You don't want me to feel obligated? Well, I'm sorry, Lily. I am here because I feel obligated." He brought her hand to his chest, pressing her palm flat against his rapidly thumping pulse. "I'm obligated by my heart. It's decided you're essential to my existence, you see. And it's threatening to go out on labor strike if I don't make you mine this very day. So yes. I am here on bended knee, acting from a deep, undeniable sense of obligation. I am, quite simply, yours." He swallowed hard. "If you'll have me.

She would allow him to comfort her. And perhaps, someday, she would listen patiently if a dark, dreary night found him well in his cups and he drunkenly confessed to still feeling scores of wounds that weren’t his own, but those of men under his command.

This is true valor, I hope you know. Legends have sprung from less. All Lancelot did was paddle about in a balmy lake.” She smiled. “Lancelot was a knight. You’re a viscount. The bar is higher.

Cleverness is like rouge - liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.

The further he raided, the closer he came to the other rooms. Those unused, cobwebbed chambers of her heart. Would he dare to venture there? She doubted. Jumping off a cliff was a flashy sort of courage, but a man would need true strength and valor to break through those padlocked doors. There were dark, uncharted spaces within her that had been built to house love, and even she was afraid to explore them. Terrified to learn just how vast and how achingly empty they truly were.

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

I'm not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel." "Why not? Because I'm a woman?" "No, because I've seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You'd shoot me dead where I stood.