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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 04e01e1 | There must be something terribly wrong with her, Camille thought, that she could neither feel nor attract love. Was it possible that her quest for perfection had somehow deadened an essential part of herself? | Mary Balogh | ||
| 9ee3084 | You must be a good girl." "Yes, Uncle," she said. "A pity, though," he said. "His assets and mine combined, Cass. Ah, well, Mr. Westhaven will be a baron one day, though the present baron is said to be in excellent health and is a relatively young man. He could live another twenty years." Chapter 13 MR. Westhaven did not after all wear his best London finery that evening. His shirt did not have quite the quantity of lace at the wrists tha.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| d62cc8c | Two very different men, saying essentially the same thing--that the greatest catastrophe of her life was perhaps also its greatest blessing. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 8de0de6 | And a strong man", she said. "Strong enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to be honest even when honesty might expose him to ridicule or rejection. And someone who would put himself at the center of my world even before knowing that I would be willing to do the same for him. A man foolish and brave enough to tell me that he loves me even when I have hidden all signs that I love him in return." | Mary Balogh | ||
| 1833bd0 | began | Mary Balogh | ||
| 725df1f | following spring to find himself a | Mary Balogh | ||
| f33706c | I have been very , Anna--for all the obvious reasons," she said. "But in a strange way, that very fact is encouraging, for before all this happened I had dedicated my life to achieving perfection. I wanted to be the perfect lady above all else. Happiness meant nothing to me. Nor did love. They frightened me, for they suggested chaos and the impossibility of achieving perfection. Now that I have been desperately unhappy, I understand that I.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 4a8938d | having a dream and being on the journey to fulfilling it sometimes brings more happiness than actually achieving it. We have a habit, do we not, of thinking happiness is a future state if only this and that condition can be met. And so much of life passes us by without our realizing how happy we can be in this present moment, or how nearly happy. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 807ba42 | He was a man who seemed careless of his appearance, very different from the gentlemen with whom she had consorted until a few months ago. She would not have afforded him a second glance if she had passed him on the street--or even a first glance for that matter. But during the few minutes she had been forced into his company, she had been aware of a sort of restless energy and raw masculinity about him, and she had been slightly shocked at .. | Mary Balogh | ||
| a43b619 | He looked windblown and out of breath and ... virile. What a horrid, shocking word. Where had that thought come from? | Mary Balogh | ||
| 7c266c5 | I do not wish to sit for a portrait, Mr. Cunningham," the elder Miss Westcott informed him. "I will do so only to please my grandmother. But I do not want to hear any nonsense about capturing my essence, which is apparently what you did or tried to do with Mrs. Dance. You may paint what you see and be done with it." "Cam," her younger sister said reproachfully. "I am perfectly sure Mr. Cunningham knows what he is doing, Camille," her grandm.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 73eaadb | the slightest noise, | Mary Balogh | ||
| 36568dc | for a rest." Freyja uttered her peculiar derisive snort" | Mary Balogh | ||
| 797db9d | We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same. | individuality | Mary Balogh | |
| 3bff32a | You have a disconcerting way of looking at me so directly that I feel as though you could see right through into my soul, Mr. Cunningham," she said. "I suppose it is the artist in you." | Mary Balogh | ||
| 0596d6f | I think | Mary Balogh | ||
| 025f2a3 | Everything about my life was a lie and remained so until after his death. What I set as my primary goal in life was all a mirage in a vast, empty desert. | Mary Balogh | ||
| cd51f05 | studied its architecture and intricate decoration | Mary Balogh | ||
| d926f64 | By God, he thought, she was a fascinating person. She was going to take some knowing, some understanding. For the first time in a long while he began to doubt his artistic abilities. How would he ever get her right? And what would he do if he never could? Paint her anyway? | Mary Balogh | ||
| 96a55de | his description | Mary Balogh | ||
| 1f98ed3 | more annoying than her general righteousness. But Camille | Mary Balogh | ||
| a11b1a3 | Miss Heyden," he said at last, "I have not even seen your face." | Mary Balogh | ||
| 5858f6b | One cannot live from one day into the next without changing. It is the nature of life. Small choices are always necessary even when large ones do not loom. I will change what I choose to change and retain what I choose to retain. I will even listen to advice since it is foolish not to, provided the adviser has something of value to say. But I will not choose between Anna and Lady Anastasia, for I am both. I merely have to decide, one choice.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 562d9d2 | She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon. | Mary Balogh | ||
| d6c5638 | His friend laughed. 'You missed your calling, Freddie,' he said. 'You should have been one of the aforementioned clergy. Is this what marriage does to you? One shudders at the very idea. | marriage romance humor witty-banter dancing-with-clara regency-romance mary-balogh regency dialogue cynicism | Mary Balogh | |
| 12eb5a4 | Good Lord, even to his own ears they sounded like a pair of coconspirators being so overhearty in their enthusiastic simulation of innocence that they proclaimed themselves as guilty as hell. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 14369f1 | was someone with her to hold her hand. The master of the house in which she had been forced to take refuge because her younger brothers and sister had the measles or would have soon and she was too young to be left in the London house alone. It was a little humiliating. "Thank you," she said to the butler. And then she leaned forward to speak to her host and hostess. "I must have taken a wrong turning. I found myself in a maze of narrow and.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| f389f3a | If he ever grew to understand himself, Hugo decided, it would be a miracle of the first order. Not | Mary Balogh | ||
| f05ef72 | She hated him. She believed the heavy ache in her heart would never go away. And then she felt sudden panic. Her portrait. Her precious painting. She had left home without it! Home? Home? All the fashionable world rode or drove or promenaded in Hyde Park late in the afternoon during the spring Season. Everyone came to see and be seen, to gossip and be gossiped about, to display and observe all the latest fashions, to flirt and be flirted wi.. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 5d870fd | She could remember him at church, sitting with his family in the second pew, behind her and her mother. She had worn her hair in long braids as a child, and she had liked to toss the braids over the back of the seat, where they would not dig into her back. One Sunday morning she had been forced to sit through most of her father's lengthy sermon with her head tilted back at an unnatural angle while Christopher's knee had kept her braid held .. | Mary Balogh | ||
| efe4892 | was, licking | Mary Balogh | ||
| 6c3f27d | Negativity could be frighteningly contagious. Even | Mary Balogh | ||
| 586e779 | I do not expect you to understand, Mr. Cunningham. You do not have the experience to understand what has happened to me, just as I do not have the experience to understand what has happened to you in the course of your life." "That is where human empathy comes in," he said. "If we did not have it and cultivate it, Miss Westcott, we would not understand or sympathize with anyone, for we are all unique in our experience." | Mary Balogh | ||
| e3a2c2c | And yet he had taken her to that inn wanting to soothe himself with feminine compassion and warmth. Her very silence and self-possession had inflamed him, angered him. He had wanted her to reach out to him as no one had reached out for more years than he could recall, and she had looked at him with steady acceptance of what she must do to earn her living. He cursed softly and turned from the | Mary Balogh | ||
| 759f6ea | Wept for the death of an ardent and immature love that had been unable to bring any comfort or peace to the beloved. And wept for the woman he had taken to wife with such high ideals--the woman who had just killed herself rather than face a final illness with only his arms to comfort her. Wept for his own frailty and infidelity. For his own humanness. He | Mary Balogh | ||
| 8e0c2a9 | It is the gentleman's job to match his pace and his step to the lady's. men do not have. All the power in the world, you see, despite what women often believe. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 24ecbc7 | But life and pain go hand and hand. On e cannot live fully unless one faces pain at least occasionally. | Mary Balogh | ||
| a1c719a | what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her. She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested and tried .. | Mary Balogh | ||
| 129c1f6 | He watched her go, wondering if life ever offered happiness in more than very small, very brief doses. T | Mary Balogh | ||
| 7435c06 | Adaptamos nuestra vida a las circunstancias y cogemos la felicidad donde la encontramos, aun cuando solo sea en momentos pasajeros. O hacemos eso o nos perdemos la oportunidad de aceptar la gracia en nuestra vida. Este es un momento feliz. Lo recordare. | felicidade vida | Mary Balogh | |
| 9862f94 | Lord Francis sighed. "When you get back to Bedlam, Soph," he said, "ask them to reserve a room for me, will you? There's a good girl. I am going to be needing it soon." Sophia clucked her tongue and spurred her horse to a canter. Lord Francis shook his head and went after her." | Mary Balogh | ||
| a3f25d1 | I suppose," he said, his voice harsher than he had intended it to be, "you want marriage again." "No," she said quickly. "No, never that. Not again. Why would any woman willingly make herself the property of a man and suffer all the humiliation of submerging her character and her very identity in his?" | Mary Balogh | ||
| d8e692b | She hastily tried to shut the door. But his forearm shot up and held it open. They stared at each other for several silent moments. "What are you doing here?" she demanded at last. It was only at that moment that she realized Lady Baird was standing behind him. "Pitting my strength against yours to hold the door open," he said in his usual bored, rather haughty tone. "It is a battle you cannot win, Catherine. Let us in?" | Mary Balogh | ||
| 38d2c9c | The ladies perhaps had the advantage in the sheer size of | Mary Balogh |