“She wanted to buckle, lie on her side and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe.”

“Moreover,' he mused relentlessly, 'I think that you'll be dreaming of me perhaps until the day you die.'She clapped her book shut then and stood abruptly. 'It was only,' she ground out, 'a kiss.''Was it?' He was laughing now.'And moreover,' she all but growled, 'you, Lord Rawden, murmured my name rather feverishly into my throat, as I recall.'His smile disappeared. Good God, but a man didn't like to be reminded of the things he did or said in the heat of passion. She was a very good player. He eyed her somewhat cautiously.'And you were breathing rather like a bellows,' she continued. 'Like a mating bull.''A mating bull?' Trust a country girl to arrive at this particular analogy.”

“And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him.“I love you.”Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in London in such a small voice.And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn’t blink. But then she realized she’d somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment.His hands remained at his sides.Which is when she noticed they were trembling.God help her, that’s when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes.One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it.And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn’t a good deal louder than hers.“Then it’s just as well that I love you, Genevieve.”

“What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him. "Well, I'm partial to whores."Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or... or..."Whor... whores...?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke. He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly. "I... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard.”

“I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?'She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock.'Because nothing could,' he added. Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her.Oh dear God!He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded.'No! God... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better... than you already are.”

“Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. “I believe it’s the devil’s job to tempt me. Not yours.”“And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?”“None that I can detect.”

“She needed to know more. “But that means…”“It means I love you, Violet. I have never said that aloud to another human being.”He said it quickly and tonelessly. As if he was afraid of the words. Violet stood basking in those words the way she might a sunbeam after a long, gray day. She closed her eyes. And she knew she was lit from within.“Do not let me just stand here having said those words,” he said stiffly. “It’s undignified.”“I love you, too,” she said softly, hurriedly. Feeling abashed. Eyes still closed. Egads. So this was what it was like to be in love. Awkward and foolish, indeed.”