Sometimes Hen...I think I would give my life just for one of your smiles.

Society is capricious and rewards the bad as often as the good. But it never rewards the quiet.

And what renders him so unmarriageable?” Eloise asked. Francesca leveled a serious stare at her older sister. Eloise was mad if she thought she should set her cap for Michael. “Well?” Eloise prodded. “He could never remain faithful to one woman,” Fran-cesca said, “and I doubt you‟d be willing to put up with infidelities.” “No,” Eloise murmured, “not unless he‟d be willing to put up with severe bodily injury.

This thing between them, this bond—it wasn’t just passion, and it wasn’t wicked. It was love, and it was divine.

James started to laugh. His chin hurt where she'd smacked him twice, his foot throbbed where she'd stepped on it, and his entire body felt as if he'd swum through a rosebush, which wasn't as far off the truth as it sounded. Yet still he started to laugh.

It was funny, he reflected later, how one’s life could alter in an instant, how one minute everything could be a certain way, and the next it’s simply ... not

The girl doesn’t need a violin,” he added. “She needs to have her hands bound so she can never touch an instrument again.