The Reluctant Heiress

I must go-- the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but--" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at--" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?" Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded. "Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that.

She took a deep breath, inhaling the night air scented with hay, honeysuckle and the rich waters of the lake, listened to the music and laughter coming from the theatre, tilted her head to the the stars. She had never seen them so brilliant and clear. Cassiopeia, Orion, the great girdle of the Milky Way-and her own birth sign, Gemini. With such staggering beauty in the world, how could anyone not rejoice? It seemed however, that 'anyone' could. For at once came the age-old cry of lovers since time began. 'What are the stars if i am not gazing at them with him? What is beauty except something we share?

[Tessa] knew about phantom limbs [....] Her cheek, where the Englishman's fingers had been, did not exactly ache ... but very strangely, most curiously ... it felt.

Do I know everything about him already? she thought, bewildered. And back came the answer: Everything. You are branded with this knowledge, you will have it for the rest of time.

It is a fearful thing to love what time can touch.

The Unconscious, lately discovered by Professor Freud and used by others to store their joys, fears and frustrations, was for Nerine a gigantic subterranean wardrobe