“What have I done to her?" Gabriel muttered to himself as he crossed the room to crank open a window. Cool air washed over his skin. "What the devil did she do to me?”

“It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman.”

“Before Charlotte could utter a syllable, Tristan picked up her gloved hand and kissed her lightly on theknuckles.“Good day, Charlotte,” he said.“Good day,” she answered. She turned to bid farewell to Lady Rosalind, but she seemed to havedisappeared.Numbly, she descended the front steps toward a waiting Rothbury, who only had eyes for the Devines’front door, looking quite like he wanted to murder someone.“Perfection, dear brother,” Rosalind proclaimed, while peeking out the little window next to the door.“Utter perfection.”Slipping a finger inside his cravat to loosen it a bit, Tristan craned his neck from side to side, easing thebuilding tension. “If he kills me, I’ll see to it that you get hanged for murder as well.”

“He did not blame them. Because in truth, that's what he did, what he was. Seduce and dominate. Charm and manipulate. A user of women. How they would scoff, Rothbury mused bitterly, if they knew that he was secretly in love with the silly little chit, spectacles and all.”

“You are beautiful and humble and sensitive and the keeper of my heart.I know it will take some time, growing up with a beast of a guardian as you did, but there will come a day when you no longer criticize yourself, no longer believe less of yourself, and you will come to love yourself just as much as I love you.Well, almost as much, I imagine.-Gabriel Devine, Duke of Wolverest-”

“I never smiled much." His voice was a low purr in the shadows. "Don't be silly," she replied, taking a step closer to the next portrait--and farther away from him. "You smile all the time." "At you," he conceded, "with you, because of you.”

“Indeed, Gabriel knew it wasn't all just empty green fields of moorland grass for miles around. Tucked within the wide landscapes of these uplands was an unpredictability that a less observant person might never be aware of. There were waterfalls concealed in swaths of wilderness, rocky stream beds ramblings in deep valleys, and...knotted sheets?”