He smiled. "How kind of you to confirm what I already know. Perhaps next you will introduce me to myself. I hear I am quite popular.

Miss Masters was not content with threatening to hire away his staff, oh no. First, she had to perfume it.

Or perhaps, despite your brave words to my parents, you've forgotten what love and loyalty look like. They aren't sacraments, Jane, for only God is perfect, only Go deserves our love without judgement. Men--women--we make mistakes. We judge those we love. But we keep loving them anyway, because we know that mistakes can be repaired, and that tomorrow, our love will be deserved again. It only takes faith--or loyalty, as you called it. Those ARE what tie a family together, through tick and thin. And they tie a husband and wife together, too. There is no happy ending, you're right--not in the singular. but in a marriage, there might be countless happy endings and even more sweet beginnings, if loyalty and love are what guide you.

Manners come down to a single principle, talk of nothing that might actually prove interesting.

I deserve better —such a dangerous, mad thought for a woman to entertain.

For a woman's words to wound would require a man to listen first!

What modern art required was an imagination drawn to possibilities, rather than braced by smug presumptions.

He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.

You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.

I admit, that the brain does not govern the body as well as one might wish- else all men would be saints and hell would be empty of lechers.

I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.

Lord John: 'The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.' Lady Nora: 'I am sorry to hear that, I suppose it takes some wit to produce one's own entertainment. Are you often bored?

She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others' responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved.

I've heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness

Surely this is what death would be like: nothingness, oblivion, as the world continued to turn, heedless of her absence.

She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.

If Gerry were dying of thirst and spotted Alex two feet from a well, he still would not think he required his younger brother's help. It simply would never occur to him that Alex might be able to provide it.

There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.

and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights.""No", she said. "Not particularly.""Only missteps."She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer." "So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.

For God's sake, Gwen," he said gently. "What matter that I love you. That's not the bit that's always been missing."Her lips parted. They wished to ask a question she could not bear to bring herself to ask. He was never less than honest. The answer, than, was bound to be wrong."So she did not ask it as a question. "You won't leave me," she said.He drew a long breath. "There," he said, quietly, fiercely. "That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen." His hands closed on her wrists, tightening until she swallowed and found her courage and looked up at him. "I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.

Alex understood such discipline. He knew the rarity of it, and the cost. And on the rare occasions when he happened to touch her, he did wonder what else she might have been, if she had not been so determined to be typical.