Debutante Quotes

 It’s like you had a coming-out party,” Andrea said. “You’ve been presented to polite society, except now everybody wants to kill you.” “Spare me.” “Kate Daniels, a debutante.” Andrea grinned. “It’s not funny.” “It’s hilarious.” The smile slid off Andrea’s face and she vomited on the snow. “Karma,” I told her.

Simon called you 'Machiavelli disguised as a debutante.'" "Gosh," I said, not sure whether to feel flattered or insulted.

TO ALL THE ambulance drivers firewatchers air-raid wardens nurses canteen workers airplane spotters rescue workers mathematicians vicars vergers shopgirls chorus girls librarians debutantes spinsters fishermen retired sailors servants evacuees Shakespearean actors and mystery novelists WHO WON THE WAR.

But Tudor mansions on manicured grounds didn't look right with their grand front doors wide open to the night. It was like a debutante flashing her bra thanks to a wardrobe malfunction.

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

You get into trouble the way debutantes get into ball gowns.

The way she told it, the English counties are littered with aging spinsters who accidentally displayed a spark of intelligence at a debutante dance and were banished forever from civilized society

Well, honey, it is the south. These debutantes know how to verbally kick anyone’s ass. They learned it from their mamas in the womb.

Prom was more about acting out some weird facsimile of adulthood: dress up like a tacky wedding party, hold hands and behave like a couple even if you've never dated, and observe the etiquette of Gilded Age debutantes thrust into modern celebrity: limos, red carpets and a constant stream of paparazzi, played by parents, teachers, and hired photo hacks.

Penny for your thoughts," she commented as she ran a hand over my dress, smoothing the fabric. "A penny won't buy you much these days," I told Lily as she zipped me. "Thought inflation.

Mind you, after your silly debutantes have finished their proper posture and walking lessons, tell them it never killed any young lady to remove the book from off the top of her head and open it for a change. Just like I taught you.

Lirael didn’t answer either question. She just looked at him, waiting for him to talk. He met her gaze at first, then faltered and looked away. There was something unnerving about her eyes. A toughness he had never seen in the young women he knew from the debutante parties in Corvere. It was partly this that made him talk, and partly a desire to impress her with his knowledge and intelligence.

Jason had attended debutante balls. Knew the drill. My crew would have to conduct research on YouTube. Jason was popular on the cotillion scene. My guys weren’t even on the radar. Asking Jason would get Whitney off my back. Inviting only Morris Island boys might plummet her into a depression.

Prom was more about acting out some weird facsimile of adulthood: dress up like a tacky wedding party, hold hands and behave like a couple even if you’ve never dated, and observe the etiquette of Gilded Age debutantes thrust into modern celebrity: limos, red carpets, and a constant stream of paparazzi, played by parents, teachers, and hired photo hacks.

We all play by rules our brothers will never even have to know.

Madame Olga began muttering something under her breath in gypsy to the effect of "Fucking debutantes, they do not understand the sacredness of the moment." But everyone in the room just thought this was part of her gypsy spirit chant.

Victor kind of rolled his eyes when his mom went on about all the debutante balls Victor had gone to with these girls, and I nodded, trying to look politely interested. Then she asked me when I came out and I said, “Oh, I’m not gay. I’m dating your son,” which I thought was pretty clear to begin with. Then Victor started coughing loudly and Bonnie looked confused, but then she got distracted, because Victor sounded like he’d swallowed his own tongue, and then right after that Victor said that we should probably leave.

This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured - the housewife buying carrots from a pushcart - the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist, but has the excuse of a sister to support - the businessman who hated his business - the worker who hated his work - the intellectual who hated everybody - all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a blessing it was to be taken out of themselves.

everyone feels like an impposter sometimes. That's life. This probably isn't the last time you will find yourself playing a role you wouldn't hve picked for youtself, but it doesn't change who you are. It's just the part you've been cast for the time being.

You can put a pig in a ball gown, Minka. That doesn’t make it a debutante.

Being an author of a book is like being a mother of a debutante in the Middle Ages. You have to present your baby to society and provide her with dowry, and in your heart, you hope that some royalty spends a night with her and ensures her way to success.

Ouch!" The manicurist who'd just relieved me of part of my cuticle submerged my feet in bubbling water. Hot water. "Oh, hush," Lily said. "It feels good. Beauty is pain." "Pain," I gritted out, "is also pain.

What kind of person would I be if I prided myself on being different from other girls?

-On creating a false identity for Pheobe- "A widow," Ava insisted. "How did her husband die?" Greer asked. "I hardly know," Ava said with a shrug as she rocked Jonathan in her arms. "How do men typically die? A fall from a horse or some such thing." "I scarcely believe scores of men are falling to their deaths from their saddles," Greer said drily.

There she was, lying on a single bed in a room so small that there wasn't even space for a chair, and the first thing that struck him was that she was beautiful. She had lost too much weight - her long legs were too thin in greasy jeans and her upper body looked as frail as a bird's under a greasy workman's shirt - but her pale and famished face, with its great blue eyes and delicate, thin-lipped mouth, made her look like the heartbreaking debutante her mother might always have wanted her to be.

5 stars. Would definitely get kidnapped again.

Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petits fours melting under the July sun.

Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petit fours melting under the July sun.

Having second thoughts, Taft?" "Sawyer doesn't have second thoughts!" Sadie-Grace insisted from the golf cart behind us, loyal to the bone. "Sometimes, she doesn't even have first thoughts!" Thank you, Sadie-Grace.

Are you sure that's how we ended up at the bottom of this hole, Sawyer?" "Trust me. You were unconscious, but I held on just long enough to see the person responsible." "Maybe it was an accident?" "How do you accidentally drug someone, Sadie-Grace?" "Accidentally . . . on purpose?

Mackie kneaded his forehead. "Are you sure none of you want to call your parents?" "No, thank you." "Do you know who my father is?' "My stepmother's faking a pregnancy, and she needs her rest." Mackie wasn't touching that with a ten-foot pole. He turned to the last girl, the one who'd successfully picked the lock mere seconds after he'd arrived. "What about you?" he said hopefully. "My biological father literally threatened to kill me if I become inconvenient," the girl said, leaning back against the wall of the jail cell like she wasn't wearing a designer gown. "And if anyone finds out we were arrested, I'm out five hundred thousand dollars.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that a person in want of plastic baggies need only look in the Taft family kitchen. Aunt Olivia was the queen of Ziplocs. She'd taken over Lillian's cabinets and had entire drawers dedicated to them - every size, every type, a year's supply of each at least.

Politics is worse than absurd, darling; it’s unfair and soul crushing.

with a singlemindedness common only to former Soviet interior-ministry troops and first-year law students

Cerulean. Or possible sapphire. Less formal than semi-formal. Cocktail?" "Yes, please," I muttered. "Cocktail attire," Lily emphasized, shooting a warning look at me,

I was done knowing better, when I didn't really know anything at all.

My grandmother gave an elegant little shrug. "People will think what they want. I daresay they always do.

Well . . ." Lily prompted primly. "Ask me again." "Ask you what?" I played dumb. She'd shushed me. This was the price of shushing.

There was waiting for the guillotine to fall, and then there was hearing the eek, eek, eek of the blade creaking downward. Campbell being nice was downright terrifying.

Don’t give in to him at all. Deny yourself. Because then your eyes will not be clouded by a madness that you cannot control, and then you will be able to learn to see him as he is.

You're not the type to natter, are you?" David Ames said in response to my silence. I said the first thing that came to mind. "Kind of a sexist way to describe someone talking." He blinked. "You wouldn't describe your grandsons as nattering," I elaborated.

He wrote you a poem?" Evelyn looped her hand around Georgiana's arm and led the way to the chairs lining one side of the room. "He did." Grateful to see Luxley select one of the debutantes as his next victim, Georgiana accepted a glass of Madeira from one of the footman. After three hours of quadrilles, waltzes, and country dances, her feet ached. "And you know what rhymes with Georgiana, don't you?" Evelyn wrinkled her brow, her gray eyes twinkling. "No, what?" "Nothing. He just put 'iana' after every ending word. In iambic trimeter, yet. 'Oh, Georgiana, your beauty is my sunlightiana, your hair is finer than goldiana, your—' " Lucinda made a choking sound.

Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and debutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many females, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.

People who'd always had a family to count on and place to belong couldn't truly understand the draw of that little whisper that said There's someone like you. Someone who wouldn't hold my origins against me.

Ronan was a national bad boy now, the wild boy who should not be left alone with virgin debutantes. Only, the world did not know it was Ronan who was the frightened virgin and Emily the drunken temptress on the night in question. He was beyond despair and had lost the will to live. He was a dead man walking, His heart and soul was ripped out of his chest. He would never get his decent girl now, his life was over.

From what I picked up during the remainder of the evening, Campbell Ames had a reputation for pulling "stunts like this". It wasn't entirely clear what constituted as a stunt, though I did gather that borrowing cars that didn't belong to her and wearing white after Labor Day were both in Campbell's repertoire.

Putting pants on a dog was not what one would call "easy". Putting pants on a purebred, hundred-pound Bernese mountain dog who was fairly certain she did not want to wear pants could have substituted for one of the twelve labors of Hercules.

Tell me everything. Did you manage to have any fun? I hope you at least staged a protest in the middle of one of Lillian's formal dinners. Burned a few bras?" "The 1960s called, Mom. They want their signature feminist protest back." "Smart-ass.

You can't be serious." I turned to face Lily. She was standing in the doorway to my room. The expression on her face could not have been more horrified if I'd declared my allegiance to a religious sect that didn't believe in wearing clothes, only snakes.

This is me crouching. This is me standing. This is me realizing how deep this hole is." "Do you have to narrate everything you're doing?" "This is me trying to give myself a boost . . . Oof!" "Sadie-Grace." "I'm sorry! It's just really hard to give yourself a boost.

It's special because it's not special, and hence it makes Cohen feel special for choosing it.

I prepared for my meal in the usual fashion: fork in my left hand; my dominant right clenched into a fist on my lap, ready to punch anyone who dared take away my food.

The only thing that separated the so-called real world from high school was a locker combination

Devon just about skipped from his brother’s townhouse to Brooks. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing, and even the horses moved their arses out of Devon’s way to shit.

People were fundamentally predictable. If you stopped expecting them to surprise you, they couldn’t disappoint.

Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want.

More than once,” Norris writes in her memoir, “I received an engraved invitation to an on-campus orgy; a more perfect expression of debutante wantonness could not be conceived.

you persist in playing the role of a spoiled, petulant debutante without the wit to realize your every action has a consequence.

He turned to me and extended a hand. "Since Lillian seems to have forgotten her manners, I suppose it's up to the two of us to introduce ourselves. I'm David Ames. And you are, young lady?" If my grandmother could have incinerated him with the power of her mind, I think she would have. "Right now," I replied, "I'm someone who is very concerned for your longevity.

You know, it's such a peculiar thing--our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they're enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for--at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it.

Why, Miss Wyndham,” Mr. Kent replied, looking as chaste and good as a debutante at her presentation to the Queen. “I think we can all agree it’s fair to punish these guilty people feigning innocence every day of their lives, all while helping a wrongfully accused innocent. I would certainly never ask you, but I suspect you agree.” “You cannot simply blackmail people into liking me!

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted. "Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable..." "What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh. "Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity." "A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously.

She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream.

Are we still tying bows?" Sadie-Grace sounded hopeful as she sat down beside me at the senator's dining room table. "I only have three things in life that I am truly gifted at, and one of them is tying bows." I shoved the basket I was currently working on in her direction. "Have at it." Sadie-Grace studied my work and got very quiet for a moment. "Sawyer," she said morosely, "what did this cellophane wrap ever do to you?

This has rather shaken you up, hasn’t it?” “Oh, don’t,” snapped Edwin, throat scratched with guilt. “Don’t go being nice, how can you constantly be like this, when it’s your arm and your visions and somebody else’s bloody mess—and I made it worse— and Reggie might be dead, and here we are dancing like sodding debutantes around the fact that you might be next, and who knows what—” “Edwin. Shut up,” Robin suggested.

We forgive not because it’s easy or the right thing to do, but that the choice to forgive is in itself powerful. It’s an affirmation, a willingness to take life on life’s terms. And a privilege that no one can take from you. It

Sawyer? I think I can feel my shoulder." "Can you feel your hands?" "No." "What about your legs?" "No." "Can you move?" "Let me check . . . Also no." "Then what good could it possibly do us that you now have feeling in your shoulder?" "I don't know, Sawyer. But I think I hear someone coming, and you're the one in charge of coming up with plans.

So, to recap," Lily said, sounding calm, but not entirely apathetic, "Campbell isn't your half sister. She's mine, because my daddy's mistress, who had Campbell's daddy's baby way back when, is actually my biological mother, and that baby was me. Victoria is my great-aunt, and technically, so is Lillian, because my adoptive mama is actually Lillian's identical twin sister's daughter. The real Liv Taft was killed twenty-five years ago in what might — or might not — have been an accident, involving practically every adult I know." Lily paused. "Does that about sum things up?

Do I even want to know what you're doing in here?" I whirled to face Campbell. "Tampons," I said. Plausible deniability, thy name is feminine hygiene. "I need one." I paused. "Possibly two." Campbell frowned. "Why would you need two?

Using only her index finger, Juliette slowly played the opening notes of the Mozart tune. One measure, two, three, and at the end of the fourth, a barely audible click came, sending a vibration through her fingers, and a small door opened on the side of the pianoforte. A weak thump sounded as a fabric-wrapped parcel fell out of the now open compartment onto the rug.

Walker is going to college — in Scotland." Sadie-Grace said Scotland like Walker might as well have been attending university on Mars. "Boone keeps asking him to mail home haggis and a kilt, but either that's illegal or Walker just really doesn't want to.

I noticed the valet stand, but didn't think to look for the valet. My frustration with Lily - and the fact that she was still updating the blog over which she was being blackmailed - may have caused me to throw my door open slightly harder than necessary. And then I saw the valet. In my defense, I wasn't used to people opening my car door for me, and he only made a small wheezing sound when it nailed him in the stomach. I stood and reached out to steady him by the arm. "You okay?" The valet's hazel eyes rested on mine. "I'll live.

Earth to Sawyer?" Campbell said. I had no idea what I'd missed. "We were just about to discuss how incredibly debonair I look in this hat," Boone informed me, sliding his fingers along its brim. "I was born to fedora." I wasn't sure whether the pained look on Nick's face was the result of Boone's use of the word fedora as a verb or the conversation he, Campbell, and I had been having before we'd been interrupted.

María picked a thorn off the top of a maguey, made thread out of the sinews of the leaf, and told the maguey: 'Pardon me for taking your needle, pardon me for threading the needle with your body, pardon me for love, pardon me for I am what I am, and I do not know what this means.

Had I realized while on Earth," he said, "that Hell was such a delightful place, I should have put more faith in the teachings of religion. As it was, I actually doubted its existence. A foolish error, cherie. I am pleased to say that you have converted me completely." "I, too," observed Mr. Hamilton, helping himself to wine, "was something of an unbeliever in my time, and while never quite an atheist, like my arch-enemy Jefferson, I was still inclined to look upon Satan as merely a myth. Imagine my satisfaction to find him ruling a monarchy! You know I spent the greater part of my earthly existence fighting Mr. Jefferson and his absurd democratic ideas and now look at the damn country! Run by morons!

Sawyer? I just wiggled my feet! And my hands! And my temple!" "Your temple? As in your head?" "No. As in my lady temple." "Your lady . . ." "Temple. Like how it says in the Bible that your body is a temple?" "Oh, God. Can be just go back to the part where you were talking about your hands and feet?

You're here because you know what it's like to feel powerless. Everyone you see here has been given every privilege that money can buy, but at the end of the day, there are some privileges that money can't buy. Money doesn't keep people from telling girls who look like me to go back to the other side of the border. And no matter what your family name is, or how white your skin, I'm willing to bet that there are still people who tell you to smile, because you look so pretty when you smile." She paused, just for an instant. "we all play by rules our brothers will never even have to know. "You want to know why we go cliff-diving and off-roading and drag you out to abandoned islands in the night?" Victoria's voice was no louder, but her delivery was suddenly crystal clear. "Because we can. Because when people say that well-behaved women rarely make history, they leave out the little tidbit that the women who do make history rarely do so alone.

An angel," I repeated. "Have you met me?" "You, as in the girl who threw herself into the line of fire on my behalf after having known me less than a day?" Lily asked innocently. "Or the one who spends hours discussing zombie-related military tactics with my younger brother?" She paused. "Or maybe the one who can't even let herself be angry that her mother's a piece of work who's been refusing her calls all month?" Ouch. Lily usually didn't go quite so clearly for the jugular.

All love is socioeconomic. It’s the gradients in status that make arousal possible.

The duke’s soaked buckskin breeches clung to his physique, outlining every well-defined muscle in his posterior and thighs. Heat flooded Charlene’s cheeks, keeping her warm despite the cold, wet gown. He was a front-page scandal, the picture of sin itself. His Disgrace, in skintight breeches and transparent linen, leading his flock of debutantes into the woods.

I paddled over to Walker's Jet Ski. The lanyard with the key was still attached to the life vest he'd left on the handlebars. I unclipped the lanyard, attached it to my own vest, and threw his to him. "Is it me," Walker asked Lily, "or is your delightful cousin stealing my ride?" "I'm not stealing it," I corrected. "I'm taking it home. Nor our lake house - yours.

Perhaps," Aunt Olivia suggested diplomatically, "you should put on some clothes." Apparently, the tailor had finished getting the measurements she needed. Apparently, that wasn't a particularly recent development. Apparently, I'd been standing there in my undergarments for a while. Only about a third as embarrassed as I should have been, I ducked back into the dressing room.

A split second later, Sadie-Grace literally bowled me over with a hug. "I love college," she told me, scrambling to her feet and helping me up before resuming her aggressive hug campaign. "I'm majoring in dance and also Russian literature, and combined, Boone and I have only broken two bones!" "Both Boone's," Campbell clarified. "His bones are my bones," Sadie-Grace insisted. "And vice versa. Unless that's creepy? I've discovered I have a really hard time telling what's creepy, but on the bright side, I haven't been kidnapped or kidnapped anyone else this semester, so that's good.

This would be the worst birthday of his life. Vladimir's best friend Baobab was down in Florida covering his rent, doing unspeakable things with unmentionable people. Mother, roused by the meager achievements of Vladimir's first quarter-century, was officially on the warpath. And, in possibly the worst development yet, 1993 was the Year of the Girlfriend. A downcast, heavyset American girlfriend whose bright orange hair was strewn across his Alphabet City hovel as if cadre of Angora rabbits had visited. A girlfriend whose sickly-sweet incense and musky perfume coated Vladimir's unwashed skin, perhaps to remind him of what he could expect on this, the night of his birthday: Sex. Every week, once a week, they had to have sex, as both he and this large pale woman, this Challah, perceived that without weekly sex their relationship would fold up according to some unspecified law of relationships.

She looked to Pippa. "Have I made it difficult for you?" Pippa hedged. "Not at all. Castleton sent news to Father just last week that he was planning to court me in earnest, and it's not as though I'm the most ordinary of debutantes." It was an understatement. Pippa was something of a bluestocking, very focused on the sciences and fascinated by the insides of living things, from plants to people. She'd once stolen a goose from the kitchens and dissected it in her bedchamber.

The seamstress looped her measuring tape around my boobs. The sound she made as she wrote down the number was unmistakably a sound of judgement. "We'll build in cups," she offered delicately. "I should think so," Aunt Olivia replied. "You have such a tiny waist," Lily told me soothingly. There was nothing like starting the day off with a three-way conversation about the size of my boobs where no one actually mentioned my chest, but it was strongly implied that one needed a microscope to see it.

Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, former paid companion to several of the ton’s most successful debutantes of prior seasons, came to Havenhurst to fill the position of Elizabeth’s duenna. A woman of fifty with wiry gray hair she scraped back into a bun and the posture of a ramrod, she had a permanently pinched face, as if she smelled something disagreeable but was too well-bred to remark upon it. In addition to the duenna’s daunting physical appearance, Elizabeth observed shortly after their first meeting that Miss Throckmorton-Jones possessed an astonishing ability to sit serenely for hours without twitching so much as a finger. Elizabeth refused to be put off by her stony demeanor and set about finding a way to thaw her. Teasingly, she called her “Lucy,” and when the casually affectionate nickname won a thunderous frown from the lady, Elizabeth tried to find a different means. She discovered it very soon: A few days after Lucinda came to live at Havenhurst the duenna discovered her curled up in a chair in Havenhurt’s huge library, engrossed in a book. “You enjoy reading?” Lucinda had said gruffly-and with surprise-as she noted the gold embossed title on the volume. “Yes,” Elizabeth had assured her, smiling. “Do you?” “Have you read Christopher Marlowe?” “Yes, but I prefer Shakespeare.” Thereafter it became their policy each night after supper to debate the merits of the individual books they’d read. Before long Elizabeth realized that she’d won the duenna’s reluctant respect. It was impossible to be certain she’d won Lucinda’s affection, for the only emotion the lady ever displayed was anger, and that only once, at a miscreant tradesman in the village. Even so, it was a display Elizabeth never forgot. Wielding her ever-present umbrella, Lucinda had advanced on the hapless man, backing him clear around his own shop, while from her lips in a icy voice poured the most amazing torrent of eloquent, biting fury Elizabeth had ever heard. “My temper,” Lucinda had primly informed her-by way of apology, Elizabeth supposed-“is my only shortcoming.” Privately, Elizabeth thought Lucy must bottle up all her emotions inside herself as she sat perfectly still on sofas and chairs, for years at a time, until it finally exploded like one of those mountains she’d read about that poured forth molten rock when the pressure finally reached a peak.

I love Fourth of July. It's my favorite, isn't it, Mim? This was going to be the year I won the golf cart parade and the pie-eating contest up at the lake. William Faulkner, too" "William Faulkner was going to win a pie-eating contest?" I asked. Still channeling Lillian, John David gave me a look. "Don't be ridiculous, Sawyer. There is no canine pie-eating contest. William Faulkner is going to win the costume contest, which is part of the parade." "I mean, sure," I said, nodding. "Who doesn't celebrate American independence with some kind of dog costume contest?" "And parade." John David could not have emphasized those words more.

By the time the Camerons, along with Lucinda and the necessary servants, arrived in London for Elizabeth’s debut, Elizabeth had learned all that Mrs. Porter could teach her, and she felt quite capable of meeting the challenges Mrs. Porter described. Actually, other than memorizing the rules of etiquette she was a little baffled over the huge fuss being made. After all, she’d learned to dance in the six months she was being prepared for her debut, and she’d been conversing since she was three years old, and as closely as she could tell, her only duties as a debutante were to converse politely on trivial subjects only, conceal her intelligence at all costs, and dance.

I'd like to make you an offer." An offer? I was suddenly reminded of who I was dealing with here. Lillian Taft wasn't a powder puff. She was the merciless, dictatorial matriarch who'd kicked my pregnant mother out of her house at the ripe old age of seventeen. I stalked to the front door and retrieved the Post-it I'd placed next to the doorbell when our house had been hit with door-to-door evangelists two weeks in a row. I turned and offered the hand-written notice to the women who'd raised my mother. Her perfectly manicured fingertips plucked the Post-it from my grasp. "'No soliciting,'" my grandmother read. "Except for Girl Scout cookies," I added helpfully. I'd gotten kicked out of the local Scout troop during my morbid true-crime and facts-about-autopsies phase, but I still had a weakness for Thin Mints. Lillian pursed her lips and amended her previous statement. "'No soliciting except for Girl Scout cookies.'" I saw the precise moment that she registered what I was saying: I wasn't interested in her offer. Whatever she was selling, I wasn't buying.

For it was Kick who stole the fame he’d so coveted that night. All eyes were on her. He watched, too, mesmerized. She was so relaxed, despite being completely out of place and hardly the prettiest of the girls there, but her smile was delight itself. She had a charming dimple in her left cheek, and she was a shameless flirt. But wildly successful in her flirting, to judge by the swarm of young men clamoring for her next dance.

When he bent down and swept her up in his arms and carried her to the divan, she did not protest. She fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, eager to touch his flesh and feel his heart beat against her hand. He moved over her and looked down at her with eyes dark with passion. “I have missed you,” he said. “God, how I have missed you.” “Show me,” she said, and sighed with happiness when he put his hand on her ankle and began to slide it up her leg.

So . . ." Campbell took up position next to me. "What's the plan?" She'd kept her voice low, but I still cast a glance at Lily, who was focusing on driving the boat, and Sadie-Grace, who was "helping Lily focus," before I supplied a response. "The plan," I murmured, "is to talk to Victoria again." I'd caught Campbell up on the conversation I'd had with Victoria Gutierrez at The Big Bang. Cam was as invested in finding Ana's baby—her half sibling—as I was. And that meant that she was just as interested in what Victoria had to say. "I didn't actually expect you to answer my question," Campbell murmured beside me. "It was more of a courtesy question, really. You were supposed to ask what my plan was." Having seen one of Campbell's schemes up close and personal, I was almost afraid to ask. "What's your plan?" "Talk to Victoria." She smiled. her teeth a flash of white in the dark. "No offense, but I'm better at talking than you are." "Me too!" Sadie-Grace appeared between us. "I'm so good at talking that sometimes, once I start, I can't even stop!" Neither Campbell nor I had a reply for that.

Is this the happiness you seek?” he whispered hoarsely. “Tell me now, and I will give it to you.” He moved down her body, his mouth on her bosom, his breath hot on her skin, and his hand freeing her breast. Phoebe ran her fingers through his hair, thrusting her breast forward as he took the peak into his mouth. This was insanity!“Only a profligate would confuse happiness with desire—Oh!” The swell of pleasure his mouth on her breast gave her was startling, and she cried out. “And only a fool would try and separate the two,” he responded hotly before he closed his mouth around her other breast

Ian saw only that the beautiful girl who had daringly come to his defense in a roomful of men, who had kissed him with tender passion, now seemed to be passionately attached not to any man, but to a pile of stones instead. Two years ago he’d been furious when he discovered she was a countess, a shallow little debutante already betrothed-to some bloodless fop, no doubt-and merely looking about for someone more exciting to warm her bed. Now, however, he felt oddly uneasy that she hadn’t married her fop. It was on the tip of his tongue to bluntly ask her why she had never married when she spoke again. “Scotland is different than I imagined it would be.” “In what way?” “More wild, more primitive. I know gentlemen keep hunting boxes here, but I rather thought they’d have the usual conveniences and servants. What was your hoe like?” “Wild and primitive,” Ian replied. While Elizabeth looked on in surprised confusion, he gathered up the remains of their snack and rolled to his feet with lithe agility. “You’re in it,” he added in a mocking voice. “In what?” Elizabeth automatically stood up, too. “My home.” Hot, embarrassed color stained Elizabeth’s smooth cheeks as they faced each other. He stood there with his dark hair blowing in the breeze, his sternly handsome face stamped with nobility and pride, his muscular body emanating raw power, and she thought he seemed as rugged and invulnerable as the cliffs of his homeland. She opened her mouth, intending to apologize; instead, she inadvertently spoke her private thoughts: “It suits you,” she said softly. Beneath his impassive gaze Elizabeth stood perfectly still, refusing to blush or look away, her delicately beautiful face framed by a halo of golden hair tossing in the restless breeze-a dainty image of fragility standing before a man who dwarfed her. Light and darkness, fragility and strength, stubborn pride and iron resolve-two opposites in almost every way. Once their differences had drawn them together; now they separated them. They were both older, wiser-and convinced they were strong enough to withstand and ignore the slow heat building between them on that grassy ledge. “It doesn’t suit you, however,” he remarked mildly. His words pulled Elizabeth from the strange spell that had seemed to enclose them. “No,” she agreed without rancor, knowing what a hothouse flower she must seem with her impractical gown and fragile slippers.

Would you be willing to tell me how the ladies came to be here? I mean, who are they?” Ian drew a long, impatient breath, tipped his head back, and absently massaged the muscles at the back of his neck. “I met Elizabeth a year and a half ago at a party. She’d just made her debut, was already betrothed to some unfortunate nobleman, and was eager to test her wiles on me.” “Test her wiles on you? I thought you said she was engaged to another.” Sighing irritably at his friend’s naiveté, Ian said curtly, “Debutantes are a different breed from any women you’ve known. Twice a year their mamas bring them to London to make their debut. They’re paraded about during the Season like horses at an auction, then their parents sell them as wives to whoever bids the highest. The winning bidder is selected by the expedient measure of choosing whoever has the most important title and the most money.” “Barbaric!” said Jake indignantly. Ian shot him an ironic look. “Don’t waste your pity. It suits them perfectly. All they want from marriage is jewels, gowns, and the freedom to have discreet liaisons with whomever they please, once they produce the requisite heir. They’ve no notion of fidelity or honest human feeling.” Jake’s brows lifted at that.

A few hours later, lying on a mat during rest time, Vladimir embraced the tiny curled-up creature beside him, his first best buddy, just as Mother had promised. Maybe tomorrow they could go to the Piskaryovka mass grave together with their grandmothers and lay flowers for their dead. Maybe they would even be inducted into the Red Pioneers side by side. What good fortune that he and Lionya were so alike and that neither of them had siblings...Now they would have each other! It was as if Mother had created someone just for him, as if she had guessed how lonely he had been in his sick bed with his stuffed giraffe, the months spinning away in twilight gloom until it was June again, time to go down to sunny Yalta to watch the Black Sea dolphins jump for joy.

Speaking of debutantes,” Jake continued cautiously when Ian remained silent, “what about the one upstairs? Do you dislike her especially, or just on general principle?” Ian walked over to the table and poured some Scotch into a glass. He took a swallow, shrugged, and said, “Miss Cameron was more inventive than some of her vapid little friends. She accosted me in a garden at a party.” “I can see how bothersome that musta been,” Jake joked, “having someone like her, with a face that men dream about, tryin’ to seduce you, usin’ feminine wiles on you. Did they work?” Slamming the glass down on the table, Ian said curtly, “They worked.” Coldly dismissing Elizabeth from his mind, he opened the deerskin case on the table, removed some papers he needed to review, and sat down in front of the fire. Trying to suppress his avid curiosity, Jake waited a few minutes before asking, “Then what happened?” Already engrossed in reading the documents in his hand, Ian said absently and without looking up, “I asked her to marry me; she sent me a note inviting me to meet her in the greenhouse; I went there; her brother barged in on us and informed me she was a countess, and that she was already betrothed.” The topic thrust from his mind, Ian reached for the quill lying on the small table beside his chair and made a note in the margin of the contract. “And?” Jake demanded avidly. “And what?” “And then what happened-after the brother barged in?” “He took exception to my having contemplated marrying so far above myself and challenged me to a duel,” Ian replied in a preoccupied voice as he made another note on the contract. “So what’s the girl doin’ here now?” Jake asked, scratching his head in bafflement over the doings of the Quality. “Who the hell knows,” Ian murmured irritably. “Based on her behavior with me, my guess is she finally got caught in some sleezy affair or another, and her reputation’s beyond repair.” “What’s that got to do with you?” Ian expelled his breath in a long, irritated sigh and glanced at Jake with an expression that made it clear he was finished answering questions. “I assume,” he bit out, “that her family, recalling my absurd obsession with her two years ago, hoped I’d come up to scratch again and take her off their hands.” “You think it’s got somethin’ to do with the old duke talking about you bein’ his natural grandson and wantin’ to make you his heir?” He waited expectantly, hoping for more information, but Ian ignored him, reading his documents. Left with no other choice and no prospect for further confidences, Jake picked up a candle, gathered up some blankets, and started for the barn. He paused at the door, struck by a sudden thought. “She said she didn’t send you any note about meetin’ her in the greenhouse.” “She’s a liar and an excellent little actress,” Ian said icily, without taking his gaze from the papers. “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get her out of here and off my hands.” Something in Ian’s face made him ask, “Why the hurry? You afraid of fallin’ fer her wiles again?” “Hardly.” “Then you must be made of stone,” he teased. “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour-includin’ me, and you know I ain’t in the petticoat line at all.” “Don’t let her catch you alone,” Ian replied mildly. “I don’t think I’d mind.” Jake laughed as he left.

He hadn’t been aware of staring, but when her questioning gaze locked with his, Grey felt as though he’d been smacked upside the head by the open palm of idiocy. “Is something troubling you, Grey?” He loved the sound of his name on her tongue, and hated that he loved it. She made him weak and stupid. One sweet glance from her and he was ready to drop to his knees. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even infatuation. It was pure unmitigated lust. He could admit that. Hell, he embraced it. Lust could be managed. Lust could be mastered. And lust would eventually fade once she was out of his care and out of his life. That was the cold, hard, blessed truth of it. “I was wondering if you were eagerly anticipating Lady Shrewsbury’s ball tomorrow evening?” How easily the lie rolled off his tongue as he lifted a bite of poached salmon to his mouth. She smiled softly, obviously looking forward to it very much. “I am. Thank you.” Camilla shared her daughter’s pleasure judging from her coy grin. “Rose has renewed her acquaintance with the honorable Kellan Maxwell. He requested that she save the first waltz of the evening for him.” The fish caught in Grey’s throat. He took a drink of wine to force it down. “The same Kellan Maxwell who courted you during your first season?” Rose’s smile faded a little. No doubt she heard the censure in his tone, his disapproval. “The same,” she replied with an edge of defensiveness. The same idiot who abandoned his pursuit of Rose when Charles lost everything and scandal erupted. The little prick who hadn’t loved her enough to continue his courtship regardless of her situation. “Mm,” was what he said out loud. Rose scowled at him. “We had no understanding. We were not engaged, and Mr. Maxwell behaved as any other young man with responsibilities would have.” “You defend him.” It was difficult to keep his disappointment from showing. He never thought her to be the kind of woman who would forgive disloyalty when she was so very loyal herself. She tilted her head. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m no debutante, Grey. If I’m to find a husband this season I shouldn’t show prejudice.” Common sense coming out of anyone else. Coming out of her it was shite. “You deserve better.” She smiled a Mona Lisa smile. “We do not always get what we deserve, or even what we desire.” She knew. Christ in a frock coat, she knew. Her smile faded. “If we did, Papa would be here with us, and Mama and I wouldn’t be your responsibility.” She didn’t know. Damn, what a relief. “The two of you are not a responsibility. You are a joy.” For some reason that only made her look sadder, but Camilla smiled through happy tears. She thanked him profusely, but Grey had a hard time hearing what she was saying-he was too intent on Rose, who had turned her attention to her plate and was pushing food around with little interest. He could bear this no longer. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, or why she seemed so strange with him. And he couldn’t stand that he cared. “Ladies, I’m afraid I must beg your pardon and take leave of you.” Rose glanced up. “So soon?” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Yes. But I will see you at breakfast in the morning.” She turned back to her dinner. Grey bid farewell to Camilla and then strode from the room as quickly as he could. If he survived the Season it would be a miracle.

If it will reassure you that I’m not a coward, I suppose I could rearrange his face.” Quietly he added, “The music has ended,” and for the first time Elizabeth realized they were no longer waltzing but were only swaying lightly together. With no other excuse to stand in his arms, Elizabeth tried to ignore her disappointment and step back, but just then the musicians began another melody, and their bodies began to move together in perfect time to the music. “Since I’ve already deprived you of your escort for the outing to the village tomorrow,” he said after a minute, “would you consider an alternative?” Her heart soared, because she thought he was going to offer to escort her himself. Again he read her thoughts, but his words were dampening. “I cannot escort you there,” he said flatly. Her smile faded. “Why not?” “Don’t be a henwit. Being seen in my company is hardly the sort of thing to enhance a debutante’s reputation.” Her mind whirled, trying to tally some sort of balance sheet that would disprove his claim. After all, he was a favorite of the Duke of Hammund’s…but while the duke was considered a great matrimonial prize, his reputation as a libertine and rake made mamas fear him as much as they coveted him as a son-in-law. On the other hand, Charise Dumont was considered perfectly respectable by the ton, and so this country gathering was above reproach. Except it wasn’t, according to Lord Howard. “Is that why you refused to dance with me when I asked you to earlier?” “That was part of the reason.” “What was the rest of it?” she asked curiously. His chuckle was grim. “Call it a well-developed instinct for self-preservation.” “What?” “Your eyes are more lethal than dueling pistols, my sweet,” he said wryly. “They could make a saint forget his goal.” Elizabeth had heard many flowery praises sung to her beauty, and she endured them with polite disinterest, but Ian’s blunt, almost reluctant flattery made her chuckle. Later she would realize that at this moment she had made her greatest mistake of all-she had been lulled into regarding him as an equal, a gently bred person whom she could trust, even relax with. “What sort of alternative were you going to suggest for tomorrow?” “Luncheon,” he said. “Somewhere private where we can talk, and where we won’t be seen together.” A cozy picnic luncheon for two was definitely not on Lucinda’s list of acceptable pastimes for London debutantes, but even so, Elizabeth was reluctant to refuse. “Outdoors…by the lake?” she speculated aloud, trying to justify the idea by making it public. “I think it’s going to rain tomorrow, and besides, we’d risk being seen together there.” “Then where?” “In the woods. I’ll meet you at the woodcutter’s cottage at the south end of the property near the stream at eleven. There's a path that leads to it two miles from the gate-off the main road." Elizabeth was too alarmed by such a prospect to stop to wonder how and when Ian Thornton had become so familiar with Charise's property and all its secluded haunts. "Absolutely not," she said in a shaky, breathless voice. Even she was not naïve enough to consider being alone with a man in a cottage, and she was terribly disappointed that he'd suggested it. Gentlemen didn't make such suggestions, and well-bred ladies never accepted them. Lucinda's warnings about such things had been eloquent and, Elizabeth felt, sensible.