More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And when the governess had left, he would slip out of his own room and peer at her door until her light was extinguished at last, before he returned to bed to stew anew in lust and yearning. A habit that he’d kept to this day, whenever they happened to be under the same roof. Her light turned off. He sighed. How long would he keep at this? Soon he would be twenty-seven. Did he still plan to stand in a dark passage in the middle of the night and gaze upon her door when he was thirty-seven? Forty-seven? Ninety-seven?
“I thought it would not be amiss to exchange a cordial greeting the morning after our wedding night—and to sacrifice a few drops of my blood to the sheets to preserve your reputation.”
“Why do you keep taking responsibility for his actions?” “I care about him and will therefore do my utmost to ensure his happiness, a concept I am sure is entirely alien to you.” “One that is no less alien to Mr. Martin. What has he ever done for your happiness? And think carefully before you answer.
Helena liked him. She genuinely liked him. It was as if he’d looked up from his lonely altar in the Sahara to find it raining. Barely a drizzle, to be sure, but still it was actual precipitation, when there had been nothing but burning sky and parched sand for centuries upon centuries.
She could scarcely breathe for her searing aversion to this reckless, selfish woman who had been described to her.
“Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation.”
