Sherry Thomas

Worrying about outcomes over which I have no control is punishing myself before the universe has decided whether I ought to be punished.

She wanted to run her hands over him as he whispered the impassioned corollaries of non-Euclidean geometry.

She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.The queer sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human__r as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life.

Do not undervalue what you are ultimately worth because you are at a momentary disadvantage.

We are all going to die soon. Do you really wish to waste time being angry at me?""Yes. I remain an unrepentant optimist. If i see that I am about to die, or you, I will forgive you. But not until then, you bastard.

Perhaps you forgave him too much, but who among us would not wish to be so generously loved and generously forgiven?

It won__ be disagreeable,_ he said. __t can be made quite enjoyable.___h, it had better be,_ she said tartly. ____e heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I__ not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.

For what is the Void but the beginning of Light? What is Light but the end of Fear? And what am I, but Light given from? What am I, but the beginning of Eternity?

For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope.Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet.Perhaps__hree porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart.A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slabby its size and weight.She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.

The next minute he realized what had happened to him, but not before she__ caught him staring.For a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman__ beauty.She knew. With surgical precision, she had peeled back his layers of defenses, until his heart lay bare before her, all its shame and yearning exposed.He could have lived with this if only he__ kept his secret whole and buried. But she knew. She knew.

...So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know.I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I sawyou last.You will find me a stooped old man when we meet again. Perhaps I might even need a pair of spectacles to recognize your veil.But I remain always,Your servant,C.One of Christian's onesided letters to the Baroness

The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn__ wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He__ been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he__ been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean.He__ been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He__ been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name.And, of course, never showed her face.

He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world__here must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he__ been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name.But more than anything, he wanted to_

Even they would think you a monster were you toorchestrate a divorce right after my confinement.___ow long do you recommend I wait, then?___ long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted:The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child.___o you will contest the divorce?___o my last penny. And then I__l borrow from Fitz and Millie.___o we__l be married __il the end of time?___he sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off.__is ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. __ow if you__l excuse me, I must have enough rest.__e gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he__ already accepted it from the moment he__ said __ do_?

There was no such thing as a marriage with one happy spouse. Both must be or neither.

All right, my hope__ut I am not saying the rest of it__ have something you need to feel.__he feigned the sound of outrage. __ut we barely know each other, sir!__e laughed softly. __ut you must hold it in your hand and feel it change,_ he urged, in her ear. __ insist. I can wait no longer.__he knew they were on a serious subject, but the flutter of his breath on her skin, the low drawl of his words__eat raced along all her nerve endings. __ill I like it?___ell, I do have to apologize for its size. It is rather small._ And with that, he pressed something rather small into her hand.

The prince set her down and dismissed his valet. The latter left with a bow and closed the door. Leaning against the wall, the prince pulled off his stockings. As he walked toward the amethyst tub, he yanked his shirt over his head.He was lean and tightly sinewed. Her little bird heart thudded.He glanced at her, his lips curved in not quite a smile. The next thing she knew, his shirt had flown through the air and landed on the cage, blocking her view toward the bathtub.__orry, sweetheart. I am shy.__he chirped indignantly. It was not as if she would have continued to watch him disrobe beyond a certain point.

The success of my rule does not rely on my ability to recite obscure Latin verse.