A Lady for a Duke

by Alexis Hall

“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 can't I can't I can't whaaatttt .... okay I'm back

“Non sum qualis eram.”

"I am not what I used to be."

He believed he’d failed her. But how could he, when he’d never known who she was? He believed he was a coward. And what, then, did that make her?

I literally can't! don't say that! ❤️

“This friend of yours does not seem like a very good influence on you.” His eyes met hers. Memory had not done their blue justice, nor the warmth that lay beneath their beauty, like some undersea garden. “He was the joy of my life.”

There was something inestimably cruel about the connectedness of lives. The way one’s own suffering, and the things one did to relieve it, became so entwined with the suffering of others.

The capacity in each of us to love more than we hate, do more good than we do ill, help more than we harm.

Whatever you did, or did not do, whether it was just or the reverse, no matter how necessary it felt, life moved mercilessly forward.

adventuress?

"a woman who would use any means, no matter how immoral, to gain a position. More specifically, this meant a woman who would use sex to snare a nobleman." - woah when they say words change meanings they mean it. Idk if that's what Hall intended but it's what came up when I searched "adventuress meaning 1800s"

He would have given her anything. Everything. For nothing but the light in her velvet eyes.

“You were my closest friend. The best part of my life. The best part of me. You were… my joy, my hope, my faith in better things. All this time, I thought I’d left you. And it was you, who left me.”

“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.”

shut up viola you're just doing your best babe!! I'm freaking crying. maybe it was selfish but it wasn't wrong!! 😭😭😭

don’t see what use we can be to others if we must deny our own most fundamental selves. We all have the right to be recognised for who we are.”

“Gracewood.” Badger’s greeting echoed distantly. “I’m confused. I thought you were in Northumberland.” “Yes,” Lady Marleigh explained, “it seems he’s left.” Badger made a sound of relief. “Oh, that makes much more sense.”

badger is the most relatable character tbh

My soul calls to yours and yours to mine, and that will never change.”

he kissed her. It was as fragile as sunlight upon frost, a fresh-budding blossom not yet unfurled, just the press of his closed lips to hers, the taste of tears between them. But there was a surety to it too. A thousand promises of an impossible spring.

perhaps the idea of the man he used to be was beginning to feel less like something he had lost than something he had moved beyond.