Wendy, Lady Evelyn Quince

“If you don’t love your characters who else will?”
― Teresa Denys

“When I heard you were almost surely dead, that’s when I knew what you were to me. My woman. You rode back to me from the dead. I’ll never let you go again.”

Weak and spent, I said desperately, as if I were shouting at him in a foreign language, “You don’t love me or you’d care what I feel!”

“I do care. In a year you’ll love me.”

Even at that moment, when I hated him, my blood quickened as he smiled. I cried defiance as much to my treacherous body as to him. “I won’t. I’ll hate you more than I do know. “

“We’ll see.” He cupped my chin and raised my face. “You’re tired darling. Sleep now. You can give me your answer in the morning.”

I couldn’t let him kill Trace. But to submit to those muscular, golden-haired arms? Let him do the things Trace had? And it wouldn’t be for one time only, I was sure of that. Court might after a season let me go, but I had a frightening dread that if he possessed me long enough, he would drain me till I became his thing, his creature—that I wouldn’t go, even if he allowed it and Trace would take me.”
― Jeanne Williams, A Lady Bought with Rifles

“I work the terraces, Miss Jones. I bring forth the champagne and the wine. I ensure that the chateau remains a perfect example of French architecture. I pay the wages of the workers. I give the orders and flourish the phantom whip, but I am only the caretaker of Satancourt and its cellar.”
― Violet Winspear, Devil in a Silver Room

“Nostalgia is much more than a defense against negative feelings. Nostalgia puts us on the offense. When we experience nostalgia, we aren’t running to the past for protection. We are pulling the past to the present to help us plan the future.”
― Clay Routledge, Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life