But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.

All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking?

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?

I am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else." "I love you," he said again.

One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.