A Desperate Fortune

I'm sure it was a good house in its time as well, but sometimes what is left behind when something has been lost is even better than the thing that came before.

Any man deserving of your notice will need nothing to impress him but that you should be yourself, and any man deserving of your love will see you as you truly are, and love you notwithstanding.

The face is a plain one," said Hugh, "but the workings inside will not fail ye.

While the other women turned back to their talk of Saint-Germain, she took the opportunity to curl into her chair again and read, and so remove herself from all her greater cares and all the people causing them.

You only have to change the value of one variable to affect the outcome of the whole equation.

My husband carries many scars,” she said, “as all men who have lived a life like his must do. There are some scars that show, and there are many, many more that he keeps hidden, and when you’ve discovered all of those, then you may try to test me on how well I know my husband. But until that day comes, Captain, I have little time for games.” Her tone was calm, but even she could hear the tremor of her righteous anger running underneath the words. “My husband is a private man, as is his right, and I’ll not take his secrets and expose them for the sake of proving something that his word alone should be the proof of. I’ll not do it. He’s a better man than any I have met in all my life, and if you choose to doubt the truth of our attachment you will have to doubt it, Captain, and be done with it, as I am done with answering your questions. He has told you what we are.

The road does rarely welcome us, preferring we should stay at home, but I have found the remedy is simply then to move my home itself to other places, and so gain a different view.

Mary could have told him that it was no use, that she had called her father back and it had made no difference, that if something once desired to leave you it was lost already and forever.

Exactly. And her son, King James the Sixth, who afterwards became King James the First of England also, when the English Queen Elizabeth the First died with no children to succeed her.” “And King James the Sixth,” I asked. “Was he a Catholic or a Protestant?” “Protestant. As was his son, Charles the First.

Always he's looking for something, he's chasing it. Always the neighbour's grass is greener, somewhere else, over the next hill." Her smile was slight. "My grass is green enough.

God always gives us people for a reason, lass. He takes them from us too, but when He puts them in our path and gives them back to us again, we would be great fools not to realize that He means us to belong to them.

I’d always been puzzled when books about people with Asperger’s claimed that we didn’t have empathy. True, I might have trouble sometimes guessing how another person felt, but sadness was an obvious emotion and an easy one to spot most of the time. My problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand their feelings, only that I didn’t have a clue how to respond to them. I never knew the proper thing to do or say. I wasn’t good at comforting. He

It mattered not that no one else would bear that moment witness nor remember it, for if the future could not know them, neither could the past confine them, and the choice was always theirs to make, the tale their own to finish,

Children teach you worries that you never knew you had,

Watching him walk off was very nearly as absorbing as observing his approach. He walked as all men ought to walk, with a decided swagger to his shoulders.

Well, if you think of your own mind as a computer, which it is, then your basic architecture is different from most of the other computers around you. You’re wired differently, you connect differently, and you run different software on a different operating system. You’re like the lone Mac,” he’d concluded, “in an office of PCs. They’re all running Windows, and you’re running OS X.

The past, Mary thought, was itself a great predator, chasing you always behind in a tireless pursuit so you ran from it, or lying ever in wait for you, ready to sink its sharp teeth in the spots where it knew you were weakest.

this feeling of attraction and anticipation; liking someone. There had been a time, before I’d learned how to contain it and control it, when this feeling would have frightened me because I would have feared that it would end, and I’d be hurt. But now, the certain knowledge all relationships would end, and I could choose the time to end them, left me free to just enjoy the rich sensations that I felt when one began.

...for through some subtle alchemy his presence had allowed her to be who she truly was, and now, without him there, she could not manage it at all.

10. It is Luc who points out to Sara that Hugh has fallen for Mary, long before she realizes it: “A woman can start with a man she might find unattractive and slowly begin to see good in him, grow into love with him, but this is not how it happens with men. We’re much simpler.” Do you agree? 11. In fiction, as in life, what people appear to be may differ from what they are. While Hugh first appears as a sinister character, “Jacques” appears to be a charming gentleman, but is he? Do you think Thompson is a good man or a bad man? 12. By “seeing” the story as it unfolds in the past, the reader is not only a step ahead, but also often has more knowledge than Sara as she deciphers the journal. How did this affect your reading of the story in the present? 13. If you’re familiar with Susanna Kearsley’s writing, you may recognize a number of references to characters, both in the past and the present, whom the author has introduced in other novels. Did you recognize anyone? (Hint: Characters also seen in The Winter Sea, Mariana, The Splendour Falls, Season of Storms, and The Firebird.)

closed her eyes a moment…and allowed the poise and grace of Mistress Jamieson to settle round her shoulders like a robe before she turned.” Is there anyone you use as a role model in this way? Why do you think it’s helpful? 5. Why does Mistress Jamieson teach Mary the cipher? 6. Susanna Kearsley has said, “Never underestimate the power of an animal to reveal character within the story.” How does the dog Frisque further the plot? What does Frisque tell us about Mary? About Hugh? In the present, how does the cat Diablo serve these purposes? 7. I fear the man across the street… What did you think of MacPherson when he is first introduced? Did you have him pegged as a hero? If not, when did you begin to change your mind? When did Mary stop fearing Hugh? When did you? Can you identify what makes you feel safe or not safe around someone? 8. Hugh was a man of his time. If he lived in the present, what sort of job would he have? What role in society would he fill? 9. Compare the meeting of Mary and Hugh with the meeting of Sara and Luc.

1. “Mistress Jamieson” tells Mary when they meet: “My mother likes to say some people choose the path of danger on their own, for it is how the Lord did make them, and they never will be changed.” Do you agree? Was it more true in the past than today? Did Mary purposely choose a path of danger? Who else? 2. The author has people in her own life with Asperger’s syndrome who helped her with Sara’s character. What was it like to be in the point of view of a person with Asperger’s syndrome? Did you have any preconceived ideas about Asperger’s? Did they change? 3. Journeys (physical and otherwise) are a prevalent theme in many of Susanna Kearsley’s books. What journeys can you identify in this book, past and present? How do they differ for female and male characters? 4. Mary takes “Mistress Jamieson” as a role model. “She