So there’s an . . . an etiquette to raking. Some seducer’s code of honor. Is this what you’re telling me?

We have to get out of here, Bram. Before they take our bollocks and use them for pincushions.

I knew right then you were the only one for me." He pulled her hand from his face, kissed her palm, then pressed it flat against his chest. "Beatings, battles, fights. No matter how bleak the circumstance, no matter how my soul despaired ... this heart never once gave up." His voice deepened, went thick with emotion. "I've a theory as to why. Do you want to hear it?" She nodded. "This heart is yours. It's yours," he said. "It always will be.

So there’s an . . . an etiquette to raking. Some seducer’s code of honor. Is this what you’re telling me?

Jesus. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Judith, Eve. Trouble, every last one. Add Minerva Highwood to the list.

I’m so sorry we’ll never meet,” she whispered, laying her posy atop the late Lord and Lady Payne’s grave. “But thank you. For him. I promise, I’ll love him as fiercely as I can. Kindly send down some blessings when you can spare them. We’ll probably need them, from time to time.

He quietly groaned. Again and again, he’d witnessed this phenomenon with his friends. They got married. They were happy in that sated, grateful way of infrequently pleasured men with a now-steady source of coitus. Then they went about crowing as if they’d invented the institution of matrimony and stood to earn a profit for every bachelor they could convert.