Beguiled (Enlightenment #2)

by Joanna Chambers

What a man could do within the law was rarely enough, and that was the hell of it.

“They believe that Woman should not be Man’s slave,”

“No. Man’s oppression of Woman is the first, and worst, act of oppression in human history. Until we repair that, how can we repair the other inequalities all around us? Every child grows up witnessing this most grievous form of slavery. We drink it in with our mothers’ milk and take it for the natural order. But it is not.”

Life was easier sometimes when you didn’t know what you were missing.

Every nook and cranny

David glanced at Murdo, ready to share that observation, but lost his train of thought when their gazes met. Murdo wore that smile that sometimes graced his face, a curving, irrepressible thing with a deep dimple denting the cheek above and a merry sparkle in his dark gaze. What a thing that smile was. Rare and coaxing. David couldn’t help but return it, his own mouth curving up in answer, his thoughts quite deserting him for a moment.

fetching,

umpteenth

“The thought of you being dead—I realised I couldn’t bear it. Bad enough not to have you. But for you not to be alive somewhere? That was—it was unthinkable.”

“I don’t know what this thing between us is,” Murdo said, and he sounded genuinely bewildered. “But I can’t give it up. I can’t give you up.”