“You worry me, Mags, so self-contained and quiet. Hazelton would not have been my choice for you.""Why not?""He's a man who dwells in the shadows and appears to like it there. You have enough shadows of your own.""Maybe he sees me as I really am because shadows don't deter him.”

“Mercia wasn’t a little-in-love sort of man. He was mad, dark passion, sweeping emotion, and complete loss of reason, with his gaunt male beauty, his wealth and power, and his haunted past.”

“I live to bring you pleasure.” To Gilly, his words rang like a vow.”

“It was a struggle to not fall in love with a man who was determined to be decent to her when what she sought was indulgence of her wanton nature.Her recently discovered, very frustrated wanton nature, damn him.”

“So she learned at the age of almost twenty-six how to kiss a lover. Such kisses involved tongues, lips, taste, feel, and soft, needy noises that had her pressing up into his body and wanting to consume him with her hands and her mouth.”

“We shall not be indiscreet here in the broad light of day,” she said, but she’d left a question in the words when she’d intended a stern admonition.He smiled down at her. “Someday, Gillian, I will have you writhing and moaning in the broad light of day. Outdoors even.”“You’d get leaves in my hair.” She could afford the humor, because he was behaving.“Among other places, but then I’d help you remove them.”

“You like this darkness. You like learning me by feel.” Feeling very bold indeed, she nuzzled at him until she found his mouth with her own. “I like it too.”

“I love you, he thought, because you are honest with me and because you are willing to speak the truth to me when others might seek to curry favor instead. I love you because you are in this bed with me, not trying to conceive the much-awaited next generation of Windhams, but just holding my hand.-- Gayle Windham”

“In Nita's experience, the best intelligence officers in any big family were found among the younger siblings. They began their careers while small, nonthreatening, and unobtrusive. By adolescence, they developed formidable powers of observation and recollection, to say nothing of an ability to lurk at keyholes and befriend the servants.”

“I know what you're doing, though.""I'm glad somebody knows what I'm about, because I seem to have lost my own grasp of it entirely.”

“You worry me, Mags, so self-contained and quiet. Hazelton would not have been my choice for you.""Why not?""He's a man who dwells in the shadows and appears to like it there. You have enough shadows of your own.""Maybe he sees me as I really am because shadows don't deter him.”