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The Beautiful Cordelia, a mad but handsome duke would come staggering across the heath, but nothing ever happened as it did in books.
she’d had no idea Grace was interested in reading, or in anything really besides torturing men and raising Jesse from the dead.
The nature of the corset, Cordelia thought irritably, was to make a woman aware of every minute way that her shape differed from society’s impossible ideal.
Alastair’s look was opaque.
“Why,” he said, “are you not even wearing a hat?” “And cover up this hair?” Matthew indicated his golden locks with a flourish. “Would you blot out the sun?”
“Never apologize for Alastair to me. He provides me an adversary to sharpen my wits on.”
“You always do find the most decadent possible solution to any problem.” “I believe that decadence is a valuable perspective that should always be considered.”
“Claude, I am crucial to your entertainments,” Matthew said. “I am that irreplaceable thing, the eager audience.”
“A lady who can choose a hat that truly suits her is very likely to have paid attention to every layer of her ensemble.”
“Matthew has a habit of getting his heart broken. He seems to prefer a hopeless love.”
“The mermaid’s backward,”
his comment had cut too close, the skeleton of the truth gleaming like white bone through dirt.
goodness can be a blade sharp enough to cut, you know, just as much as evil intent.”
“You went shadowy,” Matthew said, his voice low, “as if you were going to disappear, as if I’d wished you gone and you were vanishing—” James drew back enough to smooth Matthew’s hair away from his forehead. “Have you wished me gone?” he said teasingly. “No. Only I wish myself gone, sometimes,”
His eyes were always deep and green, like verdigris on a tarnished coin.
how potent a poison loneliness could be.
‘He’s indeed very dashing, but you must not forget your own heroism.’
what will happen if you speak your heart. You may wish to hide things because you fear hurting others. But secrets have a way of eating at relationships, Jamie. At love, at friendship—they undermine and destroy them until in the end you find you are bitterly alone with the secrets you kept.”
She filled up his vision like a lamp blotting out the stars.
He was glowering at the both of them like an owl who had been mortally offended by another owl.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
“All the stories are true,”
Cordelia wondered if it was possible to kill the thing you loved with embarrassment.
The sweet, piercing intimacy of ordinary married life.
gnarled like a tree trunk—a
“We have talked so much of travel,” James said. “I wanted to give you the world.”
I’m married too; I can’t be finding married people boring.” “Most people are boring,” said Matthew. “Being married or not has little to do with it.”
Love is a prison, and I have no desire for shackles. They would clash with my outfit.”
the wine-and-roses taste of her.
a look of happiness that was sharp and gentle at the same time would come over his face.
How do I live in this moment forever, and not let it go?
“You are as beautiful as all the stars,” he told her, “but better, because you have coffee.”
“Rome conquered the world in six hundred years. I shall conquer the Enclave in one night.”
One should not, she felt instinctively, question miracles too closely.
He ran a hand through his hair, which was already tumbling about his head like unkempt sunshine.
his tumbled dark hair feathered with snow.
Anna was all length and loose limbs, every gesture a sensual sprawl.
Anna’s eyes darkened to sapphires.
Her fingers worked music from her body as if it were a violin.
Here is the place where the dead delight to teach the living.
Someone who broke your heart is often not the person who can mend it.”
Also, I shall expect the shilling back, you parsimonious bastard.
No one is expected to be on their best behavior the day their father dies.”
“I know what it’s like to hide what you feel,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be in pain and not be able to explain why. I know why you’re not with James tonight. Because when we are in pain, we are flayed open, and when we are flayed open, we cannot hide our true selves. And you cannot bear for him to know that you love him.”
Perhaps you think I am terrible, still loving him.” “No. I think you are his saving grace.
It had been a long time since he had felt an uncomplicated love for his father, but there was no ease in knowing that.
Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Village Blacksmith”
Anna has mastered being entirely open without ever revealing anything significant about herself to anyone.
my children of steel and iron, how they cut pathways through this world.”
Lucie had never seen anyone look quite like that—as if they had been dealt a mortal blow but had not yet fallen.
