Love Practically (The Penn-Leiths of Thistle Muir, #1)

by Nichole Van

He winced. “Of course, you have the manners to remember my name.” “As your Christian name is Fox, it does have a tendency tae stick.”

Having been raised by a stoically silent father, Leah understood that silence was often a conversation unto itself.

With every passing year, Leah felt herself pushed more and more to the fringes of her loved ones’ lives, moving from the caretaker of their happiness to a mere spectator of it.

“Get yourself a wife,” Hadley winked. “The judges will be more keen tae find in your favor if you’re seen tae be a family man.” “A wife? Have you not been hearing me, your lofty earlship? I need a competent nurse for Madeline, a cat tamer for that wretch over yon—” Fox jerked his chin toward Mr. Dandy, sitting on the window sill and staring at them as if plotting their demise. “—a fairy godmother to hire devoted servants, a clerk to balance my household accounts, and a bodyguard to ensure no one disturbs my peace.” “So in other words,” Hadley lifted his glass, “a wife.”

This, she thought. I want this. I want him. I want to be mistress of my own home. To have a wee girl to raise. To rise each morning knowing my future is secured.

“in marriage, ye become part of someone else. In a way, ye lose yourself in them. With my Aileen, this feels . . . glorious. Our marriage is loving. We support and nourish one another. But if the love goes off . . .” His voice trailed away for a moment. “Well, I imagine ye can become so lost that ye struggle to keep any piece of yourself.”

“Happiness is what we make of our situation, not what the situation intrinsically is,”

Despite everything, her brother clearly believed one crushingly painful assumption: Fox Carnegie—regardless of Leah’s efforts or the passage of years—would never, ever love her in return.

After all, contentment was not measured by experiences lived, but by one’s attitude toward those experiences.

Well. That had to count as the shortest, most uneventful honeymoon known to womankind—a three-hour carriage ride and quarter-hour of conversation.

Why must loving a child involve so much terror?

“Aye.” Leah had to smile at the girl’s earnestness. “Madeline is an excellent name.”

Madeline, Leah had decided, collected new words with the enthusiasm of a gold miner.

She liked this about him, she realized. The ease with which he owned his wrongs and apologized,

She and Fox were both trapped in their own way. Fox, by the betrayals and shattering pain of his past. Leah, by her own selflessness, by a past that told her she was not valued unless she was useful.

But the heart is always better for loving.”

Joy and grief are two sides of the same coin. Ye cannae have one without the other. It’s foolishness in the extreme tae be so consumed by the possibility of loss that ye miss the joy of love entirely. Sorrow means the heart loved true.”

This was the worst part of loss, Leah thought. The endless ambush of emotion. The sense that the worst had passed and then bam! Something unexpected—a sound, a smell, an image—would bring grief crashing down again.

“Happiness and love are akin tae strawberries.” His voice turned hoarse, and he glanced at his dwindling whisky. “Ye have tae glut yourself when the occasion arises—create memories tae see ye through the dark seasons.”

Ye cannae control his behavior. Ye cannae force him to eat the strawberries, as it were. Ye can only taste of them yourself and invite him to join ye.”

“Death is an amputation.” He fixed her with haunted eyes. “A violent severing of a vital part of ye. It throbs like a phantom limb, pulsing with a pain that nothing can soothe.”

“Life is short, sister. Love hard and true . . . while ye still have time.”