At the Bride Hunt Ball

You are beautiful and humble and sensitive and the keeper of my heart. I know it will take some time, growing up with a beast of a guardian as you did, but there will come a day when you no longer criticize yourself, no longer believe less of yourself, and you will come to love yourself just as much as I love you. Well, almost as much, I imagine. -Gabriel Devine, Duke of Wolverest-

The captain of this sailing vessel has requested a private audience with you in his quarters. It seems you’ve a treasure map hidden on your person, and I mean to explore every inch of you until it is discovered.

I never smiled much." His voice was a low purr in the shadows. "Don't be silly," she replied, taking a step closer to the next portrait--and farther away from him. "You smile all the time." "At you," he conceded, "with you, because of you.

Indeed, Gabriel knew it wasn't all just empty green fields of moorland grass for miles around. Tucked within the wide landscapes of these uplands was an unpredictability that a less observant person might never be aware of. There were waterfalls concealed in swaths of wilderness, rocky stream beds ramblings in deep valleys, and...knotted sheets?

It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman.

Madelyn knew her aunt, drunk or sober, simply did not have the continuity of thought to see beyond her opinions to the implied insult.

When I first met you, all weepy and mumbling over the loss of your mother, I saw potential. I knew you could be an asset to me. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered you to be an ungrateful miss with an inclination for ungainliness, and now abject stupidity! This opportunity fell into our lap and you let it be all for naught!” Suddenly, Madelyn felt like a little girl again. She bit her lip as uncertainty took over. Losing her mother at eight years of age left a fathomless hole in her heart. When her father remarried after a year of mourning, she had sought unconditional acceptance and love from a new stepmother whose coldness seared her to the quick. It only took two months for her to realize she’d never please the oft-dissatisfied woman. But that didn’t make the pain go away, nor shrink the size of the hole left behind from her mother.

I am not mad,” Madelyn managed calmly. “I simply desire to marry a man who loves me just the way I am.” “Just the way you are!” Priscilla laughed bitterly. “Who could love a table with uneven legs, a deck of cards that counts short, a book missing its last page.

The color matched the velvet drapes hanging high above his bed to near perfection. This, of course, made him think of her lying in his bed, which made him imagine her minus the blasted gown, which made him think she’d be rather cold, lying there without any clothes and all, and this made him think of settling himself atop her to warm her up,

It would seem so. My father says the master’s always thinking of things ahead of time. It’s a sign of a great leader. He’s very watchful too. He probably took one good look at you and knew you’d end up in the pond.

Or maybe…she wasn’t surprised. From an early age she had accepted the fact that things just happened to her. Yes. That was it. Now if she hadn’t fallen into the pond, that would have been a surprise.

she were his ward, he’d hire a team of finishing governesses and lock them all in Wolverest’s tallest tower for months, maybe even a year.

You’ve inflated hopes,” Madelyn said on a loud sigh, which made the tear under her bosom rip a bit farther.