More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I am to attend tea at my aunt’s house in an hour and must be ready.” Later Tea was uninspiring. I refuse to immortalize it in my journal.
She giggled. “I see you have managed to change. You appear to be quite clean.” Just as I opened my mouth to tell her I’d given up bathing altogether and was infested with the plague, Arabella intercepted.
This time I did not sound demure, but rather vengeful. His response was to smile like a Greek god, an inordinate amount of power for a young man to have.
I want The Tenant to be a love interest. And yet. I am so thrilled by the possibility of an enemies to lovers plot here, with The Tenant being just an eventual best friend.
Joseph is given a beautiful coat. Cheer. Joseph’s coat is stolen, torn, and smeared in blood. Moan. Joseph is sold into slavery. Moan. Joseph is tempted by Potiphar’s wife. Cheer. Joseph resists temptation. Moan.
STOP THATS SO FUNNY
“Anyone who thinks Potiphar’s wife was a good idea has proven himself to be of no sense whatsoever. They can have another attempt at Christianity next week.”
A FRIEND LEFT LONDON ON BUSINESS, BUT NOT BEFORE ACCIDENTALLY ACQUIRING A NEW WIFE, WHO OWNED A CAT. THE WIFE HE TOOK WITH HIM. THE CAT WAS IN NEED OF A TEMPORARY HOME. SEEING HOW IT WAS A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL SITUATION, I ENGAGED TYBALT FOR THE DURATION OF MY FRIEND’S TRIP ABROAD. WITH ANY HOPE, OUR PROBLEM WILL BE RESOLVED BY THEN. I reread the note three times and, admittedly, a few questions crossed my mind: Question One: How does one accidentally find oneself in possession of a wife? Her owning or not owning a cat is immaterial. Question Two: An astonished repeat of the first question. I
...more
Tybalt is a mackerel tabby. Grey with black stripes and flecks, and a white belly that goes up to his neck. He looks like a young gentleman with a gambling debt.
Having seen to my correspondence, I went downstairs to spend some time in thoughtful prayer while attempting to pick the lock to the library. My prayers went up in vain as the door did not budge. Perhaps I ought not to have laughed so much in church.
Trust only those not affected by love to judge with clarity.”
“St. George is not the only one who can slay a dragon, Emma Lion. I’ve seen you wield a sword.” It was, perhaps, the most wonderful compliment I’ve ever been paid. I intend to keep Roland.
“Aunt Eugenia wanted roses, but I tell you, Lord West, Arabella only wanted the Sweet Pea. They are more––oh, how would you phrase it, Arabella? You are so good with language?” Arabella’s lips formed the enchantment of a single word. “Fresh.” “Fresh. There you have it.”
against all my efforts to think as a bug would think, he very much attached himself to me. It was very entomological.
I took myself out of the house and up to the crest of Primrose Hill. It was less for the exercise and more to feel I had accomplished Something Great.
Ok well I’m changing my whole mindset right now
I enjoy company, but I enjoy solitude, with space to walk and think and read—however slack my self-education at present. I enjoy freedom, I suppose.
Charles Goddard has a good hand on you, but he is gangly and unattractive whereas you are…not. What I mean to say is— Yes, well. The Diagonal is quite crowded today.
The most unfortunate part of all of this is that my brain insists on picturing Mr. Pierce as a version of Mr. Hyde… crotchety and old, hunch-backed, limping, twitchy-eyed, droopy-faced, with raggedy old clothes.
Unfortunate indeed.
I felt the guilt of having slandered Cousin Archibald through insinuation and realised it would take more of an explanation. If one is to be slandered, it should be in the broad daylight of more than one sentence.
Dreams are not reality. UNTIL THEY ARE.
Roland had left his card. Agnes also had a message from him. “When I told him you were at church, he said to tell you that you may go to heaven, but it will be boring without him.”
My theory is that Roland does not care for Ms. What’s-Her-Face. He is simply trying to win Emma by having Emma play his matchmaker as an excuse to spend time with her. The gift was evidence enough, and now a card. Psh.
Alas, tonight I did not let sleeping dogs lie. Instead I resorted to violence;
“Mr. Pierce,” said I, releasing a deep breath, “I would like to apologise for the last two hours of your life.”
“Mr. Pierce,” I said, “I have found that on occasions of high absurdity, one either discovers a great friend or someone to never speak with again. Having now experienced a disastrous evening in Lapis Lazuli House, I leave it to you to decide which you would prefer.”
made him swear he would waltz with me at every ball for the rest of our lives. “Happily. You see me. Not many do.”
“Roland, you goat, everybody sees you. Arabella may be Aphrodite, but you are Adonis.” His smile went from grace to tension. “They see my form, Emma. They see my money and my position. But you, you look directly at me.
“Don’t look so afraid, Emma. You and I were never meant to be. I wasn’t going to propose. I was thanking you. I was trying to tell you that I want to find a wife who will consider me as Emma Lion does.”
Aunt Eugenia doesn’t believe in balconies. She thinks they make light of the law of gravity.”
leaving me to pray that my decision to kill Cousin Archibald would be tempered before I arrived home. It was not. Unfortunately, Agnes was fretting, and it distracted me from my purpose.
“If I cannot worship in a majestic building, I have no interest in the practice,” she snipped. Which I assume is not a direct quote from the New Testament.
“Permit me to ask what you mean when you say you investigated a small amount of the content?” he then asked. There it was, the inescapable moment of my dishonourable confession. “I read it in its entirety.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in a crypt somewhere, for your sins?” Islington asked in a ducal tone. “They evicted me,” I snapped. “Who?” “The dead.”
Come to find out, I married a paleontologist whose emphasis is “The Extinct Animal and the Anglican Church.”
The grounds were inspiring. There must have been seven more blades of grass than when I was last there.
