From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

She was Sophia Fry, though her name was rarely used. she was known by her relatives, when she was known as anything at all, and perhaps by their servants too, as the mouse. (p.20)

She was accustomed to hiding from people, even when she was in their plain sight. (p.72)

She had led a brutally lonely life, judging by the little she had told him of it. (p.122)

His years of dependency were past. It was time to grow up and take charge. It was not going to be easy. But he had long ago realized that he must treat his blindness as a challenge rather than as a handicap if he wished to enjoy anything like a happy, fulfilled life. (p.11)

He was an utter idiot. Why did he forever allow the women in his life to manipulate him and rule him? Sometimes it was benevolent, or at least intended to be. Other times it was distinctly malevolent. Yet the only time in recent memory he had stood up against it, he had done so by running away. [...] Was he never to be a functioning adult, able to think and act for himself, free of the influence of any woman? He had not always been like this, surely? He had been a distinctly independent boy. He had allowed himself to grow into a weakling—or at least he was in danger of doing so. (p.59)

“I daresay,” he said, “you are trapped in a life not entirely to your liking by the fact of your parents’ death, just as I am trapped in a life that is not always entirely to my liking by the fact that I lost my sight six years ago. How long have you been orphaned?”

“Five years,” she told him. “My father died when I was fifteen.”

She was twenty, then.

“I was seventeen,” he said.

“So very young.”

“It is hard, is it not,” he said, “to have one’s life develop quite differently from what one expected and to feel not fully in command of it?” (p.61)

“I like your voice. That sounds ridiculously lame, I know. But when you cannot see, Miss Fry, sound and the other senses become far more acute. Normally one likes the look of someone to whom one feels attracted. I like the sound of your voice.” (p.79)

She pictured him as he had been the first few times she saw him. Not that he had changed in the week since. Only her perception of him had.

Elegant, beautiful, courtly. A viscount. Someone to admire from afar. Someone from a different world than her own. Someone quite untouchable. She remembered her consternation when he had offered his arm outside the assembly rooms and she had touched him for the first time.

It had felt like touching a god.

Now she was his wife. She knew him intimately—very intimately. And though he was beautiful almost beyond belief, he was just a man. Just a person. Like her, he was vulnerable. Like her, he had been living a life that was in many ways passive. Like her, he felt the need, the intense desire, to live. To prevail against life rather than merely to endure. To be free and independent …

They were not as unequal as she had thought. (p.218)

He turned her head and kissed her.

“It must be bedtime,” he said. “Am I right?”

“You are right,” she said without turning her head to consult the clock.

His very favorite time of the day. (p.297)