Quotes from Mary Balogh

Light flirtation was in danger of giving way to something less comfortable.

But she had smiled and reached out her hands for his—had he held his own out first? He could not remember. All the world had been reaching out to him, and he had taken her hands in his and known he was at home again.

She wants him to stay. She wants to be persuaded.

Life on a large estate for a single gentleman can become very lonely.

For the rest of her life she would miss him and love him. But for this moment she was here in his arms and nothing else mattered. If he were a murderer and a traitor, it would not matter at the moment. Now was all that was important.

Piers was the last person she had expected to see. She had thought never to see him again. And he was unmarried, unbetrothed, unattached.

However, I did not go home, and I must face him. And I shall do so without a blush or a tremor. I shall not give him the satisfaction of knowing that I even remember yesterday and last night.

She hastily tried to shut the door. But his forearm shot up and held it open. They stared at each other for several silent moments. "What are you doing here?" she demanded at last. It was only at that moment that she realized Lady Baird was standing behind him. "Pitting my strength against yours to hold the door open," he said in his usual bored, rather haughty tone. "It is a battle you cannot win, Catherine. Let us in?

Her smile was suddenly brightly amused, reminding him of the girl he had once known and loved.

But sometimes she had found time to be alone, to seek peace, to seek the remnants of herself.

She tried not to think. She tried to allow the quietness and the dusk to soothe her and heal her.

And I am to smile benevolently at all these happy couples?

He had come. It had been somehow inevitable.

She had been dazed, astounded by the discovery that she, too, had loved for some time without realizing it.

Good Lord, even to his own ears they sounded like a pair of coconspirators being so overhearty in their enthusiastic simulation of innocence that they proclaimed themselves as guilty as hell.

That kiss! The memory of it, brief as it had been, so consumed her with embarrassment that her mind shied away from it altogether—and could think of nothing else. Not just the kiss but the mortifying knowledge that she had burned for him, that her womb had throbbed with the need to feel him there. Mortifying indeed!

It was a strange moment, beyond time. It was unreasonable, what was happening, what was about to happen, but it was a moment beyond reason.

It may not be finished between us after all, Christina. It may be just beginning.

She could not bear the thought of missing a single minute this evening in which she might be either looking at him or at least feeling his presence.

It was a fear that disappeared once the action started, to be replaced by the mad bloodlust that was sometimes called courage.

You shared a very private feeling with me, he said. I have merely returned the compliment.

And he had felt all the responsibility of knowing that she was deeply in love with him.

Ah, said a voice from close by. Some fellow mortals . . . What a relief! I thought I was doomed to wander about the forest for the rest of my days. I have very little sense of direction, I'm afraid.

They were all dependent upon him—and he did not like her.