Eloisa James

She sent Amelie to inform Maydrop that she donned an evening dress made of a heavy, supple olive green silk that gleamed under candlelight. It fell from the bodice, but rather than belling out, the silk was cut on the bias and hugged every curve of her body.The bodice was gathered under her breasts and trimmed with dark copper lace that glimmered with shiny black beads. and widened into short sleeves. Her hair was pulled straight back from her forehead without even a wisp floating at her ears, and she waved away the ruby necklace Amelie offered. She wanted no distraction from her face.She did, however, slide a sparkling ruby onto her right hand, a present she had given to herself when Ryburn Weavers made its first thousand guineas in profit.How better to remember that milestone than to wear a sizable percentage it on one's finger?Finally, Amelie drew out a small brush and skillfully applied a few strategic dabs of face paint. The last thing Theo wanted was to try to look conventionally feminine, but she'd discovered that a thin line of kohl made her eyes look deep and mysterious.

Beauty had just squatted under one of the chairs lining the hallway. A small trickle was creeping across the marble floor.'She's too intelligent to pay mind to me,' Lady Sylvia said blandly. 'All three dogs are French, and they behave just like Frenchmen. Decorative but peevish.

I don't want Christmas season to end, because it's the only time I can legitimately indulge in on particular addiction: glitter.

Toward evening, Harriet found herself thinking the oddest thoughts: that twilight is not really dark. It's gray. The sun gone, the world turns gray, without emotion, without color. It seemed a fitting time for a little girl to slip free of all this pain, to let go.

She's elegant," Olivia stated. "I would kill to have her figure.""Really?""Of course. I have always wished to look precisely like her. Though obviously, not enough to avoid food," she added."That's madness. You have everything she doesn't."Olivia opened her mouth, ready to argue. "Everything she hasn't."She frowned at him."Including me.

I'm fat," she blurted out. "You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower."I want every inch of you," he said, growling it. "I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips." He reach out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife.

Quin reached out, spun her back to him, and pulled her into his arms, held her tight, so tight that she could hardly breathe. "I need you," he said, low and fierce, into her hair. "Oh, G-d, Olivia, how did I ever live without you?"She reached up, pulled his face down to hers. "I'm yours, for good or ill."There was a little click as the door to the ballroom closed, but Olivia paid no mind. "You're the missing piece of me," Quin said. "You make me feel.

You are absolutely beautiful," Anne said. "But if you see yourself, you'll want to pin your hair back like a shepherdess in a bad play."(Eleanor) "Are you saying that I normally look as if I'm tending sheep? With straw in my hair? As if I might yodel?

It was awful, this love.

I love you," he said, his voice catching. "When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die.

Life without a phone is riskier, lonelier, more vivid.

Marry me, Esme. Please. Honor me. I will honor you as your husband never did. Our marriage would be a remedy against sin, if anyone could ever call it a sin to love you.__ebastian Bonnington to Esme Rawlings

I need to work on developing a new, less irritable personality. though I suspect that an empty nest would be at least a partial cure, today I resorted to substance abuse.