“To me you are stardust sprinkled across a night sky, forever in my dreams, but out of my reach.”
“You asked me once if I would still love you when your lips were puckered with age and your eyes were
faded. I can assure you that I will still love you when I have only the strength (and the scant teeth) left to
gum those puckered lips. I shall love you when your bones are sharp enough to pierce my fragile flesh. I
shall love you when the light in my own eyes fades for good and yours is the last sweet face I see.
Because I am and ever shall be…”
“Before, you were only a dream. Now you're a dream come true”
“Perhaps the two of us simply got off on the wrong foot, my lord.
You seem to have received the mistaken impression that I came to Fairchild Park to make your life more
difficult.”
“The words ’a living hell’ have come to mind more than once since your arrival.”
She blew out a gusty sigh. “Contrary to what you may believe, I took this position so I could bring more
ease to your life.”
“Just when were you planning to start?”
“I see a man," she said softly. "A man with the roar of cannons still ringing in his ears. A man bloodied by life, but not beaten. A man with a scar that draws his mouth into a frown when he might actually long to smile.”
“I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” she said. “I thought we’d air out your chambers while you were
downstairs at breakfast.”
“We?” he repeated ominously, wondering just how many witnesses there were going to be to her
murder.”
“Do you know what the best thing about getting my sight back will be?” he asked softly.
“No,” she replied, all of the bravado gone from her voice.
Straightening, he took one step toward her, then another. She refused to give ground until he was almost
on top of her. Feeling the air shift as she retreated, he clumsily flanked her until their positions were
reversed and she was the one backing toward the door. “Some might believe it would be the joy of
watching the sun dip below a lavender horizon at the end of a perfect summer day.”
When he heard her back come up against the door, he splayed one palm against the thick mahogany
behind her. “Others might judge it to be perusing the velvety petals of a ruby red rose…”—leaning
forward until he felt the warm tickle of her breath against his face, he deepened his voice to a smoky
caress—“or gazing tenderly into the eyes of a beautiful woman. But I can promise you, Miss Wickersham, that all of those pleasures will pale in comparison to the sheer unmitigated joy of being rid
of you.”
“You removed my spectacles!”
A disbelieving snort of laughter escaped him. “The way you’re taking on, you’d have thought I removed
your clothing!”
Samantha clutched at the high-necked bodice of her homely bottle-green day dress. “How do I know
you didn’t?”
Silence hung between them, thicker than the heated air. Then his smoky voice dipped into low and
dangerous territory. “If I had removed your clothing, Miss Wickersham, I can assure you it would have
been worth waking up for.”
“Nursemaid, you mean? Someone who can sing me to sleep at bedtime, spoon
porridge into my mouth, and wipe my”—he hesitated just long enough to make both servants cringe with
dread—“chinif I dribble?”
“I haven’t the voice for lullabies and I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of wiping your own…chin, ”
“Not since the serpent
approached Eve in the Garden had a woman been so tempted by forbidden fruit.”
“My lord! We thought you were
taking an afternoon nap!”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” the earl of Sheffield drawled, his voice muffled by the rug. “Someone must
have forgotten to tuck me into my cradle.”
“There is none so blind as he who will not see.”
“As he shook off his servant’s grip and staggered heavily to his feet, the sunlight streaming through the outside door struck him full in the face.
Samantha gasped.
A fresh scar, still red and angry, bisected the corner of his left eye and descended down his cheek in a jagged lightning bolt, drawing the skin around it taut. It had once been an angel’s face with the sort of masculine beauty reserved only for princes and seraphim.”
“To Fate, a fickle mistress whose sense of justice is exceeded only by her sense of humor.”
“Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous. For a while, the case had left her numb, caring less, feeling less, going about her business, telling no one. But she became squeamish about bodies, barely able to look at her own or Jack’s without feeling repelled. How was she to talk about this? Hardly plausible, to have told him that at this stage of a legal career, this one case among so many others, its sadness, its visceral”
“Interesting. And does Abu have anything else to say?" she asked, leaning closer.
Cinnamon. Her breath smelled of cinnamon. He could even smell her skin at that distance. Though he wasn't one normally prone to poetry, he could only think of a fresh desert breeze that carried a whisper of cypress and sandalwood.
"He wishes there was something he could do to help..." That at least was honest. He wasn't exactly sure how kissing would help her. He just knew it was going to happen or he was going to die.
"Tell him I just might take him up on that," the girl said, closing her eyes and tilting her head.
Aladdin put his arm around her back and prepared for the best thing that had ever happened to him.”
“It’s all right if you smell bad,” Derrick says serenely. “You’re still my favorite.”
“Maybe I should be a lawyer instead of a magical baker, Rose though. Lawyers' mistakes rarely result in old men climbing on top of towers and taking off their pants.
~Bliss”
“Why must a man be always taking on Things not his own, as if he were a servant whose marketing-bag grows heavier and heavier from stall to stall and, loaded down, he follows and doesn’t dare ask: Master, why this banquet?”
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