I still don’t get why I have to eat breakfast if you don’t,” Josie muttered. “Because you have to be a certain age to earn the right to ruin your own life.

Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish?

Leo smiled and stroked her hair. 'We'll both be fine, Marks. We've just begun our journey...and there's so much we have yet to do.' He spoke more softly as he heard her breathing turn even and steady. 'Rest against my heart. Let me watch over your dreams. And know that tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, you'll awaken next to someone who loves you.' 'Dodger?' she mumbled against his chest, and he grinned. 'No, your confounded ferret will have to stay in his basket. I was referring to myself.' 'Yes, I know.' Catherine slid her hand up to his cheek. 'Only you,' she said. 'Always you.

I’ve told you before, I love like a madman,” he said. “Immoderate, jealous, possessive...I’m absolutely intolerable.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

Of all the Hathaway sisters,” Cam said equably, “Beatrix is the one most suited to choose her own husband. I trust her judgment.” Beatrix gave him a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Cam.” “What are you thinking?” Leo demanded of his brother-in-law. “You can’t trust Beatrix’s judgment.” “Why not?” “She’s too young,” Leo said. “I’m twenty-three,” Beatrix protested. “In dog years I’d be dead.

I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding." "To save your reputation?" Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me.