desire?

     Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given. When you can't be with the one you love, will you stay with the one who loves you?

     One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you. I had been broken beyond repair. And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain - the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head - but it was manageable. I could live through it. I didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.

     I was perfect- not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place

     He was my best friend. I would always love him, and it would never, ever be enough.

     I walked towards my fate with my destiny standing solidly by my side

     The fairy tale was back on. Prince returned, bad spell broken. I wasn't sure exactly what to do about the leftover, unresolved character. Where was his happily ever after?

     "I'm trying to keep" he huffed, shifting his weight as the treetop bounced him "my promise!"
I blinked my wet blurry eyes, suddenly sure that I was dreaming.
"When did you ever promise to kill yourself falling out of Charlie's tree?"

     Jacob really did look older than sixteen--not quite forty, but maybe older than me. Quil didn't have too much on him in the muscle department, for all that Jacob claimed to be a skeleton. The muscles were the long wiry kind, but they were definitely there under the smooth skin. His skin was such a pretty color, it made me jealous.
Jacob noticed my scrutiny.
"What?" he asked, suddenly self-conscious.
"Nothing. I just hadn't realized before. Did you know, you're sort of beautiful?"
Once the words slipped out, I worried that he might take my impulsive observation the wrong way.
But Jacob just rolled his eyes. "You hit your head pretty hard, didn't you?"
"I'm serious."
"Well, then, thanks. Sort of."
I grinned. "You're sort of welcome.

     It took less than half a second for me to realize that, as long as I was truly insane now, I might as well enjoy the delusions while they were pleasant.

     After all, how many ways can one heart be mangled and still be expected to keep beating?

The Last Kiss

The world is moving so fast now, we are all chasing something so fast now, we start freaking out.

 What you feel only matters to you . Its what you do to the people you say you love that what matters. that’s the only thing that’s counts.

Just do whatever it takes. You can’t fail until you give up.

You can’t try so hard to control it all. You know life is pretty much in the grays for the most part. And if you insist always on black and white you are going to be very unhappy.

Don’t be so quick so walk away.

Love me enough to let us go back to the way things were.