Here's the thing about home: you can create it most anywhere, as long as you gather your people around you.

Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.

Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?

Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.

Years ago, before this estate was generously and unwillingly turned over to the crown, the lord here was a genuine dimwit. He had a minister stashed behind his throne to whisper clever things to say.

He nodded. "And if I don't make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don't deserve to be near you.

... until Miri could not help it any longer and she laughed out loud. The sound broke the game. Peder looked at her. He reached out, and she thought he meant to grab her straw or perhaps yank her hair as he used to when they were little. But her put his hand behind her head and, leaning forward, pulled her face to his. He kissed her. One long, slow kiss.