“James - "Are you paying attention or just trying to make me look like an idoit?"
Elizabeth - "Oh, I'm definately paying attention. If you look like an idiot it has nothing to do with me.”
“He looks like a man.'
'How descriptive,' Susan said in a droll tone. 'Remind me never to advise you to seek work as a novelist.”
“Above all else, be true to your heart. When you marry, whether it be a marquis or an estate manager (or both!), it will be for life. You must go where your heart leads and never forget that love is the most precious gift of all. Money and social status are poor substitutes for a warm, tender embrace, and there is little in life more fulfilling than the joy of loving and knowledge that you are loved in return.”
“James started to laugh. His chin hurt where she'd smacked him twice, his foot throbbed where she'd stepped on it, and his entire body felt as if he'd swum through a rosebush, which wasn't as far off the truth as it sounded. Yet still he started to laugh.”
“Oh, Elizabeth," he murmured, leaning down to press a gentle kiss on her mouth, "I love you so much. You must believe me."
"I believe you," she said softly, "because in your eyes, I see what I feel in my heart.”
“Elizabeth, you resemble nothing so much as a hen trying to hatch a book.”
“If looks could have killed, Susan would have been bleeding profusely from the forehead.”
“For the love of God, woman, there's only one rule in that bloody book worth following.'
'And that is?' Elizabeth asked disdainfully.
'That you marry your damned marquis!”
“Raw toast," Lucas said grimly, shaking his head. "It goes against the very nature of man.”
“All of this presupposes that I have set my sights on a single male.'
Susan's eyes bugged out. 'You certainly cannot set your signs on a married man!'
'I meant a particular man,' Elizabeth retorted, swatting her sister on the shoulder.”
“Do you know what I like about you, Elizabeth?"
She couldn't even possibly imagine.
"You're as kind and good a person as they come," he continued, "but unlike most kind and good people, you don't preach or cloy, or try to make everyone else kind and good ... And underneath all that kindness and goodness, you seem to possess a wicked sense of humor, no matter how hard you occasionally try to suppress it.”
“It was just a book. An inanimate object. The only power it held was what she chose to give it. It could only be important in her life if she made it such.
Of course, that didn't explain why she half expected it to glow in the dark every time she peered into her satchel.”
“But you have told me," Elizabeth protested, "time and again, that the hallmark of civilization is routine."
Lady D shrugged and made a fussy little chirping sound. "A lady cannot take it upon herself to occasionally change her routine? All routines need periodic readjustment.”
“Am I not allowed to have my pride? Or is that an emotion reserved for the elite?”
“Good manners forced her to say, somewhat grudgingly, "Your boots are very nice."
He grinned and regarded his footwear, which, though old, appeared very well-made. "Yes, they are, aren't they?"
"If a bit scuffed," she added.
"I shall polish them tomorrow," he promised, his somewhat superior look telling her that he refused to rise to her bait.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "That was uncalled for. Compliments should be freely given, without restrictions or qualifications.”
“But you won't say no."
She hated that his confidence was not misplaced, hated that she could refuse him nothing when he held her in his arms. But she loved the crackling awareness that washed over her - a strange sense that for the first time in her life, she understood her own body.”
“you seemed far too familiar with violence. It was too easy for you. The way you drew your gun ... You'd had far too much experience with it."
He leaned forward, his eyes burning into hers. "What I felt in that moment was far from familiar. It was rage, Elizabeth, pure and primitive, and quite unlike anything that's ever before coursed through my veins.”
“We cannot accept this sort of money from a stranger.'
'Maybe it's not a stranger,' Susan said.
'Then that's even worse!' Elizabeth retorted. 'My God, can you imagine? Some horrid person treating us like puppets, pulling our strings, thinking he can control our destiny?”
“She Looked doubtful."If you insist." "I do." "Very well." With barely a moment for either of them to prepare, she drew back and let fly.Before James had any idea what was happening, he was sprawled on the ground, and his right eye socket was throbbing. Elizabeth, rather than displaying any sort of worry or concern over his health, was jumping up and down,squealing with glee. "I did it! I really did it! Did you see it? Did you see it?" "No," he muttered, "but I felt it".”
“She was swaying slightly from side to side, and he could see her shoulders rise and fall with each shuddering breath.
He knew that sort of breath. It was the one you drew when you were trying so hard to keep your feelings inside, but you just weren't strong enough.”
“She turned, pasting a brilliant smile on her face. She was going to charm this man until - until - well, until he was charmed. She opened her mouth to slay him with something utterly witty and sophisticated, but before she could form even a sound, he leaned in closer, his eyes warm and dangerous, and said, "I find myself unbearably curious about that smile." She blinked. If she didn't know better, she'd think that he was trying to charm her. No, she thought with a mental shake of her head. That was impossible. He barely knew her, and while she wasn't the ugliest girl in all of Surrey, she was certainly no siren.”
“Oh, go ahead and giggle," Lady Danbury sighed. "I've found that the only way to avoid parental frustration is to view him as a source of amusement.”
“But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don’t have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his.”
“I urge you to engrave this on the template of your memories: there are thousands of diseases in this world, but Medical Science only has an empirical cure for twenty-six of them. The rest is … guesswork.”
“My kind of a day is when I wake up and walk in this peaceful awareness, When I can perceive beautiful aromas coming in from the window, When there is a beautiful fragrance like the one of incense.”
“In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.”
“Immediately after the race, even as he sat gasping for air in the Husky Clipper while it drifted down the Langer See beyond the finish line, an expansive sense of calm had enveloped him. In the last desperate few hundred meters of the race, in the searing pain and bewildering noise of that final furious sprint, there had come a singular moment when Joe realized with startling clarity that there was nothing more he could do to win the race, beyond what he was already doing. Except for one thing. He could finally abandon all doubt, trust absolutely without reservation that he and the boy in front of him and the boys behind him would all do precisely what they needed to do at precisely the instant they needed to do it. He had known in that instant that there could be no hesitation, no shred of indecision. He had had no choice but to throw himself into each stroke as if he were throwing himself off of a cliff into a void, with unquestioned faith that the others would be there to save him”
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