The Silver Devil Quotes

“I forbid you to go."

"I am not yours to forbid. Comfort your pride with your conquest!"

"Felicia!"

The raw anguish of it stopped me. Tears were threatening to spill from my eyes so that I had to bend my head, fighting for self-control, and I did not hear him come up beside me. His hand touched my shoulder, then dropped again as I shivered.

"Does this look like pride?" His voice was shaking. "Or must I grovel?"

He was on his knees at my feet, and as I watched he lifted the hem of my gown to his lips and kissed it. I made some sort of sound in my throat, but I could not speak.

"You cannot go." He spoke in a whisper, without lifting his head. "I love you. I have always loved you--I bought you from your vile brother because I could not live without you."

As I stared down at his bowed, bright head, the earth shook under my feet. This could not be happening, I thought.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I knew that love would not turn the silver devil into an angel. He would remain what he was--subtle yet childish, unfeeling yet passionate, lost irretrievably to everything but his own desire. But he loved me--and I loved him, now and forever.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He held his hand out to me without speaking; and it was then, as I went to him like a falcon flying to his fist, that I realized I loved him.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I will not have you hazard your life, Felicia. It is too precious to me."

"And is yours less so to me? Domenico, whether you live or die, let me share it!”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“In moments the whole assembly was rocking with jeering laughter as I stood ridiculously before them. My hands clenched uncontrollably; I had been prepared for any humiliation but the martyrdom of laughter.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He sat on his horse unmoving, a somber black figure in startling contrast to the vivid colors about him, the sun dazzling on his white gold hair. Unlike the duke and his bastard, there was no laughter in his face, and his eyes were not searching the housefronts for diversion-instead, he was staring intently straight up at my window.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I knew then, looking up at him, that I had been deceiving myself, calling this feeling by any name but love. Lust for the beautiful animal who had seduced me, fear of the vicious tyrant, compassion for the haunted man who cried like a lost child in my arms—they were only part of what I felt for him.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“Between the sheets he is a monarch, a very god.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“The duke nodded, his beautiful face full of catlike satisfaction. "But since then I have conquered a sterner fortress." His eyes mocked me. "And now I enter it freely.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I did not dare look back at Domenico. Sprawled catlike in the silver chair, he was watching me; I could feel his eyes resting on my bare shoulders as actual as a touch.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I forbid you to go."

"I am not yours to forbid. Comfort your pride with your conquest!”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He was watching me scientifically; there was no emotion in him at all. There was an assessing gleam in the hooded black eyes, a satiric set to his mouth, and I knew with fatal clarity that I had been duped. The rapturous tenderness was only a ploy to win my response”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I tell him of damnation, but I doubt he fears anything but the darkness in his own mind.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“Those fierce animal passions of his were his masters, not his slaves, and he was as much their victim as those he punished when he was in their grip. And despite what he had done to me tonight, I knew that his desire was real. Even if all his need was for a living body and arms to hold him, it was still a bitter desperate need.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He shrugged, wholly unconcerned. He had weighed the offense against the penalty before he ever approached me, and he showed no sign of caring that he would be sent into danger — not that I really believed the danger, for Sandro bore a charmed life.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“There was nothing for me to do but cling to him, greedy of his presence, until he finally cast me off. Love had chained me to him more irrevocably than any threat he could use. That it was groundless and inexplicable—I did not truly know him and could never hope to fathom that capricious blend of intelligence, over sensitivity and animal violence—make no difference now.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I had not realized how much of the player there was in Domenico — how aware he was of his own attraction, how confident of his beauty. He courted Piero with the shamelessness of a practiced harlot, luring him with glances and innuendos and soft, caressing words. I watched Piero’s instinctive caution blossom into astonished delight before my eyes. Gradually he came closer and stayed longer until he was fast by Domenico’s side, a rabbit magnetized by a swaying snake.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“It was bewildering to leave his lessons, in which I became a child again, and nothing was more important than the curl of a G or the difference that a single letter could make to the sound of a word, and go to the brawling suppers after the talk had broken off, where keeping my footing amid the chafing tempers and spiteful formality of the della Raffaelles was ten times as hard as tracing my signature.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“The archbishop treated me with smiles and silvery courtesy which I did not understand at first; then I realised that his spite against me went deeper and worked in subtler ways than open enmity.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“Felicia.” It was little more than a whisper. “Stay with me.”
Laughter shook me, like a surge of pain; on his lips even pleading became an order. I asked unsteadily, “Nothing else?”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“Now I had new fears; not of him but of myself and of the drugging rule my body could exert over my mind. At night the strangeness of the court and the vigilance kept over my own fears were melted in the growing familiarity of his body against mine, the warm scent of him and the soft moans and whispers that were a whole new language. I tried to shut my ears to it, to hood my senses, but inevitably my new knowledge betrayed me so that I was lost to hungers I had not known I possessed.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He was dressed, I saw, in the severest Spanish fashion, making him look older, more awe-inspiring, and even more princely. A great ruff brushed his firm jaw; his supple prowl had become a conscious elegance, as though he had put on majesty as a whore puts on paint, as a mask and as a weapon.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I should have been horrified by the cruelty in him, but my heart still ached for the arrogant child who had been spoiled to become something like a monster by the indulgence of his every whim.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I thought he would have acquainted you with his thoughts.”
“No.” I smiled tenderly, then forced my face to stillness. “Secrecy is the breath of life to him. He loves intrigue more dearly than any mistress.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“You think…”
“No.” He was smiling again. “I do not think. I dare not. The old duke is dead and the duchess packed off to her Spanish kin in Naples; that is all any man her knows but he.” He glanced at Domenico and then away. “And we know enough when we know so much.”
“But Duke Carlo was old. I thought when I heard he was dead that he had died naturally.”
“It is safer to think so. Believe it.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“It was the quartet, in full force and full cry.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“He had taught me much in four nights. I had learned to await his coming with excitement as well as dread; I had learned the treachery of my own flesh and was shocked by the frailty of my virtue. He had taught me that pain could be a part of pleasure and that pleasure could be a kind of pain.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“I was not even shocked; it would be a lucky man indeed who lived out his natural span here. All around us, even now, plots and subterfuges were in train — a whisper here, a few ambiguous words in passing, or only a look. Sandro’s face came back to me, the swiftly masked expression when his generalship was mocked, and Piero’s, watching Domenico when he thought he was unobserved. Duke Carlo could not have inspired more hate or love in any who surrounded him, and he had been murdered.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“My body, my brain, felt full of pain like a bulging wineskin; one unwary move and it would spill and spatter the ground with poison. It was desperately important that I should not move, that I should not give a single sign of how much his indifference hurt me.”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil

“Hatred is in the air I breathe”
― Teresa Denys, The Silver Devil