“Uriah looked better than he did an hour ago--he washed the blood from his mouth, and some of the color returned to his face. I'm struck, suddenly, by how handsome he is-- all his features are proportionate, his eyes dark and lively, his skin bronze-brown. And he has probably always been handsome. Only boys who have been handsome from a young age have that arrogance in their smile. Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles like he is surprised you bothered to look at him from the first place.”

“His face almost looked the way it did when he was a teenager, when there was the subtle expression of both confidence and mischief in his darkly handsome eyes. When I think of him now, though, I don’t picture his face the way it is. What I see is from a memory, from a moment when he must have been eleven or twelve years old and we were both in our backyard and it was summertime and I was drawing in a coloring book and he was there in the green grass and he didn’t know I was watching him. He was crawling around on all fours; he was practicing being a lion or a tiger or more probably a leopard and he was growling to himself, stalking the shadow of a bird, and he didn’t see me staring at him and I think my mother was there, looking at us from an upstairs window, watching us both and gently smiling, and what I remember most is that all of us were happy then with who we were at that moment; at that moment, all of us were quietly happy.”

“I watch Stewart. He has the most interesting face. It is beautiful, young, almost childlike, and yet with a power and authority in his features. In another time he would have been a young warrior, a Lost Prince exiled from his kingdom. But he's from this time, this place, so he's just some "at risk" kid who can't find a place for himself in the straight world.”

“Sharp!" called a voice from outside the stable.It might as well have been the voice of God Himself, only he wasn't coming to save anyone.She jerked her hand from Gabriel's breeches in a panic. "That's Poppy! He can't find us like this."Gabriel stared at her uncomprehendingly for a second.She shook him. "If he finds you here with me, there will be no wedding, no duel, no nothing except your handsome body speared on that pitchfork over there."A lazy grin crossed his face. "You think I'm handsome?""Gabriel!""Oh, all right." He stood and brushed the straw from his skin and breeches."-Gabriel and Virginia”

“I had a tendency to forget how handsome he was when I was plotting how to peel his skin from the network of muscles and sinew that danced as he moved.”

“What would you tell her about me?”He did not just ask that.“You did not just ask that.” She chuckled.“I’m serious,” he smiled.“Very well, if you must know, I would say that you are arrogant and foolish, too handsome for your own good and far too cognizant of your own intellect. Unbending, unsympathetic, dogmatic, pig-headed—”“Handsome?” he interrupted, unable to keep the smile from his face. “And intelligent?”“Don’t forget arrogant.”