“You make me hope,” he snarled low and dangerous. “Like a goddamn idiot, you make me pray, you make my throat burn with the need to scream and beg God to give you to me, to treasure, to worship…to love until the end of my days.” He had to close his eyes to control his ragged breathing.

I cannot believe you are as delicate as you protest to be.”

“Perhaps you are merely addled,” he mused. “I’ve heard tell lunatics tend to grin a lot.” Kitty spluttered, and she mockingly punched his arm.

She marched over to him. “You threw a book at me, Your Grace.” “At the door, Miss Danvers. At the door. I was quite confident it would not hit you or else I would not have risked it. Now stop shooting daggers at me with your eyes.”

“I believe people look away because it is uncomfortable to gaze upon another’s pain when it is bare for the world to see. How do they relate? Or offer words of compassion when they truly cannot understand your pain? It would seem pretentious to say the least, and they are aware of it, and thus become flummoxed and perhaps act like fools. You are on

“I would be the worst sort of lady to be frightened by someone hurt by misfortune, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You are staring at your fiancée, quite shamelessly I might add.”

“In silence, the senses are heightened. I hear your heartbeat…and mine; I hear and feel the gentle rushing of the wind, the fishes swimming below us in the water, your sweet, soft sighs. There is such beauty in silence before the breaking dawn, after the violence of a storm, in the snow that blankets the land in winter. There is peace, and in the p

“I love you, and Mamma, Henrietta, and Judith,” Kitty said softly. “I’m not ashamed for what I did.”