Just be quiet and accept the praise.

He gave her his best smile. His best I-almost-died-so-how-can-you-deny-me smile. Or at least that’s how he hoped it appeared. The truth was, he wasn’t a very accomplished flirt, and it might very well have come across as an Iam- mildly-deranged-so-it’s-in-all-of-our-best-interests-if-youpretend- to-agree-with-me smile.

Michael nodded tersely, eyeing a table across the room. It was empty. So empty. So joyfully, blessedly empty. He could picture himself a very happy man at that table. "Not feeling very conversational this evening, are we?" Colin asked, breaking into his (admittedly tame) fantasies.

Did you know I have always suspected that men were idiots," Daphne ground out, "but I was never positive until today.

Heartache, Daphne eventually learned, never really went away; it just dulled. The sharp, stabbing pain that one felt with each breath eventually gave way to a blunter, lower ache—the kind that one could almost—but never quite—ignore.

Gareth turned to Gregory. “Your sister will be safe with me,” he said. “I give you my vow.” “Oh, I have no worries on that score,” Gregory said with a bland smile. “The real question is—will you be safe with her?” It was a good thing, Gareth later reflected, that Hyacinth had already quit the room to fetch her coat and her maid. She probably would have killed her brother on the spot.

I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.