“She didn't want to think about how wrong this was or how foolish it was to give herself to a known seducer. Because tonight Oliver wasn't that man. Not to her. He was the boy who'd cried over his dead mother, the young man who'd lost himself in drink and women to forget the past, the marquess who'd vowed not to marry for money. He was the man to be her lover.”

“How pointless, harboring romantic fantasies about a man who'd made it abundantly clear that he wasn't interested.”

“She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane.”

“I dinna think tis romantic when a man says he's willin' t' give his life fer the woman he loves. Give me instead a man who'd fight to keep us both alive and kickin'! There's naught rommantic about a dead man, beau or no.”

“How, then, was she--his wife, who'd taken a vow to remain with him in sickness and in health--supposed to justify ending the marriage and breaking up their family after everything they have been through? When all she really wanted was the man she'd once believed him to be”

“He stood there, drinking her in like he was a thirsty man and she was water in the desert. Because his soul...his foolish and hopeful soul...wanted her just as much as she wanted him." ~ Anew: The Archers of Avalon”