Dream Island Quotes

“His gaze was frankly warm as he looked at Joanna. “There is a matter Royce and I need to discuss.”
Royce nodded, looking serious yet pleased, as though it were all quite clear to him. It was not to Joanna.
“And what would that be?” she asked.
The two men exchanged a glance. “The marriage settlement,” Royce reminded her gently.
“Oh…oh!” How suddenly her cheeks could heat and how surprising, all things considered. “Well, as to that, I hate to quibble, but I haven’t actually received a proposal.”
It was very bad of her, as she knew, but still enjoyable. Instantly, her brother’s countenance changed. Gone was any hint of relaxed good humor. In its place was all the stern authority of the Lord of Hawkforte.
“You haven’t?” he inquired, and looked to Alex.
Who swiftly moved to make amends. There in the ancient hall of Hawkforte, where so many generations of lords and ladies had lived and loved, the proud Prince of Akora knelt, took his beloved’s hand in his, and bid her be his wife. There she, heedless of her brother, who at any rate looked on kindly, sank to her knees beside the man she could cherish through all eternity and joyfully pledged her heart.
And in that moment, it was as though the great hall thronged with a ll those who had gone before and found in the blessing of love life everlasting.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“Night wrapped around the proud towers. Joanna took a taper and held it to the fire, set it to a candlewick. Standing, candle in one hand, she held out the other to Alex. He took it and went with her wordlessly.
They climbed a coiling staircase so old the stones sloped gently in the centers where generations of feet had walked up and down them, and came at last to a room that took up the entire uppermost floor of the tower.
“This,” Joanna said quietly as she opened the ironbound door and stepped beyond, “is the oldest part of Hawkforte. Legend has it the first Lord of Hawkforte and his lady shared this chamber. Ever since, it has been occupied only by the present lord after he marries.”
“Are there spirits who would mind us being here?” he asked with a smile.
“They would welcome us,” she said, and went around the room, lighting the candles set in wall sconces until the room was bathed in their gentle glow.
An immense bed stood at its center, hung with richly embroidered curtains and covered with furs. Joanna walked toward it, turned, and faced Alex.
“I love you,” she said. “I just thought I ought to say that and I wanted it to be here, in this place.”
“I love you, too,” he replied matter-of-factly because it was that way to him now, a simple fact of his life.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“A bevy of lovely ladies was in attendance, not one among them failing to make herself pleasant to Royce. He bore it all with good humor and occasional flashes of real interest in, Joanna noted, the bolder among them. A few drifted in Alex’s direction but his obvious attentiveness to her seemed to discourage them. As it had damn well better.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“He shrugged off his finely tailored coat and handed it to a footman. Joanna shot a sharp look at several ladies who had the effrontery to sigh while staring at him. They looked like ravenous bitches. As in dogs, of course, never would she even think the impolite meaning of that term. Perhaps there was something to Royce’s fox hunting allusion after all.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“The white muslin, I think,” she said and wondered what to do with her hair.
Thirty minutes later, when she descended the stairs to find Royce waiting for her, she was satisfied her efforts had been worthwhile. Her brother simply stared. They were in the carriage, on the way to the Pavilion, before he said, “Poor Darcourt.”
“What?”
“Darcourt, never stood a chance, flushed like a fox from cover.”
“Alex flushed?”
“He’d know what I mean.”
“Well, I most certainly do not. Alex is as far from a flushed fox as it is possible for a man to be.”
“No doubt he thought he was. Knows differently now.”
Royce was grinning, looking rather pleased with himself, when his loving sister said, “You know, brother, a wise man might pause to think about the implications of what you’re suggesting. If an Alex Darcourt can be brought to ground, surely no man may consider himself safe.”
She was rewarded with a look of surprise shading into wariness just as the carriage rolled to a stop before the Pavilion.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“Having come this far, I don’t see how I will manage to sit by while you or someone else tried to find Royce.”
Despite himself, he felt a spurt of sympathy for her. Were their positions reversed, he would find such passivity the worst torture. But why was he thinking of that? He was a man, she a woman. Their positions were never going to be reversed. They were etched in tradition, culture and pain common sense.
“What did you think you would be doing?” he asked gently. “Wandering over hill and dale, beating the bushes for him?”
A sudden, wistful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. It very nearly undid him. “You know,” she said, “I can see myself doing just that.”
His smile was rueful. “Unfortunately, so can I.” The back of his fingers brushed her cheek gently. “Joanna, you must know that cannot be.”
Her name seemed as natural on his tongue as if they had been intimate for many years. He had a sudden, startling urge to hear her say his own.
Madness.
Their gazes locked. Mere inches separated them. It would require only the slightest effort for him to lower his head and taste again that warm, tantalizing mouth…”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“Standing on it, she craned her neck out, turning it this way and that until head, shoulders, and a goodly share of her torso were hanging out over the sun-splattered water.
It was thus that Alex found her when he came down at midday. He sighed deeply enough to tell her he was there. She withdrew with as good grace as she could manage and assumed a look of cheerful innocence.
“Beautiful day, my lord.” She hadn’t quite gotten round to calling him kreon but she was resolved to manage it once they reached Akora. Anything for Royce.
His eyebrows were quite extraordinarily eloquent. She had almost learned to chart his moods, some of them at least, by the rise and fall of those ebony wings.
“Some people might think it overly risky to stick half their bodies out the porthole of a ship moving as fast as this one.”
This close to her goal, she was in an extremely good mood, so much so that neither his sardonic drawl or the surge of sensual awareness he provoked troubled her. At least not much. Brightly, she said, “Isn’t it a good thing the world is made of different sorts? There’s use even for the foolishly cautious, I’m sure.”
“But you’d be hard pressed to say what it might be.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“It isn’t so terrible. You did a good job of stitching.” She continued to examine his work. “There will be a scar, of course, but not much of one I think.”
“I regret there will be any,” he said gruffly. With a fresh length of cloth, he rebandaged her arm.
By the time he was done, she felt oddly shaky yet unwilling to move away from him. He dropped his hands but continued standing very close to her, so near that she could feel the warmth of his body. She tried not to stare at his chest but that left her to focus on the powerful column of his throat and above to the chiseled line of his jaw, which appeared to be clenched.
“This may not have been a good idea,” he murmured. Their eyes met.
Her toes curled, as though they clung to the very edge of a precipice. On a thread of sound, she said, “Which part? My coming to London, trying to see you, stowing away, getting hurt? Or perhaps we can say it was not a good idea for Royce to set out for Akora to begin with? We could lay all this at his door.”
Alex tried very hard not to smile. She watched the struggle he waged and knew the moment he lost. His grin, for all that it was reluctant, was also quite devastating. She wondered if he knew it.
Quietly, he said, “It seems we will have to find your brother and tell him how badly he has behaved.”
“Now that is a very good idea.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island

“When the gods amused themselves at a man’s expense, they had a tendency to overdue.”
― Josie Litton, Dream Island