Quotes from Julie Anne Long

And in his weariness, only one word came to Jonathan, like a prayer. Tommy, he thought, invoking what was good and real. Tommy. The word for love in his world right now. Tommy. And he supposed the word that occurred to you in your darkest moments...well, that word meant love. That was perhaps how you knew. And perhaps that was the purpose of dark moments.

A nondescript place, but it had inevitably changed over the years; one of the old oaks had been split by lightning and now lay on its side, and the others had grown into behemoths around their fallen comrade.

She knew again the delicious little frisson of fear that came with walking the edge of something she knew better than to cross. She had forgotten what this was like. How a man could heighten every moment, remind you of the point of possessing sight and smell, let alone skin and nerve endings and a heart. That a man could so easily make your heart sing like a bloody lark or plummet like a stone.

silence spread like a stain.

eyes fixed on her as though she were the first sign of land after months at sea.

Time spent with the man was a bit like spending time with sand down one's trousers.

Fallen woman. The term made a sort of poetic sense. Once the fall started, it seemed it never stopped.

After all, "justice" was really another word for commerce, something every man at the mercy of it eventually learns.

The question remains... who takes care of you, Miss Vale? I might ask the same question of you, Lord Dryden.

You wouldn't consider riding me, would you?' he asked politely. 'You've lovely manners, she purred. 'But of course.

Only two things kept her from loathing him. The expression on his face when he'd said, France. And the expression on his face when he'd said, home.

It was all there was of life: moments of grace between the upheavals and changes.

I should be honored if you would dance with me, Lady Derring," Mr. Farraday said, because he possessed excellent manners and because Delilah was smiling sweetly at him and he was as putty in her hands. But then, in the hands of the right woman, Mr. Farraday was the sort who would be putty for the rest of his days.

Life is short, Tommy. Short and dangerous. A bit like you.

His entire life was probably sorted into neat little columns.

Backward now?' he suggested. 'Are you going to call out our lovemaking like a billiards game?

The way to achieve the impossible is to simply do it as if it were the most possible thing in the world.

But we have to be stronger and braver and cleverer than men are and not give them what they want simply because we find them charming. At which point, contrary creatures that they are, they will find us irresistible.

Colin could not recall a single women ever regarding him with anything so neutral as detachment.It suddenly seemed important to ascertain if she was pretty, in the same way it was necessary to know whether a man was armed.

This man offered her forever. And if Prescott had asked a month ago...If he'd asked the day before she'd encountered Jonathan Redmond at midnight outside the Duke of Greyfolk's house... Ah, but she was a different woman now. One kiss had changed that. And a ballroom orgasm.

He had looked into the barrel of enemy rifles, the slavering jaws of a furious bear, the lifeless faces of his father and brother. He could build a home from the stripped timbers on up, shoot to kill nearly anything, expertly hold a newborn baby. He figured he'd been tested in more ways than Hercules, and in the end he supposed he was grateful that the war had sorted the entirety of his life into two categories for him: what was worth living for, what was worth dying for.

He wanted to be a man she admired. The way he admired her. He wanted her to think of him as brave. He wanted to be better because of her, and for her. He was better because of her. She'd changed him irrevocably.

Because he spoke to her the way no one else had ever spoken to her, which meant he saw her in a way no one else saw her.

And...well he recalled hearing that Sir Galahad had been speechless when he'd first clapped eyes on the grail. It was a bit like that. Words seemed both pointless and impossible. But Galahad had allegedly been pure of heart, and that's where the comparison ended. Hugh's thoughts were anything but.