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“Or”—to be well acquainted with Lady Marleigh was to understand that fortitude was not always a virtue—“he could simply be happy you’re alive.” “And then what? Do we go riding? Do we wrestle and fence and shoot, and bathe naked together? Does he take me to brothels and gambling hells, and drink with me late into the night, while telling me of the women he woos?” Lady Marleigh blinked. “I’m sure there must be other options.” “What other options? Men and women are permitted to interact in three ways: marriage, ruination, and polite indifference.”
Morgencald had been built to withstand everything, including change.
His head was full of mist. It used to comfort him. It used to soften the edges of the raw, empty places of his world, so he didn’t cut himself bloody on them.
YAAAA DOUBLE POV BABYYYYY
“My understanding? I knew him better than my own soul. He may well have been my soul, for what little I am worth without him.”
I am already on the floor, how did we get to this angst SO FASTTTT
She was Viola Carroll. She had always been Viola Carroll. And some part of her had always known it. There was only one thing she hadn’t known. One truth that, locked in pursuit of her own, she hadn’t grasped. It was simply this: That love—that her love for Gracewood and his love for his friend—had not died with her. Covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears.
How long since he had just… talked to someone? He had taken it for granted with Marleigh. But how sweet it was, how wondrous, simply to share your thoughts in the surety of welcome, and to feel equal surety in your ability to offer the same.
“I can’t keep offering some semblance of friendship to a man I—a man I must have always loved, in ways I had no hope of comprehending, and know that I am holding half of myself from him, and that I must for fear of breaking his heart for the second time.”
Gracewood had thought her a ghost when he first saw her. Perhaps there had been more truth to that than either of them had realised. What was she, after all, but an echo, half a memory, a tale somebody once told about a girl who got lost on a battlefield?
“I am grown wary of a substance that seems to offer, in the same hand, both succor and pain.” It was easier, in that moment, to stare at a laudanum stain and some fragments of glass than meet his eyes. “That is wise, Your Grace.”
YEAH LIKE THE MAN HIMSEEEELF
And, instead, he had concluded she was some kind of… she hardly knew. Fortune huntress? Perhaps, in the end, that was better than the truth. “Again,” he said, “I apologise. I sincerely apologise.”
So adventuress = "Do you do this kind of thing often? Going around to places and making men charmed by you?" damn she should slap him but I also kinda get that they're in that really blunt and open stage of becoming potential Lovers
The room within was crimson silk and cloth of gold, from the floor coverings to the canopy of the ornately carved four-poster bed, to the wing chairs that waited by the fireplace that had been set into the stone itself.
Oh we got a red room??? Yeah we're comin back here later for sure
He chuckled. He couldn’t help himself. “I would rather your wrong than anyone else’s right, Miss Carroll.”
How many times has this man made me fall to the floor by now???
It had never occurred to him to question beauty before. He’d always assumed it was obvious, fine eyes or a trim figure, rosebud lips or hair of whatever colour was currently fashionable. But it wasn’t. It was details. The way you could wait forever for the dimple to appear beside someone’s mouth, unable to imagine ever growing tired of seeing it.
“Gracewood, you can’t just… give people horses.”
Same vibe as Gracewood you can't just ask someone why they're white
“Why is it virtue in women to preserve what it is virtue in men to pursue? And why do we even call it virtue? Surely that is a component of the spirit, not the body.” “Perhaps,” she offered, “it is some combination of women, lacking property or much of material value, being required to have something of ourselves to sell, and men being terrified of the possibility that they could be raising someone else’s child.” “Ah.” Another pause. “I confess, I’ve never understood that fear.”
HE'S OK WITH ADOPTING I KNEW IT
She had always loved talking to him, swapping ideas and telling stories, but there was an openness to him now. Depths she had not known were there. A vulnerability he had either never shown her or she had never recognised.
Bc you were both men and yall couldn't really be emotionally close, I'm on the floor again
“Dally?” He didn’t shout, but there was a pain in his voice, a real pain that Viola could never have expected. “I would marry you tomorrow if I thought you would have me.”
THERE ARE 300 MORE PAGES IN THIS BOOK WE CANNOT BE MOVING SO FAST AAAAAAAAAA
“Forgive my language, but”—his eyes were as steady on hers as the clasp upon her wrist, his mouth suddenly full of smiles—“fuck the world. I will change it for you if I have to.”
PLEASE I AM UNWELL I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS RN
“I’ve never…” she began, and oh God, how did you talk to a man when he was so close and looking at you with such tenderness and desire? How could you convince him you didn’t yearn for something you were only just learning you’d always yearned for?
Lady Marleigh sighed. “I thought it would be different.” “Did you really believe someone I’ve spent half my life with would not recognise me?”
Bsh you are the one who came along
At this, Louise, who had evidently been as meek as she was capable of being for as long as she was capable of being it, rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously I don’t. But”—her tone softened slightly—“despite my excellent friend qualities, the fact is I’m not an easy person to be friends with, and so I feel quite warmly towards those who succeed in putting up with me. Which means”—the softness fled, replaced by her typical briskness—“I can’t for the life of me understand why you won’t just admit you need Gracewood as much as he needs you.”
I'm really getting the vibe that Louise is supposed to be neurodivergent-coded
in which case what does it mean that I relate to her so heavily
also I think she's a Taurus
“I threw it away.” Lady Marleigh’s hand moved softly through her salt-roughened hair. “No, you didn’t. You just had some difficult choices to make.” “And I chose myself. Over… everything. Everyone.” “Oh, Viola.” Now a tug on her hair, and Viola lifted her head to find Louise peering up at her with sudden ferocity. “Sometimes it is the most vital thing in the world to be selfish.”
was to London, not Devon, that the carriage bore them. Viola would have preferred to return to the country, but Louise was right that she couldn’t hide away forever and besides, Badger was expected at Parliament, for what little good it would do anybody.
They're gonna meet in London for the season I am SURE OF ITTTTT
we BETTER move into the jealous stage of all this
grief sex????
He would have jumped from the cliffs of Morgencald for Viola Carroll. Of course he would. He already had. And she had saved him twice now. And ruined him nonetheless.
OF COURSE HE WOULD HE ALREADY HAAAAADDDDD!!!!
When all he should have felt was relief and gratitude and joy. Two years of grief suddenly seemed the most irrelevant price to pay for Viola’s return.
“While I’m flattered my face has passed muster, why are you so quick to assume me a heathen?” “I assume that of all the fun people. But you’re very welcome to proselytise me any time the fancy catches you.” “I’m not convinced that word means what your tone suggests it does.” Lady Lillimere blinked at her. “Suggestive? Me?”
Oh so Viola just flirting w everybody???
I am frothing at the mouth for her to make her debut and become the diamond and for GRACEWOOD TO BE JEALOUSSSS
“I’m sorry.” Lady Lillimere’s tone softened. “I’m being a little beastly to you, aren’t I? It’s just you look so pretty when you’re confused, I can’t help myself.”
OH SHE'S LIKE THAT HUH
Lady Lillimere spin-off when
Closing the distance between them, Lady Marleigh stood before Lady Lillimere, hands on hips, glaring up at her. “What is wrong with you? I thought you were only coming for tea. You know it is not a requirement that you… you… solicit the favours of every lady you meet?”
She is definitely girly pop LMAOOOO
My soul calls to yours and yours to mine, and that will never change.”
THEY HAVEN'T EVEN KISSED JFC
“Please don’t leave me again,” he whispered. “I think I could learn to live without you, but I have no wish to.”
As he made his way to the yellow drawing room, he tried to push away the battlefield. Two years and it still felt more real than quiet halls and strips of sunlight upon polished floors. Yet Viola had managed to leave those times behind. Why couldn’t he?
Has she? Why HAVEN'T we seen Viola's PTSD yet?
In this, she was almost certain he was wrong. But to have explained it to him would have meant explaining how it felt to have loved him in the confusion of not knowing who she was. And how it felt now, to be herself and love him still, and live in the torment of that understanding.
“I wanted,” retorted Miranda, with all the passion of a hurt seventeen-year-old, “not to be alone. I should not have cared where I went if I could just have—I don’t know—somebody.” Once again, Viola was slightly at a loss. “It must have been hard these last two years.” “I wish it were only these last two years. But Justin has been leaving me for as long as I can remember.” Miranda’s hands fluttered restlessly. “He left me when we were children because Father wouldn’t have his heir wasting his time with a girl. Then he left me for Eton, and when he came back in the holidays he left me for
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Absent big sister yikes
There was the strangest comfort in learning that the ways you hurt people were yours and yours alone.
am not sure love unshown is really love at all. What good does caring for a person do if you’re never there when they need you?”
Gently, Miranda squeezed Viola’s fingers. It was a small gesture, but one that said she wanted to believe. That, like Viola, she wanted to belong. And that maybe they could belong together.
I LOVE FEMALE FRIENDSHIP WHY AM I CRYING
“I say, you haven’t seen Bartholomew, have you? The one who isn’t me, I mean?” “He’s here, Badger.”
THAT'S what Badger is short for??? Eng people are insane
He gazed at her, with none of his usual vagueness. Just those absurd blue-purple eyes and the smile he smiled only for his wife. “Then dance with me, Loubear. I refuse to spend another moment in the company of people I like less than you.”
No bc forget Gracewood, Badger is the STANDARD
“I’m laughing because… because”—and suddenly she felt capable of courage again—“I love you. I love you when you’re arrogant. And I love you when you’re kind. And I love you when you’re both at the same time.” “You…” He swallowed. “You love me?” There
PLSSSSS IM AT SCHOOL BUT IM DYINGGGG
“I would say”—he shaped the words close to her mouth, as if each of them was its own kiss, a private prayer—“I love you as a man loves a woman, but we both know that love is not bound by such narrow terms. So instead let me simply tell you that I love you. I love you with the unfading flame of my friendship. With every drop of ardour in my blood. I love you with my soul, as some reserve their faith for absent gods. I love you as I believe in what is right and hope for what is good. I love you with everything I am and ever was—and if you will only let me, with every day that comes, and every
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SOULMATESSS T____T
But if you mean, can I take you inside me, or you me, then yes. If that’s what you desire.” “You… you would allow that? You would allow me to…?” She was not sure how to form the thought, let alone the words. “Allow you?” He laughed. “It’s not a sacrifice. I would welcome it. I think I would welcome most things you might want to do with me.”
BOTTOM GRACEWOOD BOTTOM GRACEWOOD
Viola left Gracewood’s side some time before dawn. She was, she supposed, his mistress now and that came with certain obligations, chief among which was discretion.
NOOOOO how are the 2 of you such perfect soulmates but the WORST communicators??
“Here’s the latest. I will meet you at the ball where you shall have all you desire. My coach will await you outside, come to me at eight. Surely she can’t have been so impetuous?”
IT'S A TRAP BY MISS AVON!!
