Can you be sure?" "I haven't spent the last fifteen hundred years learning how to knit my own socks, boy!" The crone looked like she might box Heinrich's ears, if she could reach them.

Be careful. Wait out your year. Come home.

Even now, Dickon was upstairs, writing sonnets to his new love, while back at Seadown House, Marianne was writing 'Ella' on scraps of paper and then burning them.

But I really would love to give her a very special gift. I was hoping if I did, she might give me a kiss in return, instead of the brotherly hugs I always get instead.

Pansy rolled over and went to sleep, but Petunia stayed awake long after Olga left, and long after Oliver crawled out from under the bed, grabbed some sandwiches, and slipped out the door. She hoped that he was going to Galen and Rose's room, and she hoped, too that he hadn't known she was awake when he had leaned over and kissed her hair. She wanted to savor that touch forever.

We're almost there, Oliver said. Once again Petunia was so startled that she tripped and would have fallen is Oliver hadn't caught her around the waist and pulled her upright. "You must have been far away," he said laughing.

I've faced worse than a dressmaker who breaths fire.