I cannot feel like a duchess in my mother’s sitting room.” “What do you feel like, then?” “Hmmm.” She took a sip of her tea. “Just Daphne Bridgerton, I suppose. It’s difficult to shed the surname in this clan. In spirit, that is.” “I hope that is a compliment,” Lady Bridgerton remarked. Daphne just smiled at her mother. “I shall never escape you, I’m afraid.” She turned to Gareth. “There is nothing like one’s family to make one feel like one has never grown up.

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.

He loved her. He wanted her. He needed her. And he needed her now.

My mother is convinced that yellow is a happy color and that a happy girl would get a husband. -Penelope Featherington

As his hands moved to his trousers, he saw that she was pulling the bedsheets over her. "Don't," he said, barely recognizing his own voice. Her eyes met his, and he said, "I'll be your blanket".

No. Haven’t you been listening?” Marcus would always remember that moment. It was to be the first time he would ever be faced with that most vexing of female quirks: the question that had nothing but wrong answers.

Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?