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September 23 - September 25, 2019
She wasn’t the kind of woman who embraced those she cared for with abandon.
When she was pleased to see someone, she lectured her. It was just the way she was.
The only thing worse than an unlovable woman was an unlovable woman who whined about not being loved.
A sign on the door proclaimed: The countess is NOT to be bothered except in the cases of Death, Disembowelment, the Apocalypse, or the Arrival of her Mother.
Sometimes, he knew her so well. Compliments made her freeze. Touches—even the lightest, least suggestive of touches—made her back away. But say something like this and she slipped into stony silence. There were
“It’s not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper.” Her jaw squared. “I say awful things when I’m angry. But it’s not fair to me, either, that I was made this way. You think it’s hard spending time with me? Imagine being a blacksmith puzzle made by a madman. You’re unable to perform the basic functions of your existence. You never bring anyone joy. You learn not to hope when someone picks you up. Because no matter how high their anticipation runs upon starting, you know what will happen in the end: They’ll throw you away in disgust.”
Look, he wanted to say. Look what I did. But it was more than that. Look who I am. All these years he’d let his brother tell him he was nothing, that the sum total of his accomplishments were the jokes he’d made, the wrath he’d incurred from respectable people outraged by his words. But Benedict was wrong.
“I’m not a fair woman,” she choked out. “I want impossible, contradictory things. I’m all hard edges, Sebastian. Hard edges and crumpled pieces and broken bits of glass. There is no way for you to win in this.”
“But until then,” Sebastian continued, “I’ll keep looking. Because I would rather fail at violets than succeed at anything else.”
You’re so…you, and she can be so…prickly.” “Flowers only grow thorns because they need them to survive.”
Was what she’d just done was selfish? What did the word even mean? Violet contemplated the mirror. When her husband called her selfish for refusing to go to bed with him, what had he meant? I deserve my chance to have an heir more than you deserve to live. When Lily said it would be selfish of Violet to ally herself with Sebastian, what did she mean? My attendance at balls is more important than your happiness. When Violet called herself selfish, that was what she meant—that she didn’t deserve the thing she wanted. Not happiness. Not recognition. Maybe not even her own life.
It was a coaxing, gentle massage, his fingers pressing ever so lightly into her flesh. It wasn’t the kind of angry, expectant rub that a husband might give his wife’s shoulders—a tit for tat that positively screamed, Look what I’m doing for you; now you’d better let me between your legs, or next time, it’s nothing.
Knitting makes even the most conniving soul look innocent. Her mother had it right. For some reason, butlers rarely suspected that a woman who had started knitting would stop and sneak about a house. Idiocy on their part; they were knitting needles, not shackles.
