“You string people along long enough, the string withers, then it breaks - Seamus”
“You string people along enough, the string withers, then it breaks - Seamus”
“Because frying bacon is how we stoic Irishmen say I love you.”
“Her eyes, they shone like diamonds I thought her the queen of the land And her hair, it hung over her shoulder Tied up with a black velvet band.”
“love New York City from the Battery to the Bronx, but”
“In this world everybody obviously lives for himself. As the roots of the trees and creepers turn to moisture nearby, so do men and women look for support to near relations for their happiness. This is what the world calls love, affection or friendship. In fact, it is only the love of self. If the moisture on one side dries up, the trees and the creepers do not dry up, but their roots look for it elsewhere, be it far or near. They find it, draw it in and so remain”
“Jack, you're a switch in every sense of the word.”
“Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”
“The renegade strand of hair nipped her eyes once more. With a swift, steady hand, Oscar pushed it away from her face. His fingertip left a trail of fire along her cheek. Camille reached up to help him tuck the strand back, and their fingers met. She knew for certain the flush had returned to her ears.
Oscar dropped his arm and walked to the rail, wrapping his strong hands around the carved wood.
“He is used to having things go his way,” Oscar said, his voice low and only for her ears. Camille moved to stand beside hm.
“Have you always done everything he’s asked of you?” She was cautious not to come off sounding snide.
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the rail tighter, as if to hold something back. Hold something in.
“No.”
She hadn’t expected him to give her an answer, and certainly not that one.
“No? I don’t believe it. What have you done that’s gone against his wishes?”
Oscar had been her father’s shadow since day one. He’d watched and obeyed William Rowen with the kind of devotion any eager apprentice would show his teacher.
Oscar had been staring at the water, at the mounting churn of the waves. Now he shifted his eyes to her and fixed her with a look so strong and deep, she felt helpless beneath it.
“He asked me to stop associating with you,” he answered, still hushed. Camille’s eyes watered with mortification and dread. Her father had spoken to Oscar, too. She wiped her sweaty palms on the hips of her trousers.
“But clearly,” Oscar continued, leaning toward her, “I didn’t listen.”
His gaze revolved out to the ocean again, releasing Camille. Air flowed back down her windpipe. This was beyond humiliation. Her father couldn’t do this. He couldn’t order people to stop speaking to her.
“Why not?” she asked, her breath uneven from a cross of fury and the steadfast way Oscar had looked at her. “He could fire you.”
He moved away from the rail.
“If he wants to fire me for speaking to you, for looking at you…” He turned back to her on his way to the quarterdeck and held her gaze again. “Then I’ll risk it.”
She watched in awe as Oscar took the helm from a sailor and placed himself behind the great spoked wheel. He’d risk everything he had to be able to speak with her, to just look at her. His bravery made her feel no taller than a hermit crab. She’d so quickly, dutifully, accepted her father’s request to set her focus solely on Randall. But she mattered to Oscar. She mattered, and that one truth made her wish she was brave enough to risk everything, too.”
“Now she realized that she was not peering at a so-dark-blue-it-looked-black ocean, but rather she was looking straight through miles of incredibly clear water at something enormous and black in its nethermost depths. Maybe it was the bottom--so deep that not even light could touch it.
And yet, down in those impossible depths, she thought she could see tiny lights sparkling. She stared uncertainly at the tiny glimmerings. They seemed almost like scattered grains of sand lit from within; in some places they clustered like colonies, faint and twinkling.
Like stars...”
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