Something Spectacular (Something Fabulous, #2)

by Alexis Hall

She stood. “You know I adore you both, I adore you so much, but would you mind awfully if I stormed out moodily?” “Of course,” said her mother. “Go right ahead.” Mr. Delancey nodded. “You do what you need, pet.”

“When you . . . tell people. They either say you’re not, that you can’t be. Or they nod and smile, trying to be nice, and that just feels like they don’t believe you in a different kind of way. So then you’re left wondering if you’re making it all up.”

“Sometimes”—the words were little more than breath against Peggy’s neck—“I wonder if I am because I was made to be. Because it is easier to confront the world with what it fears than fear myself.”

“I have no personal experience, but if we are to believe several centuries of art, then I am not sure there is such a thing as simple love.”

but grief was a dragon when it roared, engulfing everything in its indiscriminate fire.

Like most gentlemen of his class, Valentine had learned to fight as a young man and, like most gentlemen of his class, subsequently allowed the skill to atrophy completely. This was, in Peggy’s estimation, no bad thing in general, as dukes had enough advantages without also being able to stab people.

This was the problem with Bonny. He was 90 percent predictable and 10 percent menace.

“There is no-one in London, except possibly my husband, who holds artists in higher regard than I.” “And you know what’s a really good way of showing regard? Paying people.”

You tell 'em, Peggy.

“This may be the Tarletons’ way of forcing a conversation.” “Oh.” Peggy let the potential consequences of a Tarleton-driven intervention sink in. “Oh shit.”

There was something so strangely reassuring about bodies, the intricacies of breath and heat and skin, the powerful drive of them to continue, to live, to thrive.