“If I’d been there, I might have been able to do something. But I wasn’t, and I lost them.”“And if you’d been there,” Ty said softly, “I would have lost you.”

“Tease,” Ty accused softly.“Do I have your attention now?” Zane drawled.“You never lost it,” Ty responded before thinking better of it.”

“I think I grew up that night. It might have been Patrick that lost his virginity, but it was me that lost my innocence.”

“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

“Tony squeezed her hand and whispered, “It’s as beautiful as I remember.”“Have you been here – recently?”“No, I’d be lost without you.”

“I could have been stronger,” she said. “I wasn’t enough to keep something so important.”