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This wasn’t a case of gilding the lily. If there was a lily underneath all that, it had long since been crushed to a pulp. The party stopped in its tracks as she took off her cloak, frozen in wordless contemplation of a wardrobe that made the word “gaudy” sound sweet and demure by contrast.
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He was nothing but a deep abyss of want, and only she could fill him. He didn’t want to turn at the sound of her voice. If he simply stared into the hydrangea for long enough…then he would be a coward. He turned to face the woman who could bring him to his knees.
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I’m going to explode,” she muttered. “Into a cloud of dust and despair.
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If eyes were windows to the soul, hers had been bricked up to avoid taxation.
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In this world, you’re either playing the game or you’re a pawn on the board.
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"Maybe that’s what I have been looking for. When storms and rockslides threaten, I am looking for someone who will hold on to me and not let go.” He was talking about friendship, but the way he looked at her… She would crackle like fire if he touched her.
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But to call it looking was like calling an eighteen-course feast a snack.
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“Oh, dear.” Free looked down, fluttering her eyelashes demurely. “Is my punctuation showing once more?
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She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.
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Some servent with no sense of the symbolic had kept the hinges well-oiled during the years of his absence, as if their marital life had merely been cast into temporary abeyance.
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But the Duke of Clermont was smiling and cheerful, and he’d thrown it out there as if it were merely one more fact to be recounted. The weather is lovely. The streets are paved with cobblestone. Your tits are magnificent.
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“Jessica," he said gravely. "I will be your champion, if you let me. If I have to take on the role of knight, I want to be yours. Let me be your protector.
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You really shouldn’t blame men for everything.” “No, just the ninety-eight percent of society’s ills they’re responsible for.
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Burn that one to the ground, Violet, and dance on the ashes. And damn anyone who tells you it’s selfish to do so.
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Oh, yes. In my future, a man will control all my possessions if I marry him, I shan’t be allowed to vote, and I won’t be given the opportunity to earn a living by any means except on my back - but by all means, the most dire threat I face is freckles.
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“Violet,” he said. “How could I say I loved you and expect you to do something you didn’t want?
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He was 'susceptible' to her. If he wasn't careful, he might end up nursing a full-blown interest.
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"Family isn’t a matter of history. Or biology,” he said softly. “It’s a matter of choice.”
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He couldn't bring himself to look directly at her. Her gown was the color of daylight just before sunset; if he looked at her too long, he feared he might be left blind once she was gone.
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The vicar gave him permission and he kissed her - not hard, for lust, nor long, for love, but a light brush of his lips for the brief space of time that she would stay in his life.
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An unreadable response was heaps better than an unprintable one.
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You see, I'm not some shiny bauble to be strung onto a necklace and displayed for all the world to see. I'm too proud to ever be anyone's conquest.
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The question wasn’t when things had changed. It was this: When had he decided to simply accept society’s rules, to play the game precisely as it had been laid out by those who already had power?
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The Bible got it wrong when it intimated that the valley contained the shadow of death. Death dwells in the high places.