The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons, #2)

by Julia Quinn

There was little less appealing than being decisively contradicted while one was trying to make a grand point.

It’s just that when you agree to be mother to a child you haven’t borne, your responsibility is twice as great. You must work even harder to ensure that child’s happiness and welfare.”

Men are contrary creatures. Their heads and their hearts are never in agreement. And as women know all too well, their actions are usually governed by a different aspect altogether.

A man with charm is an entertaining thing, and a man with looks is, of course, a sight to behold, but a man with honor—ah, he is the one, dear reader, to which the young ladies should flock.

You can’t really miss her, because you didn’t know her, but there’s still a hole in your life—a big empty spot, and you know who was supposed to fit there, but you can’t remember her, and you don’t know what she was like, and so you don’t know how she would have filled that hole.”

He knew well the singularly strange sensation of loving one’s family to distraction, and yet not feeling quite able to share one’s deepest and most intractable fears. It brought on an uncanny sense of isolation, of being remarkably alone in a loud and loving crowd.

“You have to live each hour as if it’s your last,” she said, “and each day as if you were immortal.

There was little that brought him more peace than simply holding her in his arms. He didn’t know how any man survived without a woman to love.

There were few moments, Anthony decided, quite so delicious as the utter and complete besting of one’s wife. It depended upon the wife, of course, but as he had chosen to wed a woman of superb intellect and wit, his moments, he was sure, were more delicious than most.