Earls Trip (Earls Trip, #1)

by Jenny Holiday

Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister

“It’s no use, Mr. Janes,” Archie said. “He shall have to be weaned slowly from them, like a man from the poppy.”

Though he did wonder if one could reasonably love someone who had lost her mind. Was there any of her left to love? What happened when one’s mother walked the earth in corporeal form yet existed only as a memory?

Please, Archibald: save my girls.

Aww

There must have been three dozen individual plants of different sizes, each painstakingly shaped into a prick and bollocks.

This anger was like snow, white and cold and deadening.

The sisters were like stars that appeared close together in the sky, but in truth existed on different planes.

You’re born into a group of people, and it’s as random as throwing salt into the wind. The grains land where they land.”

“Yes. Regardless, my point is that for most of us—and to take up your metaphor, Effie—we’re salt on strawberries. But that’s fine, because that gives us leave—frees us up—to make our own families.”

“I want to live, Clemmie. I want to live a big life. You know as well as I do that women don’t usually get to do that.

I have observed that such an arrangement between husbands and wives, one of mutual benign neglect, generally leads to a content, peaceable union.”

‘We are not in love,’ Mother said about Father, ‘but we like each other a great deal. He is my dear friend.’ She went on to say that she appreciated the fact that if Father undertook any dalliances, he hid them well.”

Clementine Morgan didn’t just need love; she needed understanding.

Awwww

It’s just that if I had to marry, especially if I were reconciling myself to a loveless union, I would want children. They would be a sort of . . . compensation.

It was patently unfair that the best Clementine Morgan, an intelligent, vibrant, lovely woman, could hope for was a disappointing-but-not-violent match, and that such a match was likely to be devoid of carnal pleasures.

As much as he loved hunting, had he to choose, he would much rather be the kind of person Effie sought out to discuss his dreams than be a huntsman.

He understood now in a way he had not when he was a boy that for Clementine, one quality depended on the other. She had to be wild to be happy.

It is curious, though, isn’t it, that your parents apparently did not marry for love but ended up, so far as we can tell, loving each other? Whereas mine, it seems, started out with love, but it faded.”

“I am not accustomed to men listening to me when I say what I want, much less allowing me to have it.”

“Your eyes are the color of the moss that grows on that big beech tree we used to climb, the road to Hill House just after it’s rained, and the straw in the fields outside Mollybrook after it’s been bailed.” Yes, that was exactly right. “Your eyes are the color of home.”

Captivity, no matter how comfortable, is still captivity.

She had called it “Rose, Thorn, Bud.” She would lie next to him in his bed, and they would look back over the day and name their roses and their thorns, the rose being the best part of the day and the thorn being the worst. Then, the bud: a hope for the next day.

And if I’m to be judged wanting because I’ve given my virtue to one man, what difference does it make if I give it to another?”

Archie had taught her that sometimes, having someone to witness your pain, even if they couldn’t do anything about it, was a kind of balm.

“If you have to be in pain, you might as well be surrounded by pretty things and delicious food. If your spirit must suffer, why not coddle your body?”

“I don’t want to tame you. I want to love you.”

“Not only do I not want to tame you, I want to be wild with you.”