The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke, #3)

by Tessa Dare

“At least promise us one thing,” Alexandra pleaded. “Promise you won’t be caught with him alone.” Penny relented. “Very well. I promise.”

They are getting caught alone t minus 50 pages

“We’ll wait on the carriage at the inn.”

*chants* one bed! One bed!

God, she was lovely in moonlight. She was lovely in sunlight, for that matter, and in the pouring rain. Gabe suspected that even in total darkness, she would be radiant.

“Because you deserve it. Because you’ve spent too many years hiding in the corners or among the shrubbery, when you ought to be the light of any party.”

It was the autumn she’d just turned ten when he began to touch her.

Oh god poor penny!

The Duke of Ruin died here today, in her arms. And Gabe wasn’t entirely certain who he’d be going forward, but he knew one thing. He would be her husband and protector. And he would never allow anyone to hurt her again.

In short, telling the truth would be asking her family to choose between her and Mr. Lambert. They couldn’t be loyal to both. And Penny knew which of the two stories they would prefer to believe. So she said nothing.

:'((((

“I have a request of my own. I had planned to ask for a private conversation with His Lordship. However, now that you’re here, Mr. Lambert, perhaps you’d care to join us?

Hehehehehe

The little girl inside her still trembled with fear. But she wasn’t a little girl any longer. The woman she’d become refused to stand by, silent and ashamed.

We’ve known pain, the both of us. No one came to our rescue. We are survivors, and we didn’t come through all that only to lose our lives now.”

Wounded male pride has caused the world more destruction than the Black Death and the Great Flood put together.”

“If men are bent on destroying the world, we women must be the ones holding it together,” a newcomer to their gathering said. “The earth hasn’t crumbled yet.”

“She loves anything with a face.” Gabe gestured at Ashbury’s scarred visage. “In your instance, half a face.

The second worst burn Ash has gotten

Which of us would you say was the second, and which the third?”

There is one braincell between them

She looked down at the coin in her gloved palm, where its embossed face stood out in sharp relief against white satin. Light glinted off the surface, revealing the color to be not the expected dull silver, but a coppery hue instead. Oh. A sharp pang of surprise caught her heart. He’d been telling the truth. It wasn’t a shilling after all. It was a penny.

My heart!

“I have every luxury a man could desire. Hundreds of thousands of pounds in my accounts. I worked like hell to build a fortune, and yet . . .” His thumb met her cheek with a reverent caress. “Now I’d sell my soul for a Penny.”