Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers, #1)

by Lisa Kleypas

I am coming to believe that there are two kinds of people…those who choose to be masters of their own fate and those who wait in chairs while others dance. I would rather be one of the former than the latter.

“But she says that they’re all unhappy, every last one of them. I wonder why?” “Old money,” Lillian said. “Father says there is nothing like a lifetime of affluence to make one aware of what one hasn’t got.”

“I would rather have died in your arms, Simon, than face a lifetime without you. All those endless years…all those winters, summers…a hundred seasons of wanting you and never having you. Growing old, while you stayed eternally young in my memories.”