A lot could happen in a week. Just look at the last one.

He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge. And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew- she knew far to much.

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

He ought to buy her a new dress. She would never accept it, of course, but maybe if her current garments were accidentally burned... ...But how could he manage to burn her dress? She'd have to not be wearing it, and that posed a certain challenge in and of itself.

I knew nothing but love and devotion when I was growing up. Trust me, it makes everything easier.

I am going to kill you," he hissed. She gulped. "Don't you want to lecture me first?" He stared at her with a heavy dose of stupefaction. "I take that back," he said with precisely clipped words. "First I am going to strangle you, and then I am going to kill you." "Here?" she asked doubtfully, looking around. "Won't my dead body look suspicious in the morning?

And, she was able to tell herself with some satisfaction, the man in question - one Colin Bridgerton - felt precisely the same way.... ....His earth shook, his heart leaped, and Penelope knew without a doubt that his breath was taken away as well. For a good ten seconds. Falling off a horse tended to do that to a man.