It was enough to drive me mad. I was no longer myself and yet I was so much more me than I had ever been before. ~Katherine Demure
I came from across the ocean and through the wilderness and landed here and found you hiding behind a tapestry. My fate was sealed at the sight of your stockinged feet.~Viktor von Strassenberg
I can see how your mother would have a point. Having a debate with a politically minded woman can be intriguing and even entertaining but to share a house with her and have her always campaigning and...
And Mother, I love her dearly, but she flies into a panic whenever I mention women’s rights. As she sees it, it will be so much more difficult to marry me off if I am not only of a weak constitution b...
My dear lady, you have no idea just how scandalous I can be. ~Peter Viktor von Strassenberg, 1905
A glance would not be enough to tell you this was the daughter of Katherine Raquel Demure. Even a lingering gaze would not suffice. No. Only careful study of the original and a comparative inspection...
It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.
Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wi...
These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady’s things—hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he w...
All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the sta...
Wicked eyes are not a good prospect for seminary boys. They want a gentle, soft sort of wife, not a wife who looks as though she may sprout wings and carry off the young children of the village. ~Mari...
A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could n...
We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out.
Tragic tales rarely do make sense.
Even then his thoughts did not turn to prayer but to Abbie and to what she would think about his lack of prayerfulness and that surely she would have immediately broken out in prayer. “Doesn’t matter...
You can cower,” she told them in a clear voice, wrapping her long shaking fingers around the cold iron bars. “But I will stand.
Whatever happened in those more than one hundred years, from the time my great-great-great grandfather studied law to the time when my own father took his bar exam in 1989, I may never know. Perhaps i...
How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?
My heart, for unknown reasons, seems to freeze in motion in my chest. I can see he senses it and he holds his pause to enjoy my suffering, prolonging my ignorance. “Viktor, what?
