Something Fabulous (Something Fabulous, #1)

by Alexis Hall

Boudicca, her uncle’s prize hog.

“She’s what?” asked Valentine carefully. Tarleton shrugged. “Flown the coop. Done a runner. Buggered off. Absconded. Exit, pursued by a bear.”

“This.” A sweep of Tarleton’s hand encompassed his whole body. “A delectable package of pocket succulence,

Omg 😂

“In any case”—Tarleton shrugged—“marrying you is probably better than going to America.” “I’m flattered.” “You shouldn’t be. They do terrible things to tea over there.”

“When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they learned what was good, and what was evil, and how to tell the difference. I believe we know when we do wrong. We feel it. In our hearts, our souls, our conscience. And nothing I have ever learned or known or felt has taught me to believe that love is wrong. So no, my flower, it’s not wrong.”

Valentine still felt . . . off-balance? A kind of restless discontent, like having forgotten your pocket-handkerchief, or left the house with an imperfectly tied cravat.

It is through fiction that we learn to open our hearts. A man who cannot appreciate literature is a man who can appreciate nothing.”

“I don’t care”—Mr. Whelpington-Byng, Esquire, was still using his body to shelter Miss Tarleton—“how things were managed in your day. It is now the nineteenth century, and we respect women and treat them as equals in areas not pertaining to politics, property, warfare, finances, or the law.”

Valentine was starting to realise that astray was not so much a binary state as a spectrum of disaster along which they had not yet ceased progressing.

“And cravats?” enquired Bonny, so seriously that Valentine had to hide a smile. “I hope you brought cravats.” “Sir, what do you take me for. Of course I brought cravats. I brought everything necessary to life.

“Fine fine fine fine fine.” Valentine broke. “I love my books. The more romantic, the more sentimental, the better; there are pages that probably still bear the marks of privately shed tears. Now for the love of God, get the fuck away from the window, you monster.”

It turned out he didn’t read books. He possessed them. He carried them around with him, stuffed in a pocket, or tucked under his arm, burying himself into them whenever the whim took him—occasionally even wandering into furniture, or forgetting to stop pouring tea, because he just “had” to finish this chapter.

“Well, of course I care. I care that you are happy. But how you find that happiness is, frankly, none of my business.” She gave a little laugh. “What a dull life you must think I lead, darling, that I go around caring who other people marry.”

AMEN

“You’ve driven me to the brink of madness with desire. And, let’s be honest, in general.”

Fave quote right there lol