Leigh Hunt Quotes

She felt slightly guilty for eavesdropping on Kaz, but he was the one who had turned her into a spy. You couldn’t train a falcon, then expect it not to hunt.

Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.

You’re mad,” I said. “You know what he can do. No prize is worth that.” Sturmhond grinned. “That remains to be seen.” “The Darkling will hunt you for the rest of your days.” “Then you and I will have something in common, won’t we? Besides, I like to have powerful enemies. Makes me feel important.” Mal crossed his arms and considered the privateer. “I can’t decide if you’re crazy or stupid.” “I have so many good qualities,” Sturmhond said. “It can be hard to choose.

I told him the story of the day I'd been mending pottery with one of the maids in the kitchen at Keramzin, waiting for him to return from one of the hunting trips that had taken him from home more and more frequently. I'd been fifteen, standing at the counter, vainly trying to glue together the jagged pieces of a blue cup. When I saw him crossing the fields, I ran to the doorway and waved. He caught sight of me and broke into a jog. I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around in my chest. Then he'd picked me up and swung me in a circle, and I'd clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I'd missed him. Dimly, I'd been aware that I still had a shard of that blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn't want to let go. When he finally set me down and ambled off into the kitchen to find his lunch, I had stood there, my palm dripping in blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed. Ana Kuya had scolded me for getting blood on the clean kitchen floor. She'd bandaged my hand and told me it would heal. But I knew it would just go on hurting.

At Keramzin, I had a doll I made out of an old sock that I used to talk to whenever he was away hunting. Maybe that would make me feel better." "You were an odd little girl." "You have no idea. What did you and Tolya play with?" "The skulls of our enemies." I saw the glint in her eye, and we both burst out laughing.

I’m going to learn to sail.” Kaz’s brow furrowed, and he cast her a surprised glance. “Really? Why?” “I want to use my money to hire a crew and outfit a ship.” Saying the words wrapped her breath up in an anxious spool. Her dream still felt fragile. She didn’t want to care what Kaz thought, but she did. “I’m going to hunt slavers.” “Purpose,” he said thoughtfully. “You know you can’t stop them all.” “If I don’t try, I won’t stop any.” “Then I almost pity the slavers,” Kaz said. “They have no idea what’s coming for them.

The Darkling smiled, but this time the turn of his lips was cold. He shoved off the table and stalked toward me. “I will enter the Fold, Alina, and I will show West Ravka what I can do, even without the Sun Summoner. And when I have crushed Lantsov’s only ally, I will hunt you like an animal. You will find no sanctuary. You will have no peace.” He loomed over me, his gray eyes glinting. “Fly back home to your otkazat’sya,” he snarled. “Hold him tight. The rules of this game are about to change.

That was the truth of magic—blood and guts and semen and spit, organs kept in jars, maps for hunting humans, the skulls of unborn infants. The problem wasn’t books and fairy tales, just that they told half the story, offering up the illusion of a world where only the villains paid in blood, the ogre stepmothers, the wicked stepsisters, where magic was just and without sacrifice.

Colors are the smiles of nature.

Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making.

Despite himself, Beauvoir laughed. "There is strong shadow where there is much light." ... But most he loved a happy human face.

Why hunt the sea whip if you only meant to turn it over to Alina?” “I wasn’t hunting the sea whip. I was hunting you.” “That’s why you raised a mutiny against the Darkling?” I asked. “To get at me?” “You can’t very well mutiny on your own ship.” “Call it what you like,” I said, exasperated. “Just explain yourself.” Sturmhond leaned back and rested his elbows on the rail, surveying the deck. “As I would have explained to the Darkling had he bothered to ask—which, thankfully, he didn’t—the problem with hiring a man who sells his honor is that you can always be outbid.” I gaped at him. “You betrayed the Darkling for money?” “‘Betrayed’ seems a strong word. I hardly know the fellow.

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in: Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old, but add-- Jenny kissed me!

Stolen kisses are always sweetest.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.

I entrench myself in books equally against sorrow and the weather.

We were being hunted by the most powerful man in Ravka. But we were friends again, and sleep came more easily than it had in a long time.

But even as she gave thanks, she knew that the rain was not enough. She wanted a storm – thunder, wind, a deluge. She wanted it to crash through Ketterdam’s pleasure houses, lifting roofs and tearing doors off their hinges. She wanted it to raise the seas, take hold of every slaving ship, shatter their masts, and smash their hulls against unforgiving shores. I want to call that storm, she thought. And four million kruge might be enough to do it. Enough for her own ship – something small and fierce and laden with firepower. Something like her. She would hunt the slavers and their buyers. They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by her name. The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true. She clung to the wall, but it was purpose she grasped at long last, and that carried her upwards. She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers

Mal was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m not sure who my first kill was. We were hunting the stag when we ran into a Fjerdan patrol on the northern border. I don’t think the fight lasted more than a few minutes, but I killed three men. They were doing a job, same as I was, trying to get through one day to the next, then they were bleeding in the snow. No way to tell who was the first to fall, and I’m not sure it matters. You keep them at a distance. The faces start to blur.” “Really?” “No.

The Darkling will hunt you for the rest of your days." "Then you and I will have something in common, won't we? Besides, I like to have powerful enemies. Makes me feel important.

She likes to be hunted and caught and fucked.

I didn’t think. We were halfway back to Tsibeya when we got orders to turn back around and hunt you. So that’s what I did. The hard part was leading the others away from you, especially after you basically announced yourself in Ryevost.

Mere grimness is as easy as grinning; but it requires something to put a handsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offenses, particularly of blood and wounds...

The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.

The Darkling will hunt you for the rest of your days." "then you and I will have something in common, won't we? Besides, I like to have powerful. Makes me feel important.

You couldn’t train a falcon, then expect it not to hunt.

Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world. ----LEIGH HUNT

Nina remembered the first time she'd seen Matthias in a moonlit Kaelish wood. His beauty had seemed unfair to her. In another life, she might have believed he was coming to rescue her, a shining saviour with golden hair and eyes the pale blue of northern glaciers. But she'd known the truth of him by the language he spoke, and by the disgust on his face every time his eyes lighted on her. Matthias Helvar was a drüskelle, one of the Fjerdan witchhunters tasked with hunting down Grisha to face trial and execution, though to her he'd always resembled a warrior Saint, illuminated in gold.

If she believes that tigers live, then does she believe that Indians are hunted and dying? If she believes in fish the size of men, does she believe in men who string up others like linefuls of catch? Easier to avoid that history, unwritten as it is except in the soughing of dry grass, in the marks of lost trails, in the rumors from the mouths of bored men and mean girls, in the cracked patterns of buffalo bone. Easier by far to read the history that Teacher Leigh teaches, those names and dates orderly as bricks, stacked to build a civilization

The berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when—if you want to come back.” Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. “I don’t know what to say.” His bare hand flexed on the crow’s head of his cane. The sight was so strange Inej had trouble tearing her eyes from it. “Say you’ll return.” “I’m not done with Ketterdam.” She hadn’t known she meant it until she said the words. Kaz cast her a swift glance. “I thought you wanted to hunt slavers.” “I do. And I want your help.” Inej licked her lips, tasted the ocean on them. Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now? “It’s not just the slavers. It’s the procurers, the customers, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It’s everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there’s money to be made.” “I’m a Barrel boss.” “You would never sell someone, Kaz. You know better than anyone that you’re not just one more boss scraping for the best margin.” “The bosses, the customers, the politicians,” he mused. “That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all.” “Why not?” Inej asked. “One the seas and in the city. One by one.” “Brick by brick,” he said. Then he gave a single shake of his head, as if shrugging off the notion. “I wasn’t made to be a hero, Wraith. You should have learned that by now. You want me to be a better man, a good man. I—“ “This city doesn’t need a good man. It needs you.” “Inej—“ “How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way…you’ll be thinning the competition.” He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they’d be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach. Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving. Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too. Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide again hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.

I bunched the squirrel-fur hat up under my head and left the pack for Mal to use as a pillow. Then I pulled my coat close around me and huddled beneath the new furs. I was nodding off when I heard Mal return and settle himself beside me, his back pressed comfortably against mine. As I drifted into sleep, I felt like I could still taste the sugar from that sweet roll on my tongue, feel the pleasure of laughter gusting through me. We’d been robbed. We’d almost been killed. We were being hunted by the most powerful man in Ravka. But we were friends again, and sleep came more easily than it had in a long time. At some point during the night, I woke to Mal’s snoring. I jabbed him in the back with my elbow. He rolled onto his side, muttered something in his sleep, and threw his arm over me. A minute later he started snoring again, but this time I didn’t wake him.

I can't believe you blew off hunting to play housewife. I should have brought you an apron. With puppies and kitties on it even. Maybe some ribbon."~Gadreel

They hunt us,” he said, raising his voice so everyone could hear him. “Maybe it’s time we hunted them.

Saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.

I want you to hunt the sea whip.” We stared at him in shock. I almost laughed. “You’re looking for a dragon?” Mal said incredulously. “The ice dragon,” said the Darkling. “Rusalye.

But Inej knew better than that. She’d learned from the best. Better terrible truths than kind lies. Kaz had never offered her happiness, and she didn’t trust the men promising to serve it up to her now. Her suffering had not been for nothing. Her Saints had brought her to Ketterdam for a reason—a ship to hunt slavers, a mission to give meaning to all she’d been through.

The clerks at the bank who turned over our information. The fake attorney. The man who gave me free hot chocolate at Hertzoon’s fake office. I destroyed them all, one by one, brick by brick. And Rollins will be the last. These things don’t wash away with prayer, Wraith. There is no peace waiting for me, no forgiveness, not in this life, not in the next.” Inej shook her head. How could she still look at him with kindness in her eyes? “You don’t ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.” “Is that what you intend to do? By hunting slavers?” “By hunting slavers. By rooting out the merchers and Barrel bosses who profit off of them. By being something more than just the next Pekka Rollins.” It was impossible. There was nothing more. He could see the truth even if she couldn’t. Inej was stronger than he would ever be. She’d kept her faith, her goodness, even when the world tried to take it from her with greedy hands. His eyes scanned her face as they always had, closely, hungrily, snatching at the details of her like the thief he was—the even set of her dark brows, the rich brown of her eyes, the upward tilt of her lips. He didn’t deserve peace and he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her—brighter than anything he would ever have a right to—to take with him to the other side.

At Keramzin, I had a doll I made out of an old sock that I used to talk to whenever he was away hunting. Maybe that would make me feel better.’ ‘You were an odd little girl.’ ‘You have no idea. What did you and Tolya play with?’ ‘The skulls of our enemies.

Shut up,” I snapped. “This is not the time. What part of this situation seems like a joke to you?” Lohka pulled up his knees, giving a feeble, half-manic little laugh. “Oh, maybe just the idea that some soul-devouring being of chaos could be waiting anywhere to finish destroying my life,” he said. “That’s kind of hilarious, you know. Have you ever had a soul-devouring being of chaos hunting you down so it could finish eating you?” “No,” I said. “I’m sorry, Lohka.” “That’s nice,” he muttered. “What about the part where this soul-devouring being of chaos seems to have a taste for me at the moment?” Zhabyr asked. “Can we worry about that, now? Because I kind of already am.

And as we mean to be very powerful writers, as well as every thing else that is desirable, power is never seen to so much advantage as when it goes about a thing carelessly; you like to see a light horseman, who seems as if he could abolish you with a passing cut, and not a great heavy fellow, who looks as if he should tumble down in case of missing you, or a little red staring busy body, who would be obliged to wield his sword two-handed, and kill himself first with exertion.

Persons impatient of other’s deficiencies are in fact likely to be equally undiscerning of their merits; and are not aware, in either case, how much they are exposing the deficiencies on their own side. Not only, however, do they get into this dilemma, but what is more, they are lowering their respectability beneath that of the dullest person in the room. They shew themselves deficient, not merely in the qualities they miss in [a wise man who doesn’t make an ostentatious show of his knowledge] but in those which he really possesses, such as self knowledge and good temper. Were they as wise as they pretend to be, they would equal him in these points, and know how to extract something good from them in spite of his deficiency in the other; for intellectual qualities are not the only ones that excite the reflections, or conciliate the regard, of the truly intelligent, of those who can study human nature in all its bearings, and love it or sympathize with it, for all its affections.

I told him the story of the day I’d been mending pottery with one of the maids in the kitchen at Keramzin, waiting for him to return from one of the hunting trips that had taken him from home more and more frequently. I’d been fifteen, standing at the counter, vainly trying to glue together the jagged pieces of a blue cup. When I saw him crossing the fields, I ran to the doorway and waved. He caught sight of me and broke into a jog. I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around in my chest. Then he’d picked me up and spun me in a circle, and I’d clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I’d missed him. Dimly, I’d been aware that I still had a shard of the blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn’t want to let go. When he finally set me down and ambled off to the kitchen to find his lunch, I had stood there, my palm dripping blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed. Ana

POPPIES. We are slumberous poppies,     Lords of Lethe downs, Some awake, and some asleep,     Sleeping in our crowns. What perchance our dreams may know,     Let our serious beauty show. Central depth of purple,     Leaves more bright than rose, Who shall tell what brightest thought     Out of darkest grows? Who, through what funereal pain     Souls to love and peace attain? Visions aye are on us,     Unto eyes of power, Pluto’s alway setting sun,     And Prosérpine’s bower: There, like bees, the pale souls come For our drink with drowsy hum. Taste, ye mortals, also;     Milky-hearted, we; Taste, but with a reverent care;     Active-patient be. Too much gladness brings to gloom     Those who on the gods presume.

Because this land they live in is a land of missing things. A land stripped of its gold, its rivers, its buffalo, its Indians, its tiger, its jackals, its birds and its green and its living. To move through this land and believe Ba's tales is to see each hill as a burial mound with its own crown of bones. Who could believe that and survive? Who could believe that and keep from looking, as Ba and Sam do, always toward the past? Letting it drag behind them. Letting it make them into fools. And so Lucy fears that unwritten history. Easier to dismiss all Ba's tales as tall ones - because believe, and where does it end? If she believes that tigers live, then does she believe that Indians are hunted and dying? If she believes in fish the size of men, does she believe in men who string up others like linefuls of catch? Easier to avoid that history, unwritten as it is except in the soughing of dry grass, in the marks of lost trails, in the rumors from the mouths of bored men and mean girls, in the cracked patterns of buffalo bone. Easier by far to read the history that Teacher Leigh teaches, those names and dates orderly as bricks, stacked to build a civilization.

Extraordinary wonder and joy are woven through ordinary life. Hunt for them relentlessly.

Fuck, wait—what if her future husband wants to knock her up? I sit forward and open up my search bar, hunting to see if there’s any way to perform a hysterectomy safely at home, but I fail to find a single article.

hunting to see if there’s any way to perform a hysterectomy safely at home, but I fail to find a single article.

My darling sister is nearly as sadistic as me. She likes to be hunted and caught and fucked. She once told me she wanted to be chased through a graveyard, but unfortunately, this forest will have to do. I’ll chase her in here every day for the rest of our lives.

Enough for her own ship—something small and fierce and laden with firepower. Something like her. She would hunt the slavers and their buyers. They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by her name. The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true. She clung to the wall, but it was purpose she grasped at long last, and that carried her upward.

Dream for a moment’s space of care and strife, Wake, stare, and smile, and that is human Life.

Paddy was just one of many wanderers on strange, lonely quests, striking out on mysterious missions, most of whom had left no traces.

Leigh mentioned that you’re a vet in Winnipeg, here to take some courses to update your skills?” “Yes.” Valerie grimaced. “That was the idea, but if they don’t catch this guy in the next day or two, I’ll have to give up the courses until next semester and if that happens, I might as well head home.” “What?” Anders turned on her sharply. Valerie bit her lip, not very happy at the thought herself. She would have liked to get to know him better, but if she couldn’t do the course now, she’d have to do it next term and it wouldn’t be fair to be away from the clinic that long. Sighing at the very thought, she said, “That’s what my academic advisor said when I talked to him today. I’ve missed the first two weeks of class already. He said if I’m not back by Monday, then I might as well give it up and reapply for next term.” Anders frowned, his gaze shooting to Lucian. It was Leigh who said worriedly, “You can’t go home, Valerie. Not with him still out there.” “Actually, it’s probably better if I did,” Valerie said and pointed out, “He can’t know I’m from Winnipeg, so I’d be safe there, and Anders wouldn’t have to waste his time playing babysitter so he could help hunt for him.” Dead silence met this announcement as the others all exchanged glances. “But your courses,” Anders said finally. “You wanted to upgrade.” “And I still do, but I can’t do that if I can’t attend classes,” she pointed out reasonably. Another moment of silence passed with everyone exchanging glances she didn’t understand and then Lucian said abruptly, “Then you’ll have to attend classes.” When Valerie stared at him with surprise, he added, “Anders will accompany you.” “Oh.” She hesitated briefly and then shook her head. “I don’t think they’ll let him attend with me.” “They might,” Dani said slowly. “I’ve heard of people auditing classes. I even knew someone who audited a couple of mine. She had to get permission from the instructor, and the department chair, and I think her program counselor first though.” “Then he’ll get permission,” Lucian said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. When Anders frowned at this news, he added solemnly, “It’s that or we put her and Roxy on a plane home to Winnipeg.” For some reason, those words sounded ominous to Valerie, and certainly Anders reacted as if they were. His mouth tightened grimly, and he nodded once. It was Friday now, but apparently come Monday, she was attending class and Anders was coming with her.

I sit forward and open up my search bar, hunting to see if there’s any way to perform a hysterectomy safely at home, but I fail to find a single article.

Sorry’s just a word to try to get out of something, to dodge trouble if you’ve been caught out. Sorry’s a five-letter disgrace that shouldn’t even need to be used. It should be abolished from the fucking dictionary. Actions do speak louder than words, and if she’s as sorry as she makes out in her voicemails, then why does she sometimes look happy? Why is she going out partying with her friends? Kissing guys who—shockingly—vanish days later? Why does she dance around her apartment, singing ridiculous songs about love? Why is she living her life without me? If the bitch is sorry, then why is she only looking me up on the internet and not hunting for me? Why isn’t she looking for me?

She’ll never be anyone’s prey but mine. I’d hunt her from one corner of the realm to the next, I’d frighten her just enough to excite her and taste her sweet fear, I’d catch her and bite her and sink soul-deep into her, but anyone who tries to do the same? I’d tear them limb from limb.

In proportion as men were all to resemble each other, and to have faces and manners in common, their self-love was not to be disturbed by any thing in the shape of individuality. A writer might be na tural, but he was to be natural only as far as their sense of nature would go, and this was not a great way. Besides, even when he was natural, he hardly dared to be so in language as well as idea ;- there gradually came up a kind of dress, in which a man’s mind, as well as body, was to clothe itself.

We have avoided the trouble of adding assumed characters to our real ones; and shall talk, just as we think, walk, and take dinner, in our own proper persons. It is true, the want of old age, or of a few patriarchal eccentricities to exercise people's patronage on, and induce their self-love to bear with us, may be a deficiency in our pretensions with some; but we must plainly confess, with whatever mortification, that we are still at a flourishing time of life; and that the trouble and experience, which have passed over our heads, have left our teeth, hair, and eyes, pretty nearly as good as they found them.

Small Town Rule #2: Real men hunt in the rain.

La paciencia y la amabilidad son poder". Leigh Hunt

I had no idea that a burly man working through yoga poses would be more exciting to me than a lap dance at a strip club.

Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.” Leigh Hunt

The most trifling matters may sometimes be not only the commencement, but the causes, of the gravest discussions. The fall of an apple from a tree suggested the doctrine of gravitation; and the same apple, for aught we know, served up in a dumpling, may have assisted the philosopher in his notions of heat ; for who has not witnessed similar causes and effects at a dinner table ? I confess, a piece of mutton has supplied me with arguments, as well as chops, for a week ; I have seen a hare or a cod’s-head giving hints to a friend for his next Essay; and have known the most solemn reflections rise, with a pair of claws, out of a pigeon-pie.

his…demands?” And then she had held her breath as if seriously expecting Isabel to answer. And last night as Isabel passed a half-open bedroom door, she had overheard a fellow guest speaking to her maid. “I do so admire Lady Isabel for not feeling the need to bow to the demands of fashion,” the woman had said. “She dresses instead in what is comfortable even if it is not in the first stare. Though I find it no wonder her husband has strayed.” Isabel had gritted her teeth and gone on down to dinner, where she smiled and flirted and silently dared anyone to comment to her face that her dress was at least two years old. If only her early departure wouldn’t cause so much comment, she would call for her carriage and go home right now. But that was impossible. For one thing, she didn’t have a carriage, for she had come up from London with a fellow guest. Too short of funds to afford a post-chaise, she was equally dependent on her friend for transport back to the city when the hunting party broke up. And secondly, of course, there were only two places she could go—Maxton Abbey, or the London house—and her husband might be at either one. Unless, with her safely stashed at the Beckhams’, he had accepted yet another of the many invitations he received. But she couldn’t take the chance. After little more than a year of marriage, the pattern was ingrained—wherever one of the Maxwells went, the other took pains not to go. She could not burst in on her husband; what if he were entertaining his mistress? Better not to know. She might go to the village of Barton Bristow, descending on her sister. But Emily’s tiny cottage was scarcely large enough for her and her companion, with no room for a guest—and Mrs. Dalrymple’s constant chatter and menial deference was enough to set Isabel’s teeth on edge. In fact, the only nice thing Isabel could say about being married was that at least she wasn’t required to drag a spinster companion around the countryside with her to preserve her reputation, as Emily had to do. Isabel turned her borrowed mount over to the stable boys and strode across to the house, where the butler intercepted her in the front hall. “A letter has just been delivered for you, Lady Isabel, by a special messenger. He said a post-chaise will call for you tomorrow.” She took the folded sheet with trepidation. Who could be summoning her? Not her husband, that was certain. Her father, possibly, for yet another lecture on the duties of a young wife? She broke the seal and unfolded the page. My dearest Isabel, You will remember from happier days that I will soon celebrate my seventieth birthday… Uncle Josiah. But her moment of relief soon

She'll never be anyone's prey but mine. I'd hunt her from one corner of the realm to the next, I'd frighten her just enough to excite her and taste her sweet fear, I'd catch her and bite her and sink soul-deep into her, but anyone who tries to do the same? I'd tear them limb from limb.