Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.

He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

Her heart the damned thing had begun to race and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn't visible beneath her fitted bodice.