“
There is something about the aroma of fresh books that's totally intoxicating. A new book has a certain clean, crisp smell full of promise that is difficult to define. Sort of like the scent and feeling of just-washed bed linens at the moment you slide your legs between them.
”
”
Debra Ginsberg (Blind Submission)
“
Penelope
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
”
”
Dorothy Parker
“
Good or bad?” Ty asked, rubbing his fingers over Zane’s chest to soothe him. Smith chose that moment to come out of hiding, pouncing on his moving fingers and landing on Zane’s chest. His claws sank in, turning the bed into a frenzy of cat fur, flying linens, and screaming FBI agents.
”
”
Abigail Roux
“
Sad to say, in my four-thousand-plus years, the times I'd felt most at home had all happened during the past few months: at Camp Half-Blood, sharing a cabin with my demigod children; at the Waystation with Emma, Jo, Georgina, Leo and Calypso, all of us sitting around the kitchen table chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner; at the Cistern in Palm Springs with Meg, Grover, Mellie, Coach Hedge and a prickly assortment of cactus dryads; and now at Camp Jupiter, where the anxious, grief-stricken Romans, despite their many problems, despite the fact that I brought misery and disaster wherever I went, had welcomed me with respect, a room above their coffee shop and some lovely bed linen to wear.
These places were homes. Whether I deserved to be part of them or not - that was a different question.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Tyrant’s Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4))
“
Lottie did everything the old fashioned way, including the bookkeeping, which was fine with me since I knew nothing about accounting software anyway. To me, spreadsheets was what I did on Saturday mornings after washing my bed linen.
”
”
Kate Collins (Snipped in the Bud (A Flower Shop Mystery, #4))
“
I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing.
A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her. (This first pleases the lady and then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same impulse.)
”
”
E.B. White (Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel the Way You Do)
“
and then she said, apologetically, “You do not look Cuban.” “Pues, lo soy,” I said haughtily. (“Well, I am.”) Luisa nodded and packed up her lunch, moving on to change the bed linens. I sat at that table for at least a half hour, reeling. I kept thinking, How dare she try to take my own identity away from me? But as I looked around my house, seeing no pictures of my family, not a single Latin-American book, stray blond hairs in my hairbrush, not even a jar of cumin in my spice rack, I realized Luisa hadn’t done that to me. I had done it to me. I’d made the choice to be different from my true self.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
Sebastian left the bed and went to the washstand on unsteady legs. He felt dazed, uncertain, as if he were the one who had just lost his virginity instead of Evangeline. He had long thought that there was nothing new for him to experience. He had been wrong. For a man whose lovemaking was a practiced blend of technique and choreography, it had been a shock to find himself at the spontaneous mercy of his own passions. He had meant to withdraw at the last moment, but he had been so mindless with desire that he’d been unable to control his body. Damn. That had never happened before. Fumbling with the clean linen towel at the washstand, he made a project of dampening it with fresh water. By now his breathing had returned to normal, but he wasn’t at all calm. After what had just happened, he should have been satiated for hours. But it hadn’t been enough. He had experienced the longest, hardest, most wrenching climax of his life…and yet the need to have her again, open her, bury himself inside her, had not faded. It was madness. But why? Why with her?
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
By the washing line, the crisp white bed linen in her hand, Ellen tilted her face up to the sun, drinking it in. Grace stared at her and smiled; moments like this, with Ellen – mundane as they were – were her favourite.
”
”
Shauna Mc Eleney (Awake in the Night)
“
Clouds spread out over the Atlantic like soiled linens on an unmade bed.
”
”
Kevin Powers (The Yellow Birds)
“
Miss,” said the maid, “if you could just choose an outfit for tonight. Perhaps if you didn’t…Oh. Oh, that was an antique. No, that’s fine. I’ll get another— OH! Very well, Miss, if you don’t like those bed linens I can— There’s no need to shred them, Miss!
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
“
Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh.
”
”
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
“
At her feet, a fold of the bed linens wriggled. A wet black nose appeared, followed by a whiskered snout.
"Bixby!" She reached for the dog and pulled him into her arms for cuddles and kisses. The pup was beside himself, turning in circles and licking her everywhere he could reach. "Oh, darling. Look at you. How did you end up here?"
Gabriel crossed the room to stand at the bedside. "I knew you needed an animal in your bed. And I didn't think it should be me tonight."
"There's room for another.
”
”
Tessa Dare (The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke, #3))
“
Her smile held–held and yet changed, the way freshness depart white linens once you unfold them and put them on the table or bed. Still clean, bright, but something departed.
”
”
Alison Atlee (The Typewriter Girl)
“
I could hear the pop of bed linen snapping in the wind.
”
”
William Kent Krueger (Ordinary Grace)
“
Next I know, I'll be calling myself the queen of Romania and wandering down the lane wearing my bed linens for a cape.
”
”
Libba Bray
“
WHAT CONNECTS US are the basics, tenets of normalcy I never had. Need is redefined. Pots and pans, knives and dish towels, bed linens and bath mats don’t have to match. They don’t have to even exist.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
...Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
“
She pushed the door open further, revealing herself to be clad in nothing but a Grecian-inspired arrangement of draped bed linens. The graceful angles of her bared shoulders and arms stood bright against the darkness. Her knot of steam-dampened hair could be so easily undone. A flick of his wrist would send it spilling free, flowing like molten gold between his fingers.
And those bed linens... a single tug, and they'd be a puddle on the floor.
”
”
Tessa Dare (The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke, #3))
“
Catherine's face was peaceful, her lips slightly parted. Curled among the white bed linens, a glimpse of her pink shoulder visible, that golden hair streaming everywhere, she looked like a confection placed amid swirls of whipped cream.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Married by Morning (The Hathaways, #4))
“
Too Busy
I've folded all my laundry
and put it in the drawer.
I've changed my linen, made my bed,
and swept my bedroom floor.
I've emptied out the garbage
and fixed tomorrow's lunch.
I've baked some cookies for dessert
and given dad a munch.
I've searched the house for pencils
and sharpened every one.
There are so many things to do
when homework must be done.
”
”
Bruce Lansky
“
Pessimism is a towering skyscraper eighty stories high in the suburbs of the soul at the end of a long avenue with waste ground on either side and a few poorly-stocked little shops. Several ultra-fast staircases give access to the building, running up from the cellars to the roof-gardens. The comfort of this place leaves nothing to be desired and only the greatest luxury is acceptable, but every Friday the residents gather on the ground floor to read from a bible bound in the skin of a blind man. The psalmic words they intone rise up through the pipes, sigh in the stoves and sweep the chimneys coated inside with black grease which leaves dirt on the skin. Water runs constantly in the bathrooms and the showers beat down on the numbered bodies, peppering them with sand. On Sundays the bed linen unrolls by itself and nobody makes love. For this tower block, like an obscure phallus scraping the vulva of the sky, is usually a hive of sexual activity. The most beautiful woman lives there, but no-one has ever known her. It is said, that dressed in furs and feathers, she keeps herself shut away in a first-floor apartment as if in a white safe. Her windows are scissors which cut short both shadow and breath. Her name is AURORA.
”
”
Michel Leiris (Aurora)
“
Does it matter if they were from Kielce or Brno or Grodno or Brody or Lvov or Turin or Berlin? Or that the silverware or one linen tablecloth or the chipped enamel pot—the one with the red stripe, handed down by a mother to her daughter—were later used by a neighbour or someone they never knew? Or if one went first or last; or whether they were separated getting on the train or off the train; or whether they were taken from Athens or Amsterdam or Radom, from Paris or Bordeaux, Rome or Trieste, from Parczew or Bialystok or Salonika. Whether they were ripped from their dining-room tables or hospital beds or from the forest? Whether wedding rings were pried off their fingers or fillings from their mouths? None of that obsessed me; but—were they silent or did they speak? Were their eyes open or closed?
I couldn't turn my anguish from the precise moment of death. I was focused on that historical split second: the tableau of the haunting trinity—perpetrator, victim, witness.
But at what moment does wood become stone, peat become coal, limestone become marble? The gradual instant.
”
”
Anne Michaels (Fugitive Pieces)
“
He would scrub the floors on his hands and knees, beat the rugs, wash the windows and pound the bed linen in the tin bath at the outdoor pump. All those heavy chores he knew intimately; his identity lay in the dirt others left behind and his salvation lay in cleaning it up.
”
”
Christina McKenna (The Misremembered Man (Tailorstown #1))
“
ALone, she snuggled luxuriously down through the warm snowbank of linen and wool, sheet and cover, and the colors of the patchwork quilt were bright as the circus banners of old time. Lying there, she felt as small and secret as on those mornings eighty-some-odd years ago when, wakening, she comforted her tender bones in bed.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
“
He reached down to the exposed line of her throat, drawing the backs of his fingers over her skin with a sensitive lightness that caused her breath to quicken. His fingertips rested on the rapid tattoo of her pulse, and caressed softly. Watching a delicate tide of pink rise in her face, he said in a low voice, “Put the book aside.” Poppy’s toes curled beneath the bed linens. “But I’ve reached a very interesting part,” she said demurely, teasing him. “Not half so interesting as what’s about to happen to you.” Drawing the covers back with a deliberate sweep that left her gasping, Harry lowered his body over hers … and the book dropped to the floor, forgotten.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Married By Morning (The Hathaways, #4))
“
You can get a running start on a day of aligned Energy as you put yourself to bed the night before: Find things in your immediate vicinity—such as your bed, your bed linens, and your pillow—to direct your appreciation toward. Then set your intention to sleep well and to awaken refreshed. When you find yourself awake in the morning, lie in more appreciation for at least five minutes, and then refresh yourself by bathing and eating. Then, sit for 15 minutes and quiet your mind. Feel whatever resistance you may have fall away, and feel your Vibration rise. Then open your eyes, and sit for five or ten minutes writing a list of things you appreciate about your life.
”
”
Esther Hicks (The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships)
“
With deliberate titillating accuracy, she crawls up onto the luxurious white linen bed...
”
”
Bat Maxwell (The Color of Honey)
“
Well-made linen beds would make nice houses, but beauty from dysfunctionality & unkemptness is what makes a perfect home~ Home, Select Poetry Collection
”
”
Kanika Sharma (Select Poetry Collection)
“
I knew when I first saw you, what you would mean to me,” Win murmured eventually. “Wild, angry boy that you were. I loved you at once. You felt it, too, didn’t you?” He nodded slightly, luxuriating in the feel of her. Her skin smelled sweet like plums, with an arousing hint of feminine musk. “I wanted to tame you,” she said. “Not all the way. Just enough that I could be close to you.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “Outrageous man. What possessed you to kidnap me, when you knew I would have come willingly?” “I was making a point,” he said in a muffled voice. She chuckled and stroked his scalp, the scrape of her oval fingernails nearly causing him to purr. “Your point was well-taken. Must we go back now?” “Do you want to?” Win shook her head. “Although … I wouldn’t mind having something to eat.” “I brought food to the cottage before I went to get you.” She ran a flirtatious fingertip around the rim of his ear. “What an efficient villain you are. May we stay all day, then?” “Yes.” Win wriggled with delight. “Will anyone come for us?” “I doubt it.” Kev drew the bed linens lower and nuzzled into the lush valley between her breasts. “And I would kill the first person who approached the threshold.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair; and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor with a sort of careworn wrinkle between his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple - a mere matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the heap with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like nothing on earth. All most unpleasant.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves (Jeeves, #3))
“
The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window…Every night around nine-thirty or ten, those kids would get called in one by one…I knew the first ones called were full of resentment. But they needn’t have been. Nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just sort of ended in a slow motion way, like petals falling off a flower. You couldn’t have people leave like that and have anything good happen afterward. Whoever was left couldn’t pay much attention to anything other than waiting for their turn to get called in. So, it wasn’t so bad to go first, to head back toward those deep yellow lights and beds made up with summer linens. It was much better than being last, when you would be left standing there alone, finally going in without anybody calling you.
”
”
Elizabeth Berg (Never Change)
“
The first night she did not think on the matter, concerning herself with her work and her rest and the small things that brought her happiness: the honey in her tea, the stars in the night sky, the linen sheets on her bed.
”
”
Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea)
“
Kell looked down at the rich red linens on the bed and pulled aside his collar to show the mirroring scar. “I did only what you would have done, if you were me.” Rhy frowned. “I love you, Kell, but I had no interest in matching tattoos.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1))
“
Imagine that Abundance is a wonderful guest that you would love to come and stay. Clean the house, prepare great food, have fresh linen on the beds, light fires, chill the champagne, buy or grow fresh flowers … just be ready for Abundance to drop in unexpectedly.
”
”
Jane Monica-Jones (The Billionaire Buddha)
“
Anna’s attention was focused on a single patient. Ariadne Bridgestock lay quietly against the white pillows. Her eyes were shut, and her rich brown skin was ashen, stretching tightly over the branching black veins beneath her skin.
Anna slipped in between the screens surrounding Ariadne’s cot, and Cordelia followed, feeling slightly awkward. Was she intruding? But Anna looked up, as if to assure herself that Cordelia was there, before she knelt down at the side of Ariadne’s bed, laying her walking stick on the floor.
Anna’s bowed shoulders looked strangely vulnerable. One of her hands dangled at her side: she reached out the other, fingers moving slowly across the white linen sheets, until she was almost touching Ariadne’s hand.
She did not take it. At the last moment, Anna’s fingers curled and dropped to rest, beside Ariadne but not quite touching. In a low and steady voice, Anna said, “Ariadne. When you wake up—and you will wake up—I want you to remember this. It was never a sign of your worth that Charles Fairchild wanted to marry you. It is a measure of his lack of worth that he chose to break it off in such a manner.”
“He broke it off?” Cordelia whispered. She was stunned. The breaking off of a promised engagement was a serious matter, undertaken usually only when one of the parties in question had committed some kind of serious crime or been caught in an affair. For Charles to break his promise to Ariadne while she lay unconscious was appalling. People would assume he had found out something dreadful about Ariadne. When she awoke, she might be ruined.
Anna did not reply to Cordelia. She only raised her head and looked at Ariadne’s face, a long look like a touch.
“Please don’t die,” she said, in a low voice, and rose to her feet. Catching up her walking stick, she strode from the infirmary, leaving Cordelia staring after her in surprise.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1))
“
As I eyed him, probably with a spent and blissful look on my face, I watched how he lifted the fingers that had been inside of me moments ago and introduced them inside his mouth. His eyes closed, and his face contorted into an expression I would never forget. An expression that would be branded in my mind for the rest of my goddamn life and that would haunt me in the wet dreams I’d start having now. Aaron grunted, opening his eyes back and finding mine. “I could come only with your taste. With you in my arms like this.” So primal, so basic, so hot. I couldn’t begin to articulate an answer, to move. He must have seen that because one of his arms went below my legs and the other one around my back. Picking me up from the floor, he carried me to the bed and placed me on the top of the velvety linen.
”
”
Elena Armas (The Spanish Love Deception (Spanish Love Deception, #1))
“
He was able to sleep on bare boards; he drank plain hot water with neither tea nor sugar; he ate stale bread; he wore footcloths rather than socks. He had no bed linen, but she noticed that his shirt collar was always clean, even though the shirt had been washed so many times that it had gone yellow. And in the mornings he always took out a chipped, battered little box that had once contained fruit drops and that now contained his washing things; he would brush his teeth and carefully soap his face, his neck, and his arms up to his elbows.
”
”
Vasily Grossman (Everything Flows)
“
We let our fathers carry our stuff up into our new rooms and our mothers make up our beds with new linen, something we probably wouldn’t do in a few months’ time after a single gender studies module convinced us we knew more about the world than our parents had learned from decades of living in it.
”
”
Catherine Ryan Howard (The Liar's Girl)
“
He returns to the blur of velvet and firelight in the main room, kicking off his shoes as he walks, managing to remove his suit jacket and vest before he reaches the bed but he is asleep before he can deal with additional buttons, linen sheets, and lamb's-wool pillows swallowing him like a cloud and he welcomes it, his last thoughts before sleeping a fleeting mix of reflections on the evening that has finally ended, questions and worries about everything from his sanity to hot to get paint out of his hair and then it is gone, the last wisp of thought wondering how you go to sleep if you're already dreaming.
”
”
Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea)
“
The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature. Many people of his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
“
With all the arrangements made, Marcus carried Lillian to the largest guest room in the building, where a bath and food were sent up as quickly as possible. It was sparely furnished but very clean, with an ample bed covered in pressed linen and soft, faded quilts. An old copperplate slipper tub was set before the hearth and filled by two chambermaids carrying steaming kettles. As Lillian waited for the bathwater to cool sufficiently, Marcus bullied her into eating a bowl of soup, which was quite tolerable, though its ingredients were impossible to identify. “What are those little brown chunks?” Lillian asked suspiciously, opening her mouth reluctantly as he spooned more in.
“It doesn’t matter. Swallow.”
“Is it mutton? Beef? Did it originally have horns? Hooves? Feathers? Scales? I don’t like to eat something when I don’t know what—”
“More,” he said inexorably, pushing the spoon into her mouth again.
“You’re a tyrant.”
“I know. Drink some water.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
“
A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the patients been forbidden the ball the might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse de Berri with l’Enfant du Miracle, and the other as Madame de Montespan and the Duc du Maine. The two husbands, the ghost of the Duc de Berri, a dagger sticking out of his evening dress, and Louis XIV, were rather embarrassed really by the horrible screams of their so very young heirs, and hurried to the bar together. The noise was indeed terrific, and Albertine said crossly that had she been consulted she would, in this case, have permitted and even encouraged the substitution of dolls. The infants were then dumped down to cry themselves to sleep among the coats on her bed, whence they were presently collected by their mothers’ monthly nannies. Nobody thereafter could feel quite sure that the noble families of Bregendir and Belestat were not hopelessly and for ever interchanged. As their initials and coronets were, unfortunately, the same, and their baby linen came from the same shop, it was impossible to identify the children for certain. The mothers were sent for, but the pleasures of society rediscovered having greatly befogged their maternal instincts, they were obliged to admit they had no idea which was which. With a tremendous amount of guilty giggling they spun a coin for the prettier of the two babies and left it at that.
”
”
Nancy Mitford (The Blessing)
“
he had developed a system that enabled him to sleep in clean sheets every night without the trouble of bed changing. He’d been proposing the system to Sarah for years, but she was so set in her ways. What he did was strip the mattress of all linens, replacing them with a giant sort of envelope made from one of the seven sheets he had folded and stitched together on the sewing machine. He thought of this invention as a Macon Leary Body Bag. A body bag required no tucking in, was unmussable, easily changeable, and the perfect weight for summer nights. In winter he would have to devise something warmer, but he couldn’t think of winter yet. He was barely making it from one day to the next as it was. At moments—while he was skidding
”
”
Anne Tyler (The Accidental Tourist)
“
The Guardian's Wildchild: Lorna tossed used linen onto the floor and snapped fresh sheets into place on the bed. She fluffed pillows into submission so they sat only as her big hands demanded. Lorna turned around and saw Sam standing in the main infirmary. She hustled into the main room and snapped to attention in front of him.
“You caught me working again.” She feigned worry. “Damn!
”
”
Feather Stone
“
He closed his eyes. This bed was a wedding gift from friends he had not seen in years. He tried to remember their names, but they were gone. In it, or on it, his marriage had begun and, six years later, ended. He recognized a musical creak when he moved his legs, he smelled Julie on the sheets and banked-up pillows, her perfume and the close, soapy essence that characterized her newly washed linen. Here he had taken part in the longest, most revealing, and, later, most desolate conversations of his life. He had had the best sex ever here, and the worst wakeful nights. He had done more reading here than in any other single place - he remembered Anna Karenina and Daniel Deronda in one week of illness. He had never lost his temper so thoroughly anywhere else, nor had been so tender, protective, comforting, nor, since early childhood, been so cared for himself. Here his daughter had been conceived and born. On this side of the bed. Deep in the mattress were the traces of pee from her early-morning visits. She used to climb between then, sleep a little, then wake them with her chatter, her insistence on the day beginning. As they clung to their last fragments of dreams, she demanded the impossible: stories, poems, songs, invented catechisms, physical combat, tickling. Nearly all evidence of her existence, apart from photographs, they had destroyed or given away. All the worst and the best things that had ever happened to him had happened here. This was where he belonged. Beyond all immediate considerations, like the fact that his marriage was more or less finished, there was his right to lie here now in the marriage bed.
”
”
Ian McEwan (The Child in Time)
“
He let go of her hands and cut her off, placing a finger over her lips as he rubbed her arm.
“The only thing I want tonight is you. The only thing you need to know tonight is I’m going to have you...as I wish...for as long as I wish.” He rolled his head in a circle to stretch before looking directly back into her eyes, and added as an afterthought, “Hmm... Hurt you? Your arousal will likely hurt you excruciatingly until I allow your release.”
And as his sensual voice streaked through her, Kate’s mind shorted out like a tripped wire snapping, completely blank. Her whole body betrayed her yet again by flushing with unrestrainable heat.
“Stay as you are, Kate.” He pushed the bunched-up nightgown at her waist, down to the floor to pool at her feet. Shivering hard, she moved her hands to cover her nakedness, dropping her head to her chest, avoiding his steady gaze. Grabbing her hands, he moved them back to her sides. He lifted her chin high to face him and said, “I told you to stay as you were, Kate. You will do good to listen to me.”
His fingers pressed into her hair, curling a bit of it around her ear as he leaned in to the side of her head. His voice lowered seductively until it was a purr in her ear. “I know how to please a woman to the point her voice is hoarse from her screams of desire, her bed linens soaked, and her legs quivering for hours after I’m done.” His lips scantly apart from her ear, his voice dropping lower, he continued, “In the matter of choices, I know which sounds best to me. Do you, beautiful girl? I’ll prove I was worth the trouble of opening your door. Can you allow yourself this indulgence? It’s just one night.
”
”
Elaine Barris (Master for Tonight (Master for Tonight, #1))
“
On June 21, AIDS patients at George Washington University Hospital opened their eyes to see a woman in a white linen gown moving among them. She wore no mask or gloves and was not afraid to approach their beds and ask the young men about their illness. Mother Teresa came to visit the AIDS patients directly from the White House, where President Reagan, who had yet to acknowledge the disease, had awarded her the Medal of Freedom.
”
”
Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic)
“
There was someone in his little attic room. Geralt knew it before he even reached the door, sensing it through the barely perceptible vibration of his medallion. He blew out the oil lamp which had lit his path up the stairs, pulled the dagger from his boot, slipped it into the back of his belt and pressed the door handle. The room was dark. But not for a witcher. He was deliberately slow in crossing the threshold; he closed the door behind him carefully. The next second he dived at the person sitting on his bed, crushed them into the linen, forced his forearm under their chin and reached for his dagger. He didn't pull it out. Something wasn't right. “Not a bad start,” she said in a muffled voice, lying motionless beneath him. “I expected something like this, but I didn't think we'd both be in bed so quickly. Take your hand from my throat please.” “It's
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Last Wish (The Witcher 0.5))
“
Mr. Brock’s account of his adventure in London has given the reader some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one period, held such a rank in the army, but pawned his half-pay for drink and play; and for many years past had lived, one of the hundred thousand miracles of our city, upon nothing that anybody knew of, or of which he himself could give any account. Who has not a catalogue of these men in his list? who can tell whence comes the occasional clean shirt, who supplies the continual means of drunkenness, who wards off the daily-impending starvation? Their life is a wonder from day to day: their breakfast a wonder; their dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence. If you and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us? Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe us in clean linen? — not a bone or a rag. Standing as we do (may it be ever so) somewhat removed from want,[*] is there one of us who does not shudder at the thought of descending into the lists to combat with it, and
”
”
William Makepeace Thackeray (Delphi Complete Works of W. M. Thackeray (Illustrated))
“
I was splayed on my bed in sweats, staring at the ceiling, when suddenly I gave birth to The Idea: one area of the country club would be filled with gold bamboo chairs, architecturally arranged orchids and roses, and antique lace table linens. Violins would serenade the guests as they feasted on cold tenderloin and sipped champagne. Martha Stewart would be present in spirit and declare, “This is my daughter, whom I love. In her I am well pleased.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
He had pursued his strikingly beautiful, spirited, fashionable wife for years and years before marrying her in mid-Channel aboard a man-of-war: for so many years indeed that he had become a confirmed bachelor at last, too old a dog to give up his tricks of smoking tobacco in bed, playing his 'cello at odd untimely moments, dissecting anything that interested him, even in the drawing-room; too old to be taught to shave regularly, to change his linen, or to wash when he did not feel the need - an impossible husband. He was not house-trained; and although he made earnest attempts at the beginning of their marriage he soon perceived that in time the strain must damage their relationship, all the more so since Diana was as intransigent as himself and far more apt to fly into a passion about such things as a pancreas in the drawer of the bedside table or orange marmalade ground into the Aubusson.
”
”
Patrick O'Brian (The Ionian Mission (Aubrey & Maturin, #8))
“
I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long.
“Oh, that’s good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!”
Sarah clears her throat. “Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow.”
The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it’s from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious?
I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook.
“What are you doing?”
She looks up, her doe eyes widening. “Getting ready for bed.”
“You’re going to sleep there?”
“Of course. The sofa’s very uncomfortable.”
“Why can’t we share the bed?”
She chokes . . . stutters. “I . . . I can’t sleep with you. I don’t even know you.”
I throw my arms out wide. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything—I’m an open book.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“You’re being ridiculous! It’s a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn’t hear it.”
And the blush is back. With a vengeance.
“I’m not . . . I don’t . . .”
“You don’t fart?” I scoff. “Really? Are you not human?”
She curses under her breath, but I’d love to hear it out loud. I bet uninhibited Sarah Von Titebottum would be a stunning sight. And very entertaining.
She shakes her head, pinning me with her eyes.
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“No.” I explain calmly, “I’m just free. Honest with myself and others. You should try it sometime.”
She folds her arms, all tight, trembling indignation. It’s adorable.
“I’m sleeping in the nook, Your Highness. And that’s that.”
I sit up, pinning her gaze right back at her.
“Henry.”
“What?”
“My name is not Highness, it’s fucking Henry, and I’d prefer you use it.”
And she snaps.
“Fine! Fucking Henry—happy?”
I smile.
“Yes. Yes, I am.” I flop back on the magnificent bed. “Sleep tight, Titebottum.”
I think she growls at me, but it’s muffled by the sound of rustling bed linens and pillows. And then . . . there’s silence. Beautiful, blessed silence.
I wiggle around, getting comfy.
I turn on my side and fluff the pillow.
I squeeze my eyes tight . . . but it’s hopeless.
“Fucking hell!” I sit up.
And Sarah springs to her feet. “What? What’s wrong?”
It’s the guilt. I’ve barged into this poor girl’s room, confiscated her bed, and have forced her to sleep in a cranny in the wall. I may not be the man my father was or the gentleman my brother is, but I’m not that much of a prick.
I stand up, rip my shirt over my head. and march toward the window seat. I feel Sarah’s eyes graze my bare chest, arms. and stomach, but she circles around me, keeping her distance.
“You take the bloody bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep in the bloody nook.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
I push my hand through my hair. “Yes, I do.” Then I stand up straight and proper, an impersonation of Hugh Grant in one of his classic royal roles. “Please, Lady Sarah.”
She blinks, her little mouth pursed. “Okay.”
Then she climbs onto the bed, under the covers. And I squeeze onto the window bench, knees bent, my elbow jammed against the icy windowpane, and my neck bent at an odd angle that I’m going to be feeling tomorrow.
The light is turned down to a very low dim, and for several moments all I hear is Sarah’s soft breaths.
But then, in the near darkness, her delicate voice floats out on a sigh.
“All right, we can sleep in the bed together.”
Music to my ears. I don’t make her tell me twice—I’ve fulfilled my noble quota for the evening. I stumble from the nook and crash onto the bed.
That’s better.
”
”
Emma Chase (Royally Matched (Royally, #2))
“
I took a step toward her, but she turned from me and stomped back to her car. I watched her drive off. After a moment, I walked up the limestone steps and through the phantom oak-and-glass front doors of the house where I grew up. I paced the hall, entered the long rectangle of dining room, rested a hand on the carved cherrywood mantel, then passed into the kitchen. The house was so real around me that I could smell the musty linen in the cedar closet, the gas from the leaky burner on the stove, the sharp tang of geraniums that I had planted in clay pots. I lay down on the exact place where the living room couch had been pushed tight under the leaded-glass windows. I closed my eyes and it was all around me again. The stuffed bookshelves, the paneling, the soft slap of my mother's cards on the table.
I could see from the house of my dark mind the alley, from the alley the street leading to the end of town, its farthest boundary the lucid silence of the dead. Between the graves my path, and along that path her back door, her face, her timeless bed, and the lost architecture of her bones. I turned over and made myself comfortable in the crush of wild burdock. A bee or two hummed in the drowsy air. The swarm had left the rubble and built their houses beneath the earth. They were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey.
”
”
Louise Erdrich (The Plague of Doves)
“
and reaches out her hands to the needy. 21 She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. [6] 22 She makes bed coverings for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple. 23 Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. 24 She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant. 25 Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. 26 She opens her mouth with wisdom,
”
”
Anonymous (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (without Cross-References))
“
Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than ‘toilet’. Originally, in about 1540, it was a kind of cloth, a diminutive form of ‘toile’, a word still used to describe a type of linen. Then it became a cloth for use on dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence ‘toiletries’). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private room near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself. Which explains why ‘toilet water’ in English can describe something you would gladly daub on your face or, simultaneously, ‘water in a toilet’. Garderobe, a word now extinct, went through a similar but slightly more compacted transformation. A combination of ‘guard’ and ‘robe’, it first signified a storeroom, then any private room, then (briefly) a bed-chamber and finally a privy.
”
”
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
“
Since eight o'clock she had been trying on and rejecting dresses, and now she stood dejected and irritable in lace pantalets, linen corset cover and three billowing lace and linen petticoats. Discarded garments lay about her on the floor, the bed, the chairs, in bright heaps of color and straying ribbons. The rose organdie with long pink sash was becoming, but she had worn it last summer when Melanie visited Twelve Oaks and she’d be sure to remember it. And might be catty enough to mention it.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind)
“
system that enabled him to sleep in clean sheets every night without the trouble of bed changing. He’d been proposing the system to Sarah for years, but she was so set in her ways. What he did was strip the mattress of all linens, replacing them with a giant sort of envelope made from one of the seven sheets he had folded and stitched together on the sewing machine. He thought of this invention as a Macon Leary Body Bag. A body bag required no tucking in, was unmussable, easily changeable, and the perfect weight for summer nights.
”
”
Anne Tyler (The Accidental Tourist)
“
Hands- there were hands on my shoulders, shaking me, squeezing me. I thrashed against them, screaming, screaming-
'FEYRE.'
The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.
'Open your eyes,' the voice ordered.
I did.
My throat was raw, my mouth full of ash, my face soaked and sticky, and Rhysand- Rhysand was hovering above me, his eyes wide.
'It was a dream,' he said, his breathing as hard as mine.
The moonlight trickling through the windows illuminated the dark lines of swirling tattoos down his arm, his shoulders, across his sculpted chest. Like the ones I bore on my arm. He scanned my face. 'A dream,' he said again.
Velaris. I was in Velaris, at his house. And I had- my dream-
The sheets, the blankets were ripped. Shredded. But not with a knife. And that ashy, smoky taste coating my mouth...
My hand was unnervingly steady as I lifted it to find my fingers ending in simmering embers. Living claws of flame that had sliced through my bed linens like they were cauterising wounds-
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old student's overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of the sofa.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
“
When I wasn’t trying to swallow something that no one is ever going to make me believe wasn’t drained off from the kennels, I was sitting watching your aunt knot a fringe in the most uncomfortable hole of a lodging I’ve been in yet! Why, I had to take all my own bed-linen with me!’
‘You always do, ma’am,’ said Mr Beaumaris, who had several times been privileged to see the start of one of the Duchess’s impressive journeys. ‘Also your own plate, your favourite chair, your steward, your –’
‘I don’t want any of your impudence, Robert!’ interrupted her grace. ‘I don’t always *have* to take ’em!
”
”
Georgette Heyer (Arabella)
“
There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’ ‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’ ‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’ You
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
Why had he gone, stepping off into the dark, into the war, into a Cause that was lost, into a world that was mad? Why had he gone, Rhett who loved the pleasures of women and liquor, the comfort of good food and soft beds, the feel of fine linen and good leather, who hated the South and jeered at the fools who fought for it? Now he had set his varnished boots upon a bitter road where hunger tramped with tireless stride and wounds and weariness and heartbreak ran like yelping wolves. And the end of the road was death. He need not have gone. He was safe, rich, comfortable. But he had gone, leaving her alone in a night as black as blindness, with the Yankee Army between her and home.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)
“
Her newly revealed skin was white and luminous, her body tender and abundantly curved... He closed his eyes briefly, striving to subdue this violent passion. When he opened them again, Vivien had moved away from him and hastily climbed into bed, pulling the linens over her nakedness. Her bashfulness was so genuine, so... well, virginal, that he wondered if this was what she had been like long ago, before embarking on her career as a courtesan.
"Don't cover yourself," he murmured. "Your body is too beautiful to be concealed."
The bedsheets did not lower an in inch. "I'm cold," she said breathlessly, her cheeks flushed.
"I'll warm you," he promised with a quick grin, stripping off his coat.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Someone to Watch Over Me (Bow Street Runners, #1))
“
Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work.
”
”
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
“
I feed Volnay, who eats in her unusual way, delicately removing one piece of kibble at a time from her bowl, placing it on the little rug that serves as her dining room, and then eating it before going back in for a second piece of kibble. It takes her the better part of thirty minutes to finish her bowl. I'm sure if she had thumbs, she'd be patting her chin with a linen napkin after every morsel. When she finishes, she hits the water bowl. Silently. No one can figure out how she drinks, she sort of purses her lips and sucks, none of that slurping and splashing that accompany most dogs' drinking. She is a stealth drinker. When she finishes, she heads to her little bed in the corner of the kitchen to groom her fur a bit. Lovely girl.
”
”
Stacey Ballis (Out to Lunch)
“
Lord Macaulay, ready as ever with a flush of gorgeous hyperbole, evokes the circumstances of the Grub Street authors: Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge Island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste; they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. He goes on, ‘They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode … They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass.
”
”
Henry Hitchings (Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary)
“
The careful, embroidered stitches delineated a coil of some sort. It looked rather like a halved snail shell, but the interior was divided into dozen of intricate chambers.
"Is that a nautilus?" he asked.
"Close, but no. It's an ammonite."
"An ammonite? What's an ammonite? Sounds like an Old Testament people overdue for smiting."
"Ammonites are not a biblical people," she replied in a tone of strained forbearance. "But they have been smited."
"Smote."
With a snap of linen, she shot him a look. "Smote?"
"Grammatically speaking, I think the word you want is 'smote.' "
"Scientifically speaking, the word I want is 'extinct.' Ammonites are extinct. They're only known to us in fossils."
"And bedsheets, apparently."
"You know..." She huffed aside a lock of hair dangling
in her face. "You could be helping."
"But I'm so enjoying watching," he said, just to devil her. Nonetheless, he picked up the edge of the top sheet and fingered the stitching as he pulled it straight. "So you made this?"
"Yes." Though judging by her tone, it hadn't been a labor of love. "My mother always insisted, from the time I was twelve years old, that I spend an hour every evening on embroidery. She had all three of us forever stitching things for our trousseaux."
'Trousseaux.' The word hit him queerly. "You brought your trousseau?"
"Of course I brought my trousseau. To create the illusion of an elopement, obviously. And it made the most logical place to store Francine. All these rolls of soft fabric made for good padding."
Some emotion jabbed his side, then scampered off before he could name it. Guilt, most likely. These were sheets meant to grace her marriage bed, and she was spreading them over a stained straw-tick mattress in a seedy coaching inn.
"Anyhow," she went on, "so long as my mother forced me to embroider, I insisted on choosing a pattern that interested me. I've never understood why girls are always made to stitch insipid flowers and ribbons."
"Well, just to hazard a guess..." Colin straightened his edge. "Perhaps that's because sleeping on a bed of flowers and ribbons sounds delightful and romantic. Whereas sharing one's bed with a primeval sea snail sounds disgusting."
Her jaw firmed. "You're welcome to sleep on the floor."
"Did I say disgusting? I meant enchanting. I've always wanted to go to bed with a primeval sea snail.
”
”
Tessa Dare (A Week to be Wicked (Spindle Cove, #2))
“
And barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy, but almost of every art. The Egyptians were the first to introduce astrology among men. Similarly also the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, prohibited intercourse with women in the temples, and enacted that no one should enter the temples from a woman without bathing. Again, they were the inventors of geometry. There are some who say that the Carians invented prognostication by the stars. The Phrygians were the first who attended to the flight of birds. And the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, were adepts at the art of the Haruspex. The Isaurians and the Arabians invented augury, as the Telmesians divination by dreams. The Etruscans invented the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute. For Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. And Cadmus, the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Euphorus says, was a Phoenician; whence also Herodotus writes that they were called Phoenician letters. And they say that the Phoenicians and the Syrians first invented letters; and that Apis, an aboriginal inhabitant of Egypt, invented the healing art before Io came into Egypt. But afterwards they say that Asclepius improved the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship and navigated the sea. Kelmis and Damnaneus, Idaean Dactyli, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Another Idaean discovered the tempering of brass; according to Hesiod, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented what is called a scimitar (arph), -- it is a curved sword, -- and were the first to use shields on horseback. Similarly also the Illyrians invented the shield (pelth). Besides, they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay; and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first fashioned the oblong shield (qureos). Cadmus the Phoenician invented stonecutting, and discovered the gold mines on the Pangaean mountain. Further, another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, and the Assyrians in the same way the dichord. The Carthaginians were the first that constructed a triterme; and it was built by Bosporus, an aboriginal. Medea, the daughter of Æetas, a Colchian, first invented the dyeing of hair. Besides, the Noropes (they are a Paeonian race, and are now called the Norici) worked copper, and were the first that purified iron. Amycus the king of the Bebryci was the first inventor of boxing-gloves. In music, Olympus the Mysian practised the Lydian harmony; and the people called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. It is said that the crooked pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian; likewise also diatonic harmony by Hyagnis, a Phrygian too; and notes by Olympus, a Phrygian; as also the Phrygian harmony, and the half-Phrygian and the half-Lydian, by Marsyas, who belonged to the same region as those mentioned above. And the Doric was invented by Thamyris the Thracian. We have heard that the Persians were the first who fashioned the chariot, and bed, and footstool; and the Sidonians the first to construct a trireme. The Sicilians, close to Italy, were the first inventors of the phorminx, which is not much inferior to the lyre. And they invented castanets. In the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, they relate that linen garments were invented. And Hellanicus says that Atossa queen of the Persians was the first who composed a letter. These things are reported by Seame of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Cydippus of Mantinea also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle and besides these, Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, in his books Concerning Inventions. I have added a few details from them, in order to confirm the inventive and practically useful genius of the barbarians, by whom the Greeks profited in their studies. And if any one objects to the barbarous language, Anacharsis says, "All the Greeks speak Scythian to me." [...]
”
”
Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis, Books 1-3 (Fathers of the Church))
“
Ant then, opening her eyes, how fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry, laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peas spreading in their bowls, tinged violet, snow white, pale - as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb summer's day, with its almost blue-black sky, its delphiniums, its carnations, its arum lilies was over; and it was the moment between six and seven when every flower - roses, carnations, irises, lilac - glows; white, violet, red, deep orange; every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds; and how she loved the grey-white moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses!
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
“
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage——
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
--"Tulips", written 18 March 1961
”
”
Sylvia Plath (Ariel)
“
I brought the best of the gowns I found yesterday, but they all need work. I never got to repairing them yesterday what with running between ye and the merchant,” she added apologetically. “No, of course you did not,” Annabel said with understanding as she pushed the door closed. “ ’Tis all right. Surely we can get one ready by noon?” “Aye,” Seonag agreed, sounding relieved that she wasn’t angry. A sigh from the bed made them both glance that way as Ross tossed the furs and linens aside to get up. “I suppose there is no reason fer me to stay abed then,” he said dryly, bending to pick up his shirt. He tugged it on and then walked to Annabel and gave her a slow, hungry kiss that had her releasing his plaid to reach for him. The moment she did, he broke the kiss and stepped back taking the plaid with him. “I’ll need this. Besides, I like ye better that way,” he said with a grin as Annabel gasped in surprise at being left naked.
”
”
Lynsay Sands (An English Bride In Scotland (Highland Brides, #1))
“
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 43
from his former possessions six silver knives and forks and
a soup-ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every
day with delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the
coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting the Bishop
of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had
said more than once, ‘I find it difficult to renounce eating
from silver dishes.’
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks
of massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt.
These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured
on the Bishop’s chimney-piece. When he had any one
to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and
set the candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed,
there was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire
locked up the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon
every night. But it is necessary to add, that the key was never
removed.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Miserables (Abridged))
“
Nesta's stare drifted to the paint flaking off the walls. The intricate little designs. Cassian followed her stare. 'Did Feyre paint that?'
Nesta swallowed, and managed to get out, 'She painted every chance she got. Any extra coins she managed to save went toward paints.'
'Have you ever seen what she's done to the cabin up in the mountains?'
'No.' She'd never been there.
'Feyre painted the whole thing. Just like this. She told me once that there's a dresser here...'
Nesta aimed for the bedroom. 'This one?' Cassian followed her, and gods, it was so cramped and dark and smelly. The bed was still covered with stained linens. The three of them had slept here for years.
Cassian ran a hand over the painted dresser, marvelling. 'She really did paint stars for herself before she knew Rhys was her mate. Before she knew he existed.' His fingers traced the twining vines of flowers on the second drawer. 'Elain's drawer.' They drifted lower, curling over a lick of flame. 'And yours.'
Nesta managed a grunt of confirmation, her chest tight to the point of pain.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
No,” she croaked, trying to shrink away from him. “You’re not supposed to be here. Don’t come near me; you’ll catch it. Please go—” “Quiet,” Kev said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He caught Win as she tried to roll away, and settled his hand on her forehead. He felt the burning pulse beneath her fragile skin, the veins lit with raging fever. As Win struggled to push him away, Kev was alarmed by how feeble she had grown. Already. “Don’t,” she sobbed, writhing. Weak tears slid from her eyes. “Please don’t touch me. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to get sick. Oh, please go. … ” Kev pulled her up against him, her body living flame beneath the thin layer of her nightgown, the pale silk of her hair streaming over both of them. And he cradled her head in one of his hands, the powerful battered hand of a bare-knuckle fighter. “You’re mad,” he said in a low voice, “if you think I would leave you now. I’ll see you safe and well no matter what it takes.” “I won’t live through this,” she whispered. Kev was shocked by the words, and even more by his own reaction to them. “I’m going to die,” she said, “and I won’t take you with me.” Kev gripped her more closely, letting her fitful breaths blow against his face. No matter how she writhed, he wouldn’t let go. He breathed the air from her, taking it deep into his own lungs. “Stop,” she cried, trying desperately to twist away from him. The exertion caused her flush to darken. “This is madness. … Oh, you stubborn wretch, let me go!” “Never.” Kev smoothed her wild, fine hair, the strands darkening where her tears had tracked. “Easy,” he murmured. “Don’t exhaust yourself. Rest.” Win’s struggles slowed as she recognized the futility of resisting him. “You’re so strong,” she said faintly, the words born not of praise, but damnation. “You’re so strong. … ” “Yes,” Kev said, gently using a corner of the bed linens to dry her face. “I’m a brute, and you’ve always known it, haven’t you?” “Yes,” she whispered. “And you’re going to do as I say.” He cradled her against his chest and gave her some water. She took a few painful sips. “Can’t,” she managed, turning her face away. “More,” he insisted, bringing the cup back to her lips. “Let me sleep, please—” “After you drink more.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
Marlboro Man was out of town, on a trip to the southern part of the state, looking at farm ground, the night I began conceiving of the best way to arrange the reception menu. I was splayed on my bed in sweats, staring at the ceiling, when suddenly I gave birth to The Idea: one area of the country club would be filled with gold bamboo chairs, architecturally arranged orchids and roses, and antique lace table linens. Violins would serenade the guests as they feasted on cold tenderloin and sipped champagne. Martha Stewart would be present in spirit and declare, “This is my daughter, whom I love. In her I am well pleased.”
Martha’s third cousin Mabel would prefer the ballroom on the other end of the club, however, which would be the scene of an authentic chuck wagon spread: barbecue, biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, Coors Light. Blue-checkered tablecloths would adorn the picnic tables, a country band would play “All My Exes Live in Texas,” and wildflowers would fill pewter jugs throughout the room.
I smiled, imagining the fun. In one fell swoop, our two worlds--Marlboro Man’s country and my country club--would collide, combine, and unite in a huge, harmonious feast, one that would officially usher in my permanent departure from city life, cappuccino, and size 6 clothes.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
There was also a package wrapped in pale blue paper and tied with a matching ribbon. Picking up a small folded note that had been tucked under the ribbon, Beatrix read:
A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this.
-Poppy
Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked...
After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let a slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk.
Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen.
Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. "My God," he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers.
"Do you like my nightgown?" Beatrix asked.
Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. "Where's the rest of it?"
"This was all I could find." Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. "I wonder if I put it on backward..."
"Let me see." As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath.
Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn't take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin. She went to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, relishing the billowy softness of its quilts and linens. Reclining on her side, she made no attempt to cover her exposed leg as the gossamer fabric fell open to her hip.
Christopher came to her, stripping off his shirt along the way. The sight of him, all that flexing muscle and sun-glazed skin, was breathtaking. He was a beautiful man, a scarred Apollo, a dream lover. And he was hers.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly. People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along, when it had only been luck and muddle. A pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear Jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it. Hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches. Bl*wj*bs from women of stunning beauty. Restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right. The lamb or duck in tureen sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy gleaming in your manicured hand below the broad cloth cuff and mother of pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith. But the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo. Though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of 12-year-old scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the hair cuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for, and always had paid for.
Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth, cloth that was itself the color of money, could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts. But on the table with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there, it had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.
”
”
Walter Tevis (The Color of Money (Eddie Felson, #2))
“
The leader of the Red Guards stepped up to Nien Cheng. “We are the Red Guards. We have come to take revolutionary action against you!” Nien Cheng held up the copy of the Constitution and looked the leader in the eye. “It’s against the Constitution to enter a private house without a search warrant.” The man grabbed the Constitution out of Nien’s hand and threw it on the floor. “The Constitution is abolished. It was a document written by the Revisionists within the Communist Party. We recognize only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.” One of the Red Guards took the stick he was carrying and smashed the mirror hanging over a wooden chest in the entryway. Another guard replaced the mirror with a blackboard that bore a quotation from Mao: “When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain. We must not belittle these enemies.”2 With that, the young guards tore through the house, smashing furniture, dumping shelves of books onto the floor, slashing priceless paintings by Lin Fengmian and Qi Baishi. On a rampage, the eager students looted the closets and drawers, tearing most of Nien Cheng’s clothing and linens. They overturned the bed mattresses and hacked them to pieces. Then they smashed her music recordings. Pressing on, they found the food pantry and dumped flour, sugar, and canned goods onto the ravaged clothing. They broke several bottles of red wine, pouring it over the mess.
”
”
Charles W. Colson (The Good Life)
“
Elizabeth,” he said, trying not to laugh. “At a wedding reception, the guests cannot leave until the bride and groom retire. If you look over there, you’ll notice my great-aunts are already nodding in their chairs.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly contrite. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Because,” he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, “I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery.”
“Speaking of shrubbery,” she teased, pausing on the balcony to cast a last fond look at the “arbor” of potted trees with silk blossoms that occupied one-fourth the length of the entire ballroom, “everyone is talking about having gardens and arbors as themes for future balls. I think you’ve stared a new ‘rage.’”
“You should have seen your face,” he teased, drawing her away, “when you recognized what I had done.”
“We are probably the only couple,” she returned her face turned up to his in laughing conspiracy, “ever to lead off a ball by dancing a waltz on the sidelines.” When the orchestra had struck up the opening waltz, Ian had led her into the mock “arbor,” and they had started the ball from there.
“Did you mind?”
“You know I didn’t,” she returned, walking beside him up the curving staircase.
He stopped outside her bed chamber, opened the door for her, and started to pull her into his arms, then checked himself as a pair of servants came marching down the hall bearing armloads of linens. “There’s time for this later,” he whispered. “All the time we want.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
Lillian’s lashes lowered as she let him ease her closer, his hand sliding over the length of her spine. Her breasts and waist felt swollen within the insulating grip of her corset, and she suddenly longed to be rid of it. Taking as deep a breath as the stays would allow, she became aware of a sweetly spicy scent in the air.
“What is that?” she murmured, drawing in the fragrance. “Cinnamon and wine…” Turning in the circle of his arms, she looked around the spacious bedroom, past the poster bed to the small table that had been set near the window. There was a covered silver dish on the table, from which a few traces of sweet-scented steam were still visible. Perplexed, she twisted back to look at Marcus.
“Go and find out,” he said.
Curiously Lillian went to investigate. Taking hold of the cover’s handle, which had been wrapped with a linen napkin, she lifted the lid, letting a soft burst of intoxicating fragrance into the air. Momentarily puzzled, Lillian stared at the dish, and then burst out laughing. The white porcelain dish was filled with five perfect pears, all standing on end, their skin gleaming and ruby-red from having been poached in wine. They sat in a pool of clear amber sauce that was redolent of cinnamon and honey.
“Since I couldn’t obtain a pear from a bottle for you,” came Marcus’s voice from behind her, “this was the next best alternative.”
Lillian picked up a spoon and dug into one of the melting-soft pears, lifting it to her lips with relish. The bite of warm, wine-soaked fruit seemed to dissolve in her mouth, the spiced honey sauce causing a tingle in the back of her throat. “Mmmm…” She closed her eyes in ecstasy.
Looking amused, Marcus turned her to face him. His gaze fell to the corner of her lips, where a stray drop of honey sauce glittered. Ducking his head, he kissed and licked away the sticky drop, the caress of his mouth causing a new pleasurable ache deep inside her. “Delicious,” he whispered, his lips settling more firmly, until she felt as if her blood were flowing in streams of white-hot sparks. She dared to share the taste of wine and cinnamon with him, tentatively exploring his mouth with her tongue, and his response was so encouraging that she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself closer. He was delicious, the taste of his mouth clean and sweet, the feel of his lean, solid body immeasurably exciting. Her lungs expanded with shaky-hot breaths, restrained by the clench of her corset stays, and she broke the kiss with a gasp.
“I can’t breathe.”
Wordlessly Marcus turned her around and unfastened the gown. Reaching her corset, he untied the laces and loosened them with a series of expert tugs, until the stays expanded and Lillian gulped in relief. “Why did you lace so tightly?” she heard him ask.
“Because the dress wouldn’t fasten otherwise. And because, according to my mother, Englishmen prefer their women to be narrow-waisted.”
Marcus snorted as he eased her back to face him. “Englishmen prefer women to have larger waists in lieu of fainting from lack of oxygen. We’re rather practical that way.” Noticing that the sleeve of her unfastened gown had slipped over her white shoulder, he lowered his mouth to the smooth curve.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
“
He looks around in amazement, taking in the mess. 'Where- Do you really sleep here? Perhaps you ought to set fire to your rooms as well.'
'Maybe,' I say, guiding him to my bed. It is strange to put my hand on his back. I can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin linen of his shirt, can feel the flex of his muscles.
It feels wrong to touch him as though he were a regular person, as though he weren't both the High King and also my enemy.
He needs no encouragement to sprawl on my mattress, head on the pillow, black hair spilling like crow feathers. He looks up at me with his night-coloured eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. 'For a moment,' he says, 'I wondered if it wasn't you shooting bolts at me.'
I make a face at him. 'And what made you decide it wasn't?'
He grins up at me. 'They missed.'
I have said that he has the power to deliver a compliment and make it hurt. So, too, can he say something that ought to be insulting and deliver it in such a way that it feels like being truly seen.
Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks.
He hates you, I remind myself.
'Kiss me again,' he says, drunk and foolish. 'Kiss me until I am sick of it.'
I feel those words, feel them like a kick in the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can't tell which of us he's laughing at.
He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you.
Maybe he hates you the more for it.
After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he's talking to himself. 'If you're the sickness, I suppose you can't also be the cure.'
He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.
”
”
Holly Black (The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air, #2))
“
Mrs. Barnstable took her to a beautiful room with windows overlooking the gardens. “This is yours,” the housekeeper said. “No one has occupied it before.” The bed was made of light blue upholstered panels, the bedclothes of white linen. There was a graceful lady’s writing desk in the corner, and a satin maple wardrobe with a looking glass set in the door. “Mr. Merripen personally selected the wallpaper,” Mrs. Barnstable said. “He nearly drove the interior architect mad with his insistence on seeing hundreds of samples until he found this pattern.” The wallpaper was white, with a delicate pattern of flowering branches. And at sparse intervals, there was the motif of a little robin perched on one of the twigs. Slowly Win went to one of the walls and touched one of the birds with her fingertips. Her vision blurred. During her long recuperation from the scarlet fever, when she had grown tired of holding a book in her hands and no one had been available to read to her, she had stared out the window at a robin’s nest in a nearby maple tree. She had watched the fledglings hatch from their blue eggs, their bodies pink and veined and fuzzy. She had watched their feathers grow in, and she had watched the mother robin working to fill their ravenous beaks. And Win had watched as, one by one, they had flown from the nest while she remained in bed. Merripen, despite his fear of heights, had often climbed a ladder to wash the second-floor window for her. He had wanted her view of the outside world to be clear. He had said the sky should always be blue for her. “You’re fond of birds, Miss Hathaway?” the housekeeper asked. Win nodded without looking around, afraid that her face was red with unexpressed emotion. “Robins especially,” she half-whispered.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
Annabelle met her at the door, looking strained and weary but wearing a brilliant smile. And there was a tiny bundle of linen and clean toweling in her arms. Daisy put her fingers over her mouth and shook her head slightly, laughing even as her eyes prickled with tears. “Oh my,” she said, staring at the red-faced baby, the bright dark eyes, the wealth of black hair.
“Say hello to your niece,” Annabelle said, gently handing the infant to her.
Daisy took the baby carefully, astonished by how light she was. “My sister—”
“Lillian’s fine,” Annabelle replied at once. “She did splendidly.”
Cooing to the baby, Daisy entered the room. Lillian was resting against a stack of pillows, her eyes closed. She looked very small in the large bed, her hair braided in two plaits like a young girl’s. Westcliff was at her side, looking like he had just fought Waterloo singlehandedly.
The veterinarian was at the washstand, soaping his hands. He threw Daisy a friendly smile, and she grinned back at him. “Congratulations, Mr. Merritt,” she said. “It seems you’ve added a new species to your repertoire.”
Lillian stirred at the sound of her voice. “Daisy?”
Daisy approached with the baby in her arms. “Oh, Lillian, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her sister grinned sleepily. “I think so too. Would you—” she broke off to yawn. “Show her to Mother and Father?”
“Yes, of course. What is her name?”
“Merritt.”
“You’re naming her after the veterinarian?”
“He proved to be quite helpful,” Lillian replied. “And Westcliff said I could.”
The earl tucked the bedclothes more snugly around his wife’s body and kissed her forehead.
“Still no heir,” Lillian whispered to him, her grin lingering. “I suppose we’ll have to have another one.”
“No, we won’t,” Westcliff replied hoarsely. “I’m never going through this again.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers, #4))
“
When Evie awakened alone in the large bed, the first thing she beheld was a scattering of pale pink splashes over the snowy white linens, as if someone had spilled blush-colored wine in bed. Blinking sleepily, she propped herself up on one elbow and touched one of the pink dabs with a single fingertip. It was a creamy pink rose petal, pulled free of a blossom and gently dropped to the sheet. Gazing around her, she discovered that rose petals had been sprinkled over her in a light rain. A smile curved her lips, and she lay back into the fragrant bed.
The night of heady sensuality seemed to have been part of some prolonged erotic dream. She could hardly believe the things she had allowed Sebastian to do, the intimacies that she had never imagined were possible. And in the drowsy aftermath of their passion, he had cradled her against his chest and they had talked for what seemed to be hours. She had even told him the story of the night when she and Annabelle and the Bowman sisters had become friends, sitting in a row of chairs at a ball. "We made up a list of potential suitors and wrote it on our empty dance cards," Evie had told him. "Lord Westcliff was at the top of the list, of course. But you were at the bottom, because you were obviously not the marrying kind."
Sebastian had laughed huskily, tangling his bare legs intimately with hers. "I was waiting for you to ask me."
"You never spared me a glance," Evie had replied wryly. "You weren't the sort of man to dance with wallflowers."
Sebastian had smoothed her hair, and was silent for a moment. "No, I wasn't," he had admitted. "I was a fool not to have noticed you. If I had bothered to spend just five minutes in your company, you'd never have escaped me." He had proceeded to seduce her as if she were still a virginal wallflower, coaxing her to let him make love to her by slow degrees, until he was finally sheathed in her trembling body.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
She said, “Why can’t you see that people care for you?”
She said, “I care for you.”
“I know that you care. But…” He searched her face. “Anyone would, for a friend.”
“You’re more than a friend.”
“On the battlefield, you stayed--”
“Of course I did.”
“You have a strong sense of honor. You always have. I think you think you owe me something.”
“I stayed because I love you.”
He flinched and looked away. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.”
The night outside seemed to swell against the tent. The lamp smelled like a hot stone. His face slowly opened. He touched her hand as it pressed against his heart. His caress was light, secret, almost unsure of her knuckles, the thin tendons as strong as bone. She felt him become sure.
There was no sound when he kissed her. None when she unthreaded the ties of his shirt and found his skin.
He grasped her dagger belt, flexed his fingers once around the leather, then simply held on. He whispered something into her mouth that was almost a word. It lost its shape, became something else.
He let go. She heard the brush of linen as he drew the shirt over his head, his fingertips grazing the tent’s sloped ceiling as if for balance. His ribs were bound with gauze, his body marked by scars. Old ones, badly healed and raised. Others, pink and fresh. His shoulders bore pale gouges; they looked like sets of claws, almost deliberate, like tattoos. Curious, she touched them.
He bit his lip.
“That hurts?”
“No.”
“What is this? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Later.”
His hand strayed over her shirt, which was eastern, as Arin’s was, with no collar. Threadbare in places. Frayed at the neck. He worried the cloth there, rubbing it between fingers and thumb. Then he drew her shirt open, and she felt as if reality had grown larger and tremulous: a drop of water on the point of a pin.
“Kestrel…I’ve never--”
She whispered that this was new for her, too.
There was a long pause. “Are you certain you want--”
“Yes.”
“Because…”
“Arin.”
“Maybe you--”
“Arin.” She laughed, and then so did he, aware that they’d already found the bed. Words had fallen away. Maybe the words lay on the earth, nestled among clothes, curled into the undone dagger belt. Maybe later, language would be recovered and pieced together. Made to make sense. But not now. Now there was touch and taste and sound.
When he eased into her, she was glad for the burning lamp, the fuzzy glow of it on his skin. The way it showed the black fall of his wet hair, the flesh and scars that made him. She didn’t look away.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3))
“
What lesson is this?” she choked out.
His wild gaze met hers. “That even a low bastard can be tempted above his station when a lady is as lovely as you.”
“A lady? Not a tomboy?”
“I wish you were a tomboy, sweeting,” he said bitterly. “Then you wouldn’t have viscounts and earls and dukes vying for your favors.”
Was he jealous? Oh, how wonderful if he was! “And Bow Street Runners?” she prodded.
He shot her a dark glance that was apparently supposed to serve as her answer, for he then bent to close his mouth over one linen-draped breast.
Good. Heavens. What deliciousness what this? She shouldn’t allow it. But the man she’d been fascinated with for months was treating her as if he truly found her desirable, and she didn’t want it to stop.
Clutching his head to her, she exulted in the hungry way he sucked her breast through her chemise, turning her knees to water and her blood to stream.
He pleasured her breast with teeth and tongue as his hand found her other breast and teased the nipple to arousal. Her pulse leapt so high she feared she might faint. “Jackson…ohhh, Jackson…I thought you…despised me.”
“Does this feel like I despise you?” he murmured against her breast, then tongued it silkily for good measure.
A sensual tremor swept through her. “No.” But then, she’d been a fool before with men. She wasn’t good at understanding them when it came to this. “If you desired me all along, why didn’t you…say anything before?”
“Like what? ‘My lady, I keep imagining you naked in my bed?’” He slid one hand down to her hip. “I’m not fool enough to risk being shot for impertinence.”
Should she be thrilled or disappointed to hear that he imagined her in his bed? It was more than she’d expected, yet not enough.
She dug her fingers into his shoulder. “How do you know I won’t try shooting you now?”
He nuzzled her breast. “You left your pistol on the breakfast table.”
A strange excitement coursed through her. It made no sense, considering what had happened the last time a man had got her alone and helpless. “Perhaps I have another hidden in this room.”
He lifted his head to gaze steadily into her eyes. “Then I’d best keep you too busy to use it.”
Suddenly he was kissing her again, hard, hungry kisses…each more intoxicating than the last. He filled his hands with her breasts and fondled them shamelessly, distracting her from anything but the taste and feel of him.
A moan escaped her, and he tore his mouth from hers. “You shouldn’t let me touch you this way.”
“Yet I am,” she gasped against his cheek. “And you aren’t stopping, either.”
“Say the word, and I will.” Yet he dragged her skirts up and pressed forward between her legs. “This is mad. We’re both mad.”
“Are we?” she asked, hardly conscious anymore of what she was aying.
Because it felt utterly right to be in his arms, as if she’d waited ages to be there. Her heart had never clamored so for anyone else.
“I don’t generally take advantage of my clients’ sisters,” he rasped as his hands slid to grip her thighs. “It’s unwise.”
“I’m your client, too. Do I look as if I’m complaining?” she whispered and drew his head down to hers.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
“
Wyatt." She tore it open and stood there, drinking him in.Just the sight of him had her heart doing a happy dance in her chest.
"Don't throw me out." He lifted a hand. "I come in peace.With food."
When she didn't say a word he added, "Pizza.With all your favorite toppings.Sausage, mushrooms, green..."
"Well,then." To hide the unexpected tears that sprang to her eyes,she turned away quickly. "Since you went to so much trouble,you may as well come in."
"It was no trouble.I just rode a hundred miles on my Harley,fought my way through the smoke screen at the Fortune Saloon,had to fend off Daffy's attempts to have her way with me, and discovered that I'd left my wallet back at the ranch,which meant I had to sign away my life before Vi would turn over this pizza,wine,and dessert. But hey, no trouble at all.It's the sort of thing I do nearly every day."
He followed her to the kitchen, where he set down the pizza box and a brown bag.
He glanced over at the stove. "Are you going to lift that kettle, or did I interrupt you making a recording of you whistling along with it in harmony?"
Despite her tears,she found herself laughing hysterically at his silly banter.
Oh,how she'd missed it.
He set the kettle aside.The sudden silence was shocking.
Because she had her back to him, he fought the urge to touch her.Instead he studied the way her shoulders were shaking. Troubled,he realized he'd made her cry.
"Sorry." Deflated,his tone lowered. "I guess this was a bad idea."
"Wyatt."
He paused.
"It was a good idea.A very good idea."
She turned,and he saw the tears coursing down her cheeks.
"Oh,God,Marilee,I'm sorry.I didn't mean to make you..."
"I'm not crying." She brushed furiously at the tears. "I mean I was,but then you made me laugh and..."
"This is how you laugh?" He caught her by the shoulders and held her a little away. "Woman,I didn't realize just how weird you are. Wait a minute.Do you think being weird might be contagious? Maybe I ought to get out of here before I turn weird,too."
The more she laughed,the harder the tears fell.
Through a torrent of tears she wrapped her arms around his waist and held on, burying her face in his neck. "You can't leave.I won't let you."
He tipped up her face,wiping her tears with his thumbs. "You mean that? You really don't want me to go?"
"I don't.I really want you to stay, Wyatt."
"For dinner?"
"And more."
"Dessert?"
"And more."
His smile was quick and dangerous. "I'm beginning to like the 'and more.'"
She smiled through her tears. "Me,too."
"Maybe we could have the 'and more' as an appetizer, before the pizza."
Her laughter bubbled up and over, wrapping itself around his heart. "Oh, how I've missed your silly sense of humor."
"You have?"
"I have.I've missed everything about you."
"Everything?" He leaned close to nibble her ear,sending a series of delicious shivers along her spine.
"Everything."
Catching his hand,she led him to the bedroom. "I worked very hard today making up the bed with fresh linens. Want to be the first to mess it up?"
He looked from the bed to her and then back again. "Oh,yeah."
He drew her close and brushed her mouth with his. Just a soft,butterfly kiss, but she felt it all the way to her toes. "I mean I want to really, really mess it up."
"Me,t..."
And then there was no need for words.
”
”
R.C. Ryan (Montana Destiny)
“
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 97 percent of postconsumer textile waste is recyclable. Yet only 20 percent gets recycled because the consumer simply does not know it can be. When I was a child, I remember watching a wooden mill turn old bed linens into beautiful paper sheets at the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, but I had forgotten about the class field trip until today. Throughout the world, a small portion of worn-out textiles is currently being converted into rags for the construction, painting, and automobile industries; another percentage is shredded into flocking fibers for insulating, padding, upholstering, or soundproofing purposes. But the recyclers wish they could put their hands on all textile discards, including the extras that we simply throw away or hoard for the what-if. Resale giant Goodwill, along with mobile recycling bins, accept both natural and man-made fibers of any brand for recycling. Those items that have holes, rips, and stains beyond repair can be boxed, labeled “rags,” and donated to participating locations, where they are then dispatched to textile recyclers.
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
“
Watching a delicate tide of pink rise in her face, he said in a low voice, "Put the book aside."
Poppy's toes curled beneath the bed linens. "But I've reached a very interesting part," she said demurely, teasing him.
"Not half so interesting as what's about to happen to you." Drawing the covers back with a deliberate sweep that left her gasping, Harry lowered his body over hers... and the book dropped to the floor, forgotten.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Married by Morning (The Hathaways, #4))
“
He had moved closer to the fire and was turning his laced sleeves back when he saw her.
Her red hair was a blaze across the white ermine lap throw in which she was wrapped. She was sound asleep, lying on the settee, and he could see the pinched white misery of her face, the paleness of her lips, the faint spattering of freckles against her skin. He wondered if he could redden those lips.
Would she pay the logical price for rescue? She was in his house, in his power, and if she were even the slightest bit knowledgeable about the way the world worked, she'd know what was expected of her. She was probably lying naked beneath that soft white fur, expecting him.
A sudden rush of desire washed over him, and he examined it, surprised. It had been a very long time since the thought of a soft, sweet body had aroused his interest, not to mention another, more demanding part of him. But Emma Brown, with her murderous ways, her soft, shy mouth, and her astonishing bravery, had done just that.
He moved to stand over her. He considered unfastening his breeches and taking her there on the sofa. After all, she must be a doxy, despite that innocence. No one could look as she did, find herself in the situations she did untouched, and remain untouched.
He reached out a hand, tugging the fur down, hoping to see exposed skin. Instead he saw that miserable gray serge that he'd wanted to rip off her when he'd unfastened it earlier. She wasn't made for gray serge. She was made for silks and satins and furs. And the pristine whiteness of bed linen and smooth skin.
"What are you doing?"
His damnable guest, Nathaniel, appeared in the doorway, his brown hair ruffled from sleep, a glowering expression on his face.
"Admiring Miss Brown," Killoran said lazily, turning his gaze back to the sleeping woman.
”
”
Anne Stuart (To Love a Dark Lord)
“
But apparently it was the bed linen that changed her mind. Cool blue silk and cotton patchwork. When Dad laid the stitched pillowcase and duvet out for her on the sofa, the colours reminded her of something she’d never seen. She said to us, “Imagine everyone in the house—even people we don’t know—all wrapped up safe in blue, like fishes. What fun . . .
”
”
Helen Oyeyemi (White Is for Witching)
“
What are you doing here, anyway?” Cass asked.
Luca’s smile vanished. “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he said. “And your aunt wanted to plan a betrothal ceremony. Didn’t she tell you?”
Instantly, Cass’s good mood dissipated. A betrothal ceremony? Once she had undergone the official ritual, there would be no going back on her marriage. She would belong to Luca da Peraga. Like his fur-lined cloak or the feather in his hat, Cass would be just one more pretty thing for Luca to call his own. No more studying. No more adventures. She would become, as Falco said, a caged bird, beating its wings against the bars of its prison.
“No, she didn’t tell me,” Cass said hoarsely, trying to push Falco from her mind. His sparkling eyes. The crooked smile. The tiny jagged scar under his right eye.
“We can talk about it more tomorrow,” Luca said kindly, perhaps mistaking her dread for nervousness. “I’ll be out running some errands in the morning, but I’ll see you at dinner?”
Cass nodded. A pair of servants came for Luca with armfuls of bed linens and towels. Cass fled the library in front of them. She didn’t want to watch Luca settle in to the bedroom next to her. She didn’t want to think about what it meant for the two of them, and for her future.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1))
“
THE FRENCHMAN’S GOLD We found Jocasta Cameron Innes on the window seat in her room, clad in her chemise, bound hand and foot with strips of bed linen, and absolutely scarlet-faced with fury. I had no time to take further note of her condition, for Duncan Innes, clad for the night in
”
”
Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross (Outlander, #5))
“
You said you wouldn't bed me tonight." Her voice sounded small, fearful. She hated it.
"I'm not. I'm merely going to help you to your feet."
She placed her hand in his. Hers seemed so tiny, and when he closed his fingers around it, she was incredibly aware that he could easily break her with very little effort. She was surprised by the coarseness of his flesh. These were not the hands of a gentleman. He drew her up, then expertly moved her arm behind her back, somehow snagging her other wrist until both were held within his firm grasp. With his free hand, he cradled her face, stroked her cheek with his thumb.
"You will learn to do things as I like them done," he said softly, in a voice that promised pleasures. His eyes captured and held hers, and she thought that even if he wasn't holding her, she'd not have been able to break away. "I have particular needs. The first is that you are never to wrap your arms around me."
"Why not?" she whispered.
"Because it's what I require." He lowered his lips to hers, and she realized that if he hadn't manacled her wrists that her arms would have twined about him of their own accord, simply to ensure that she remained standing when her knees grew so weak.
His tongue toyed with her mouth, painting it, outlining it as though he wanted to be intimately familiar with it. Then he was urging her lips apart and delving into the depths of her mouth with an urgency that astounded her. He might not like her, but it was becoming plain enough rather quickly that he was quite fond of her mouth. He explored every inch of it, every nook, every cranny, every hidden corner. When she dared to meet the thrust of his tongue with a thrust of her own, he groaned low and pressed her against his broad chest. Through the thin linen of his shirt and the maid's well-worn nightly attire, she could feel the thudding of his heart, sense its increase in tempo.
When she tried to break free of his hold, his hand clamped harder on her wrists, just shy of causing pain.
”
”
Lorraine Heath (Lord of Wicked Intentions (The Lost Lords of Pembrook, #3))
“
Do not store your linens together in a central location. It is more efficient to store them near the bed for which they are intended. Reducing your linen inventory to two sets or fewer for each bed should make it easy to fit the linens on the closet shelf of their respective bedrooms. Finally, assign each bed a color to clear up any confusion about which sheets fit which bed.
”
”
Susan C. Pinsky (Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized)
“
She remembered sitting on the edge of a white-sheeted bed, the muscles in her arms drawn taut as she gripped the linen and tried to contain her screams of pain, her teeth feeling like they’d crack from being clenched so hard, watching the seconds slowly drip off the clock.
”
”
Obie Williams (The Crimes of Orphans)
“
Come here,” Cam said in a sleep-darkened voice, drawing back the bed linens. A laugh stirred in her throat. “Absolutely not. There is too much to be done. Everyone is busy except you.” “I intend to be busy. As soon as you come here. Monisha, don’t make me chase you this early.” Amelia gave him a severe glance as she obeyed. “It’s not early. In fact, if you don’t wash and dress quickly, we’ll be late to the flower show.” “How can you be late for flowers?” Cam shook his head and smiled, as he always did when she said something he considered to be gadjo nonsense. His gaze was hot and slumberous. “Come closer.” “Later.” She gave a helpless gasp of laughter as he reached out with astonishing dexterity, snaring her wrist in his hand. “Cam, no.” “A good Romany wife never refuses her husband,” he teased. “The maid—” she said breathlessly as she was pulled across the mattress, and clasped against all that warm golden skin. “She can wait.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (The Hathaways Complete Series (The Hathaways #1-5))
“
Put the book aside.” Poppy’s toes curled beneath the bed linens. “But I’ve reached a very interesting part,” she said demurely, teasing him. “Not half so interesting as what’s about to happen to you.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Married By Morning (The Hathaways, #4))
“
Cam, please, not now.” “I’ll be gentle.” He lifted her from the circle of discarded clothes. “I know it’s soon after your first time.” She shook her head as he laid her on the bed. Clenching the fabric of her chemise with both hands to keep it in place, she whispered, “No, it’s not that. Someone will find out. Someone will hear. Someone will—” “Let go, hummingbird, so I can take this off you.” There was a flick of devil’s fire in his eyes as he said mildly, “Let go, or I’ll rip it.” “Cam, don’t—” She was interrupted by the sound of rending linen. He had torn it completely down the front, the fragile material drooping on either side of her. “You’ve ruined it,” she said in disbelief. “How am I to explain this to the maid? And how am I to put my corset back on?” Cam didn’t look at all apologetic as he pulled the remnants of the chemise away from her body. “Take off your drawers. Or I’ll have to rip those, too.” “Oh, God.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways, #1))