The Hollow of Fear

Perhaps she had always been a monster, but even the lady monsters of the world couldn't escape the expectations that came of being women.

I'm afraid. Terrified." "As you should be. As am I. But don't forget, sir," She reached through the bars and took hold of his hands, her own hands steady, her gaze clear and calm. "That I am a queen upon this board. And I do not play to lose.

You might be surprised at the strength of the fragile. And for some people it is ordinary life that is most challenging, not so much the extraordinary.

Adversity didn't improve everyone - or the world would be filled with men and women of flawless character and sublime insight.

It’s far easier for people who want the same things to fall in love than for people who want different things to remain in love.

That's the trouble with putting women on a pedestal. You do that, and they always fall off - knocking you over on the way down.

She wasn't sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions―everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn't mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.

Well, I always enjoy a case more once witnesses start quoting Shakespeare, don't you?

Women who appear perfectly happy sometimes live in fear of their lives. And men who give every impression in public of kindness and amiability can be monsters in private.

Charlotte sighed inwardly. The problem was not that she didn’t always understand the full spectrum of human emotions. It was that even when she did, she still gave those close to her the opposite of what they wished for.

Inside the house she took off both her hat and her wig—a woman’s wig, this time—and sat down in front of the vanity table to massage her scalp. In the mirror she seemed thinner. Was she already down to only one point two chins? Another face appeared in the mirror. “Counting your chins?” “Me? How dare you accuse me of such rampant self-absorption!

She would not last a minute in the kind of life we lead." "You might be surprised at the strength of the fragile. And for some people, it is ordinary life that is most challenging, not do much the extraordinary." In a way, Livia's greatest strength was that she was so overlooked and underestimated. Within seconds people decided who she was, and what she was and wasn't capable of. But no one was so easy to sum up, least of all a someone like Livia, who yearned to be more with every fiber of her being.

Charlotte Holmes. I thought I might see you here." The voice belonged to Lord Ingram, but slightly raspy, as if he were under the weather―or recovering from a night of hard drinking. She turned around slowly. "Hullo, Ash." A complicated pleasure, this man.

Adversity didn’t improve everyone—or the world would be filled with men and women of flawless character and sublime insight.

Her silence wasn’t simply distracted; there was something unnerving about it. He felt as if he stood on the prow of a ship, watching the captain scan the horizon for signs of impending disaster only the latter could recognize.

Her abiding interest in what would end up on a dining table, hers or anyone else’s, for that matter, used to strike him as completely at odds with the cool ferocity of her mind. To his younger self it seemed that a person ought to be one or the other, a thinker or a gourmand, but not both. He had pointed that out to her once, as he removed encrusted dirt from the handles of an amphoriskos he had dug up. She, sitting a few paces away, had listened attentively, a book in one hand and a jam tart in the other—the fourth consecutive one she’d eaten from the small picnic basket she’d brought. When he’d finished speaking she’d looked at him for some time, then gone back to reading and eating, as if he’d never taken the trouble to voice his opinion aloud. It was the first time he’d told anyone how they ought to be. It also happened to be the last time: He had been beyond mortified that she’d treated his considered commentary as if it were an ant that had crawled onto her jam tart.

Still scared witless?" Of course she was. He'd had to remind her there was a citron tart on the premises.

Is it true, what I once heard your sister say, that you don't like to be embraced?" She took some time to think. "Sometimes Livia needs to hold someone, and I'm the only suitable person nearby. When I was little, I used to wriggle out of her arms and escape to a corner of our room. But it wasn't so much that I couldn't stand being held as that I didn't want to be held indefinitely. Later I taught myself to count to three hundred to mark five minutes―which helped me to realize that she needed only about half that time. I can take two to three minutes of being held. But Livia remains hesitant to this day―she's still scarred by my bolting away from her embrace." He would be, too. In fact, sometimes he felt scarred by her, even though she had never done anything except be an excellent friend.

Lord Ingram picked up a paperweight from his desk and turned it around in his hand. “If I were to think of it at all, I would be struck by how grandly and inhospitably strange the world must appear to Charlotte Holmes.

The woman was a holy terror: the sweetest face, the pillowiest bosom, and a perspicacity that stripped a man naked in seconds.

A complicated pleasure, this man. In fact, it was their sometimes fraught friendship that had taught her the meaning of complicated pleasure, a gladness pockmarked by not only irreversible choices but also staggering incompatibilities.

I had no idea Scotland Yard employed novelists these days," said Lord Bancroft coldly. "Of the penny dreadful variety, no less.

There are very few heiresses among the women jockeying for eligible gentlemen on the marriage mart. And the cost of failure is high: lifelong dependence on disappointed parents and indifferent brothers, perhaps even the necessity of becoming a lady's companion or, worse, a governess. No one would have thought any less of Lady Ingram for marrying the richest man she could find, certainly not when he happened to be both striking in appearance and sterling of character. Her success was a fairy tale, something to aspire to. "And if that fairy tale was to gradually lose its potency, well, such is life. What was not supposed to happen was her brutal honesty. The unspoken rule has always been that if a woman marries for money, she keeps that to herself and maintains an appearance of interest in her husband. Because that is what his money paid for. She is never supposed to not only confirm that she has never loved him but also denigrate him in the same breath for his said-to-be half-Jewish blood." "I didn't know Society ladies cared that those of Jewish roots should not be taunted for that fact," said Treadles. "What? No, they didn't care about that. They cared that Lady Ingram didn't just tear the fairy tale in two but spat on it. They cared that this sent a shiver through all the men of Society. If a paragon such as Lord Ingram couldn't find a wife who genuinely loved him, what chance did the other gentlemen have?

But don’t forget, sir”—she reached through the bars and took hold of his hands, her own hands steady, her gaze clear and calm—“that I am a queen upon this board—and I do not play to lose.

She had always known her own mind and been competent at everything she did. And he had always taken great pride in her—when she’d been the feather in his cap, the envy of his colleagues, a woman who, despite the elevated circumstances into which she had been born, had found in him everything she needed. Except that had never been true, had it? She’d always needed more. And now she had it.

Miss Holmes eyed a third slice of Madeira cake, but did not reach for it—possibly because she was approaching Maximum Tolerable Chins, the point at which she began regulating further helpings of cakes and puddings.

Sweet things placed before her usually disappeared: Hunger wasn’t necessary; cake tasted just as good accompanied by preoccupation, concern, or even boredom.