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324f04f
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Life was very sad if there were not - and unbearably so if one's experience with romantic love turned one into an incurable cynic.
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love
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Mary Balogh |
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36a26e7
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Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way.
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Mary Balogh |
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dca9158
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But there were certain moments in life that forever defined one as a person - in one's own estimation, anyway. And one's own self esteem, when all was said and done, was of far more importance than the fickle esteem of one's peers.
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peers
self-esteem
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Mary Balogh |
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87eb44c
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It takes chracter to refuse a man you love more dearly than life merely because marrying him would be the wrong thing to do.
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Mary Balogh |
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3867d9f
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Ah, those eyes," he said. "They can speak volumes, but sometimes even I cannot translate the language. And we never did invent enough signs for deeper thoughts and feelings."
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Mary Balogh |
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27f168d
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Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been without thought? Without...integrity? How could she have felt like that without love? Was love essential? Did it even exist - the love she had dreamed of her life? If it did, it was too late now for her to find it. Must she make do with this instead, then? Only this? Pleasure without love?
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peace
pleasure
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Mary Balogh |
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2af640a
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People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it.
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romantic
passion
romance
love
regency-romance
regency
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Mary Balogh |
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7e9feef
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He asked me not to kill myself - asked, not told. His wife had done that, he told me, and it was in a sense the ultimate act of selfishness since it left behind untold and endless suffering for those who had witnessed it and been unable to do anything to prevent it. And so I remained alive.
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Mary Balogh |
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4fcac11
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I think it is more tha6 the sea is a reminder of how little control we have over our own lives no matter how carefully we try to plan and order them. Everything changes in ways we least expect, and everything is frighteningly vast. We are so small.
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Mary Balogh |
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87042da
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We must, as we grow older and wiser, be able to allow all the pain to seep out of our bones and our souls so that we can start again.
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Mary Balogh |
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180fe37
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But he was not Matthew. He was everything that Matthew was not. He was safety and comfort and warmth. He was home. He was everything in the world that was hope and sunshine. He took a step toward her and opened his arms to her, and she was in those arms without ever knowing how the distance between them had closed.
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Mary Balogh |
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0bf831b
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One longs and longs to be grown up, doesn't one?," she said, "I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But life is not nearly as that simple when one finally does grow up."
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growing-up
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Mary Balogh |
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f8907be
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I am afraid that it will all be ruined. It is like stepping out into the darkness when one has a world of light and warmth behind one.
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love
warmth
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Mary Balogh |
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b01924a
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Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.
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nature
people
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Mary Balogh |
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b8d4db5
|
Perhaps we should do the learning - and learn not to communicate, or to do it in a different way. Now there is a thought. Perhaps we could learn your peace if we could share your silence.
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Mary Balogh |
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1a6a739
|
Would she be able to bear never seeing him again? Never in this life?
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seeing
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Mary Balogh |
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27a42f7
|
Sou todas as pessoas que ja fui - esclareceu - e todas as experiencias que vivi. Nao tenho de fazer opcoes. Nao tenho de renegar uma identidade para poder reclamar outra. Sou quem sou." In "Uma noite de amor"
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Mary Balogh |
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8a596af
|
How dare he give her no opportunity to ignore him?
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Mary Balogh |
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a8c16e1
|
Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm & smiles? Or like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory charactersticks?
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Mary Balogh |
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8ff9bfd
|
That is the excitement of life," he said when he was finished. "The not knowing. It is often best not to know."
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Mary Balogh |
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1eb5323
|
Tis what marriage is all about, madam," he said. "Have you not realized it? 'Tis about discovering unknown facets of the character and experience and taste of one's spouse and learning to adjust one's life accordingly. 'Tis learning to hope that one's spouse is doing the same thing."
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Mary Balogh |
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996d5c5
|
Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. but sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.
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Mary Balogh |
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27b8bd6
|
But Ashley had always understood. He had always known there was a person behind the silence - not just a person who listened with her eyes and would have responded in similar words if she could have, but one who inhabited a world of her own and lived in it quiet as richly as anyone in his world. With Ashley there had always been a language. There had always been a way of giving him glimpses of herself.
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Mary Balogh |
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c9f83ec
|
One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.
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Mary Balogh |
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54559c8
|
It is foolish to regret anything form one's past.
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Mary Balogh |
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d03427b
|
She looked like someone he must have known all his life. She looked like a little piece of home - whatever the devil his mind meant by presenting him with that odd idea.
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Mary Balogh |
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2e90f22
|
One does tend to assume that life must be far easier for others than it ever is for oneself," he said. "I suspect it rarely is. I daresay life was not meant to be easy." --
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Mary Balogh |
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7c569ac
|
But I am glad you are not some sort of superhuman pillar of strength. I would not be able to prevail against it. I am too weak, too fragile. In each other's weaknesses, perhaps we can both find strength.
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Mary balogh |
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83ed319
|
The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.
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Mary Balogh |
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8548d27
|
A funny thing, love. It was not always, or even mostly, a sexual thing.
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Mary Balogh |
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ec4f19c
|
Once in, when did one fall out of love? It had taken several weeks back in October - though it seemed the feeling had merely lain dormant instead of going away altogether. How long would it take this time? And when would it be gone forever?
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Mary Balogh |
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afc0d00
|
She wondered if she would have tumbled into love with him during the past week if her heart had been whole, if her soul had no been shattered long ago. She rather thought she might have. But a heart and soul could not be mended by the power of the will, she had discovered over seven years. And so she had accepted reality and moved on.
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Mary Balogh |
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080c2bc
|
I am your husband. When you feel lonely or afraid or unhappy, it is to me you must come. My arms are here for you, and my strength too for whatever it is worth. You will never be a burden to me.
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Mary Balogh |
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b22a959
|
Sometimes sexuality was more compelling when it was not overt.
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Mary Balogh |
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2d3f53c
|
My mind cannot grasp forever," she told him. "There must surely be an end somewhere. But the big question is-what it beyond the end?"
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Mary Balogh |
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ef41f85
|
Tell me, Lady Angeline, is there a color represented in your rather splendid riding hat? It would be a shame if there were. It would be sitting all alone on a palette somewhere, feeling rejected and dejected.
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Mary Balogh |
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d31589a
|
Eunice Goddard," he said, all pretense of sleepiness gone from his eyes, "will you marry me? I have no flowery speech prepared and would feel remarkably idiotic delivering it even if I had. Will you just simply marry me, my love? Because I love you? Will you take the risk? I am fully aware that there is a risk. I can only urge you to take a chance on me while I promise to do my very best to love and cherish you for the rest of my days and e..
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Mary Balogh |
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5b17669
|
May intelligent, bookish ladies sometimes be reformed?" he asked her. She thought about it. "I suppose it may be within the bounds of possibility," she said, "even if not of probability."
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Mary Balogh |
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506f2e3
|
Gifts were dangerous things, she thought. Sometimes one succeeded only in taking far more than one gave.
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Mary Balogh |
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c01634b
|
As he had once said to someone in England, though he did not care to remember whom, he had liked the sight of the sea because it represented his escape from England. And he had escaped. But she had said that perhaps it was from himself he wished to escape and that it could not be done. For wherever he went, he must inevitably take himself along too.
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sea
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Mary Balogh |
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439d10d
|
All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking?
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heart
love
|
Mary Balogh |
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48b17f0
|
He had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it.
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live
life
|
Mary Balogh |
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ae300a3
|
He would never know know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words - even if she could speak or write them - could never explain her world to him.
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Mary Balogh |
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b50f654
|
That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to . Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from
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Mary Balogh |