Gail Dayton

“Amanusa sighed. She held out her hand to her husband who helped her to her feet. "Back to the salt mine Grey calls a workroom. I left my students practicing lancing.""Good god," Grey exclaimed. "The floors will be awash in blood.""Hardly. They're practicing on themselves. Most of them haven't managed to pierce the skin yet." Amanusa shook her head in mild disappointment.”

“The warmth in his eyes flared to heat and he captured her hand in both of his, bending over it to hold his lips against the back a long moment. He did not exactly kiss it so much as breathe her in. She feared her hand smelled of bacon, but he didn't seem to care.”

“She gathered herself up- rather like collecting her skirts before mountibg a carriage”

“Pearl spent the passing days buried so deep in the musty, dusty sorcery tomes that sometimes when she emerged, she spoke in archaic english. "Hast thou a light?" she'd asked him this afternoon when her study room had grown dark with gathering clouds.”

“Pleased as punch. That's an odd-sounding turn of phrase, isn't it? How can a punch be pleased? It's punch. Rum and lemons and such. And if it's the other sort of punch they mean, a punch in the face- well that doesn't sound very pleasing at all, does it?”

“I mean it today. And tomorrow, it will be today again, and I will mean it for that today. It's always today, Pearl. Don't worry about tomorrow, because it's always today, and every today we have, I will mean it. I will not leave you. Not willingly. Dont't make my mistake. Let me unmake it. Don't throw me away.”