Riding Gloves Quotes

Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when Clary had first been there. It had a stark grandeur in the winter: the mountains rose in the distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lace-like patterns against the bright sky. Sometimes Jace would slow the horse to point out the manor houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his shoulders tense as they passed one that nearly melded with the forest around it: it had clearly been burned and rebuilt. Some of the stones still bore the black marks of smoke and fire. “The Blackthorn manor,” he said. “Which means that around this bend in the road is …” He paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante — Clary could see the demon towers in the distance — while the other curled down toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a low wall. “ … the Herondale manor,” Jace finished. The wind picked up; icy, it ruffled Jace’s hair. Clary had her hood up, but he was bare-headed and bare-handed, having said he hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the reins in his hands. “Did you want to go and look at it?” she asked. His breath came out in a white cloud. “I’m not sure.

We made it, baby. We’re riding in the back of the black limousine. They have lined the road to shout our names. They have faith in your golden hair & pressed grey suit. They have a good citizen in me. I love my country. I pretend nothing is wrong. I pretend not to see the man & his blond daughter diving for cover, that you’re not saying my name & it’s not coming out like a slaughterhouse. I’m not Jackie O yet & there isn’t a hole in your head, a brief rainbow through a mist of rust. I love my country but who am I kidding? I’m holding your still-hot thoughts in, darling, my sweet, sweet Jack. I’m reaching across the trunk for a shard of your memory, the one where we kiss & the nation glitters. Your slumped back. Your hand letting go. You’re all over the seat now, deepening my fuchsia dress. But I’m a good citizen, surrounded by Jesus & ambulances. I love this country. The twisted faces. My country. The blue sky. Black limousine. My one white glove glistening pink—with all our American dreams.

want to wear scarlet velvet and slippers and lace gloves and ride in a stage instead of wearing calluses on my hands driving a team like a man. It is not her fault. She is right. The Lord looks on the inside, although people look on the outside. That man is measuring cloth

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast’s mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf. Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing.

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.

Driving a desk was sometimes lonely, but Eddie had been in the drivers'-seat himself more than once, his aspirator riding there with him on the dashboard, its trigger reflected ghostly in the windshield (and a bucket-load of pills in the glove compartment), and he knew that real loneliness was a smeary red: the color of the taillights of the car ahead of you reflected on wet hottop in a driving rain.

Pandora's dress was disheveled, her bodice askew, and her gloves were missing. A few raised red scratches marred the surface of her shoulder. The pins had been pulled from her ruined coiffure during the carriage ride, allowing a profusion of heavy black-coffee locks to fall to her waist in waves and ripples. Her coltish form quivered like a wild creature held in restraints. She gave off a kind of... energy, of... there didn't seem to be a word for it, but Gabriel could feel the irresistible voltage eating up the space between them. Every hair on his body individuated as he was flooded with the hot, humming awareness of her. Holy hell.

He surveyed what remained of his crew. Rotty still hovered by the wreckage of the longboat. Jesper sat with elbows on knees, head in hands, Wylan beside him wearing the face of a near-stranger; Matthias stood gazing across the water in the direction of Hellgate like a stone sentinel. If Kaz was their leader, then Inej had been their lodestone, pulling them together when they seemed most likely to drift apart. Nina had disguised Kaz’s crow-and-cup tattoo before they’d entered the Ice Court, but he hadn’t let her near the R on his bicep. Now he touched his gloved fingers to where the sleeve of his coat covered that mark. Without meaning to, he’d let Kaz Rietveld return. He didn’t know if it had begun with Inej’s injury or that hideous ride in the prison wagon, but somehow he’d let it happen and it had cost him dearly. That didn’t mean he was going to let himself be bested by some thieving merch. Kaz looked south toward Ketterdam’s harbors. The beginnings of an idea scratched at the back of his skull, an itch, the barest inkling. It wasn’t a plan, but it might be the start of one. He could see the shape it would take—impossible, absurd, and requiring a serious chunk of cash. “Scheming face,” murmured Jesper. “Definitely,” agreed Wylan. Matthias folded his arms. “Digging in your bag of tricks, demjin?” Kaz flexed his fingers in his gloves. How did you survive the Barrel? When they took everything from you, you found a way to make something from nothing. “I’m going to invent a new trick,” Kaz said. “One Van Eck will never forget.” He turned to the others. If he could have gone after Inej alone, he would have, but not even he could pull that off. “I’ll need the right crew.” Wylan got to his feet. “For the Wraith.” Jesper followed, still not meeting Kaz’s eyes. “For Inej,” he said quietly. Matthias gave a single sharp nod. Inej had wanted Kaz to become someone else, a better person, a gentler thief. But that boy had no place here. That boy ended up starving in an alley. He ended up dead. That boy couldn’t get her back. I’m going to get my money, Kaz vowed. And I’m going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he’d promised her so long ago. Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.

The value of the tape was also the crafting of a mixtape. I am from an era when we learned not to waste songs. If you are creating a cassette that you must listen to all the way through, and you are crafting it with your own hands and your own ideas, then it is on you not to waste sounds and to structure a tape with feeling. No skippable songs meant that I wouldn’t have to take my thick gloves off during the chill of a Midwest winter to hit fast-forward on a Walkman, hoping that I would stop a song just in time. No skippable songs meant that when the older, cooler kids on my bus ride to school asked what I was listening to in my headphones, armed with an onslaught of jokes if my shit wasn’t on point, I could hand my headphones over, give them a brief listen of something that would pass quality control, and keep myself safe from humiliation for another day.

Parisians gasped when Theo paired brown with black- and then found themselves even more shocked when she wore a black corded silk evening gown sewn with amethysts, and later, a purple riding habit with sour-green gloves. They gasped... and rushed to imitate. What the French loved most were Theo's epigrammatic rules. They were collected like precious jewels, and even the poorest shopgirls ripped the lace from their Sunday frocks when she was reported to have remarked, "Wear lace to be baptized. Period.

Sometimes I imagine meeting the guy who designs raingear that can be neither donned nor doffed when wet. We both roll up at a gas station at about the same time. Of course, it’s raining. When I figure out what he does for a job, rain gear designer, or whatever, I stop him right there by holding up an index finger. “Just wait a minute,” I say. Then I struggle to remove a waterlogged glove, shaking my head and laughing a bit because I know what’s coming next. Holding the glove by the cuff, I soggy-slap him in the face. “That’s a sloggy!” I’d say (trademark), and I’d deliver it on behalf of us all.

Thomas heard the stamping of hooves of horses, a shout of warning, and the Institute carriage came crashing through the Portal barely remaining on all four of its wheels as it came. Balios and Xanthos looked very pleased with themselves as the carriage spun in midair and landed, with a jarring thud, at the foot of the steps. Magnus Bane was in the driver’s seat, wearing a dramatic white opera scarf and holding the reins in his right hand. He looked even more pleased with himself than the horses. “I wondered if it was possible to ride a carriage through a Portal,” he said, jumping down from the seat. “As it turns out, it is. Delightful.” The carriage doors opened, and rather unsteadily, Will, Lucie, and a boy Thomas didn’t know clambered out. Lucie waved at Thomas before leaning against the side of the carriage; she was looking rather green about the gills. Will went around the carriage to unstrap the luggage, while the unfamiliar boy—tall and slender, with straight black hair and a pretty face—put a hand on Lucie’s shoulder. Which was surprising—it was an intimate gesture, one that would be considered impolite unless the boy and girl in question were friends or relatives, or had an understanding between them. It seemed, however, unlikely that Lucie could have an understanding with someone Thomas had never seen before. He rather bristled at the thought, in an older-brother way—James didn’t seem to be here, so someone had to do the bristling for him. “I told you it would work!” Will cried in Magnus’s direction. Magnus was busy magicking the unfastened baggage to the top of the steps, blue sparks darting like fireflies from his gloved fingertips. “We should have done that on the way out!” “You did not say it would work,” Magnus said. “You said, as I recall, ‘By the Angel, he’s going to kill us all.’ “Never,” said Will. “My faith in you is unshakable, Magnus. Which is good,” he added, rocking back and forth a little, “because the rest of me feels quite shaken indeed.

Philippa Somerville slowed her horse to a trot, and, pulling off her right glove, held her hand high and flat, white palm outwards as she paced forward to Lymond and stopped. ‘Never again,’ Philippa said. ‘Never, never again.’ He sat still, breathing deeply as yet from the ride, with his face brushed and ridged with wet light from the rain. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve that. I think.’ Philippa looked down and then up again, her cheeks red with mortification. ‘It works with Austin,’ she said. His lips tightened, and Philippa sat, empty and braced for the stinging attack she deserved. ‘It works with me, too,’ he said. ‘But perhaps not quite in the same way.

Ronan was waiting in his family’s stables. He played with the gloves in his hands as he stood watching Kestrel and Arin ride toward him. “I thought you would take the carriage,” Ronan said to Kestrel. “To go riding? Really, Ronan.” “But your escort.” His eyes cut to Arin sitting easily on the stallion. “I didn’t think any of your slaves rode.” Kestrel watched Ronan tug at the gloves’ fingers. “Is there a problem?” “Now that you are here, certainly not.” Yet his voice was strained. “Because if you don’t like the way in which I have come, you may ride to my house the next time you invite me, then escort me back to your estate, then see me safely home again, and go back the way you came.” He responded to her words as if they had been flirtatious. “It would be my pleasure. Speaking of pleasure, let’s take some together.” He mounted his horse. “Where is Jess?” “Sick with a headache.” Somehow Kestrel doubted that. She said nothing, however, and let Ronan lead the way out of the stables. She turned to follow, and Arin did the same. Ronan glanced back, blond hair brushing over his shoulder. “Surely you don’t intend for him to join us.” Arin’s horse, perfectly calm up until this point, began to shift and balk. It was sensing the tension Kestrel couldn’t see in its rider, who looked impassively at her, waiting for her to translate Ronan’s words into Herrani so that he could pretend it was necessary. “Wait here,” she told him in his language. He wheeled the horse back toward the stables. “You should vary your escorts,” Ronan told Kestrel as Arin rode away. “That one stays too close to your heels.

began to walk home, very quickly. A car full of high-school girls screeched around the corner. They were the girls who ran all the clubs and won all the elections in Allison’s high-school class: little Lisa Leavitt; Pam McCormick, with her dark ponytail, and Ginger Herbert, who had won the Beauty Revue; Sissy Arnold, who wasn’t as pretty as the rest of them but just as popular. Their faces—like movie starlets’, universally worshiped in the lower grades—smiled from practically every page of the yearbook. There they were, triumphant, on the yellowed, floodlit turf of the football field—in cheerleader uniform, in majorette spangles, gloved and gowned for homecoming; convulsed with laughter on a carnival ride (Favorites) or tumbling elated in the back of a September haywagon (Sweethearts)—and despite the range of costume, athletic to casual to formal wear, they were like dolls whose smiles and hair-dos never changed.

I’d go with him. We’d be old enough. We’d make a whole new life together, a normal one. Ever since that bus ride, I’d been carrying my love for him around in my pocket. I should have handed it to him then and there in exchange for the gloves, but the briars and brickles of shame had been too sharp. By the time they receded, it felt stupid to bring it up. Then that faded, and all I could do was wait for an opening, some situation where he and I were hanging out and shooting love darts at each other. When it arrived, I’d say, all joshing, Hey, you remember when you thought I needed gloves? Yeah, he’d laugh. I’ve wanted to give you my paper airplane necklace ever since. And our relationship would bloom from there. Every day, I looked for this opening. It could be tomorrow. “Time to go,” Dad said, finally. His face was glistening. Me and Sephie’s pops and quarters were long gone and our stomachs were growling. We’d been sitting near the door, wishing Dad would take the hint and leave, but he’d kept up at that hot conversation with Bauer. We followed him outside. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Dad said when we finally slid inside the van, his voice full of bravado. Except I could tell he was scared. Mom wasn’t going to be happy that we were out so late on a school night and that Dad was driving drunk, but that wasn’t it. No, he looked jumping-ghost scared, and that made me uneasy. It did even worse to Sephie. It must have. That’s the only explanation for why she broke the rule about inviting conversation with Dad when he’d been drinking. “Are you okay, Daddy?” She hardly ever called him that anymore. I didn’t think he was going to respond, but he finally did, his voice all bluster. “As okay as a man can be in a country where nothing’s sacred.” I wondered what he meant. He and Bauer had talked about so many things. Well, I wasn’t going to

We talked about the speed trials, which were starting today. I said I was running in them, but not that it was about art. It wasn’t a lie. I was a Nevada girl and a motorcycle rider. I had always been interested in land speed records. I was bringing to that a New York deliberateness, abstract ideas about traces and speed, which wasn’t something Stretch needed to know about. It would make me seem like a tourist. Stretch said the motel owner’s son had a Corvette running but that he could not so much as check the oil or tire pressure, that mechanics worked on it and a driver raced it for him. “I have to fill out his racing form because he doesn’t know what ‘displacement’ means.” He laughed and then went quiet. “I never met a girl who rides Italian motorcycles,” he said. “It’s like you aren’t real.” He looked at my helmet, gloves, my motorcycle key, on his bureau. The room seemed to hold its breath, the motel curtain sucked against the glass by the draft of a partly opened window, a strip of sun wavering underneath the curtain’s hem, the light-blocking fabric holding back the outside world.

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to centre field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle sixty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs he is under no formal compulsion to run; he may stand there all day, and as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.

What, Lara Jean?” He looks at me like he’s waiting for something, and suddenly I’m afraid to give it. I tighten my fist around the letter, shove it into my coat pocket. My hands are freezing. I don’t have any gloves or hat; I should probably just go home. “I just came to say…to say I’m sorry for the way things turned out. And…I hope we can still be friends, and happy new year.” His eyes narrow at this. “‘Happy new year’?” he repeats. “That’s what you came here to say? Sorry and happy new year?” “And I hope we can still be friends,” he repeats, and there is a note of sarcasm in his voice that I don’t understand or like. “That’s what I said.” I start to stand up. I was hoping he’d give me a ride home, but now I don’t want to ask. But it’s so cold outside. Maybe if I hint…Blowing on my hands, I say, “Well, I’m gonna head home.” “Wait a minute. Let’s go back to the apology part. What are you apologizing for, exactly? For kicking me out of your house, or for thinking I’m a dirtbag who would go around telling people we had sex when we didn’t?” A lump forms in my throat. When he puts it that way, it really does sound terrible. “Both of those things. I’m sorry for both of those things.” Peter cocks his head to the side, his eyebrows raised. “And what else?” I bristle. What else? “There is no ‘what else.’ That’s it.” Thank God I didn’t give him the letter, if this is how he’s going to be. It’s not like I’m the only one with stuff to apologize for. “Hey, you’re the one who came here talking about ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘let’s be friends.’ You don’t get to force me into accepting your half-assed apology.

I would rather face the devil himself than that man,” Elizabeth said with a repressed shudder. “I daresay,” Lucinda agreed, clutching her umbrella with one hand and the side of the cart with her other. The nearer the time came, the more angry and confused Elizabeth became about this meeting. For the first four days of their journey, her tension had been greatly allayed by the scenic grandeur of Scotland with its rolling hills and deep valleys carpeted in bluebells and hawthorne. Now, however, as the hour of confronting him drew near, not even the sight of the mountains decked out in spring flowers or the bright blue lakes below could calm her mounting tension. “Furthermore, I cannot believe he has the slightest desire to see me.” “We shall soon find out.” In the hills above the high, winding track that passed for a road, a shepherd paused to gape at an old wooden wagon making its laborious way along the road below. “Lookee there, Will,” he told his brother. “Do you see what I see?” The brother looked down and gaped, his lips parting in a toothless grin of glee at the comical sight of two ladies-bonnets, gloves, and all-who were perched primly and precariously on the back of Sean MacLaesh’s haywagon, their backs ramrod-stiff, their feet sticking straight out beyond the wagon. “Don’t that beat all,” Will laughed, and high above the haywagon he swept off his cap in a mocking salute to the ladies. “I heered in the village Ian Thornton was acomin’ home. I’ll wager ‘e’s arrived, and them two are his fancy pieces, come to warm ‘is bed an’ see to ‘is needs.” Blessedly unaware of the conjecture taking place between the two spectators up in the hills, Miss Throckmorton-Jones brushed angrily and ineffectually at the coating of dust clinging to her black skirts. “I have never in all my life been subjected to such treatment!” she hissed furiously as the wagon they were riding in gave another violet, creaking lurch and her shoulder banged into Elizabeth’s. “You may depend on this-I shall give Mr. Ian Thornton a piece of my mind for inviting two gentlewomen to this godforsaken wilderness, and never even mentioning that a traveling baroche is too wide for the roads!” Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something soothing, but just then the wagon gave another teeth-jarring lurch, and she clutched at the wooden side. “From what little I know of him, Lucy,” she managed finally when the wagon righted, “he wouldn’t care in the least what we’ve been through. He’s rude and inconsiderate-and those are his good points-“ “Whoa there, whoa,” the farmer called out, sawing back on the swayback nags reins and bringing the wagon to a groaning stop. “That’s the Thornton place up there atop yon hill,” the farmer said, pointing.

He removed his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small. Holy Lord, I said to myself. What in the name of kingdom come is going on here? His face wore a sweet, sweet smile. I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these. He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat. “I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I’ll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti. Marry you? My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest. Marry you? But then I’d have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop. Marry you? But then I’d have to make casseroles. Marry you? But then I’d have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don’t live in the country. I don’t know how. I can’t ride a horse. I’m scared of spiders. I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice. “You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise. Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs, “C’mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!” Mike didn’t like being late. Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned. “I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

Certainly, the PAP applies far more stringent background checks on its candidates than the opposition does on its own. However, in some respects, a new and inexperienced PAP candidate has an easier ride. He is cushioned by the ruling party's institutional support, and faces a press predisposed to treating him with kid gloves. While an opposition member's every move is dissected and held against him in the interest of keeping politics honest, the PAP candidate is spared any probing by the media, on the grounds that a loss of privacy and face would deter good men from stepping forward to serve.

A young Amish girl is going on her first date and her mother is helping her get ready. She puts on gloves, because it is cold out that night and the Amish still ride in buggies. Asks her mother, “Why are you wearing gloves? It isn’t ladylike to wear gloves.” “It’s supposed to be cold tonight. What do I do with my hands if they get cold?” “Just stick your hands between your knees, and they will get warm.” Reluctantly, the girl agrees. Her date picks her up and they go on their way. On the way home the girl’s hands get cold so, following her mother’s orders, she sticks them between her knees. Her date looks over and says, “Why on earth do you have your hands between your legs?” “My mother told me that if my hands got cold, I should stick them between my legs.” “Well, my dick is frozen solid; do you care if I stick it between your legs to get it warm?” “Hmmm...well, I guess I don’t see any harm in it.” After returning home from her date the girl asks her mother, “What do you know about dicks?” “Why?” asks the concerned mother. “What do YOU know about dicks?” “All I know is that when they thaw out they make an awful mess!

As I trod down the hall, I made and discarded plausible excuses. When I reached the tapestry I decided against speaking at all. I’d just take a quick peek, and if the livery was Merindar, then I’d have to hire someone to ride back and warn the Renselaeuses. I pulled my soggy cloak up around my eyes, stuck out my gloved finger, and poked gently at the edge of the tapestry. Remember the surmise I recorded on my arrival at the Residence that day in early spring--that if anyone were to know everyone’s business, it would be the servants? I glanced inside in time to see a pale, familiar face jerk up. And for a long, amazing moment, there we were, Meliara and Shevraeth, mud-spattered and wet, just like last year, looking at one another in silence. Then I snatched my hand back, now thoroughly embarrassed, and spun around intending retreat. But I moved too fast for my tired head and fell against the wall, as once again the world lurched around me. I heard the faint metallic ching of chain mail, and suddenly he was there, his hand gripping my arm. Without speaking, he drew me inside the bare little parlor and pointed silently at a straw-stuffed cushion. My legs folded abruptly, and I plopped down. “Azmus--” I croaked. “How could you--I sent him--” “Drink.” Shevraeth put a mug into my hands. “Then we can talk.” Obediently I took a sip, felt sweet coffee burn its way pleasantly down my throat and push back the fog threatening to enfold my brain. I took a longer draught, then sighed. The Marquis looked back at me, his face tense and tired, his eyes dark with an intensity that sent a complexity of emotions chasing through me like darting starlings. “How did you get ahead of me so fast?” I said. “I don’t understand.” His eyes widened in surprise, as if he’d expected to hear anything but that. “How,” he asked slowly, “did you know I was here? We told no one when I was leaving, or my route, outside of two servants.” “I didn’t know you were here,” I said. “I sent Azmus to you. With the news. About the Merindars. You mean you already knew?” “Let us backtrack a little,” he said, “if you will bear with my lamentable slowness. I take it, then, that you were not riding thus speedily to join me?” With his old sardonic tone he added, “Because if you were, your retreat just now is somewhat puzzling, you’ll have to admit.” I said indignantly, “I peeked in because I thought you might be one of the Merindars, and if so, I’d send a warning back to you. I mean, you if you were there. Does that make sense?” I frowned, shook my head, then gulped down the rest of the coffee. He smiled just slightly, but the intensity had not left his eyes. The serving maid came in, carrying a bowl of food and some fresh bread. “Will you have some as well?” she said to me. “Please,” Shevraeth said before I could speak. “And more coffee.” He waited until she went out, then said, “Now, begin again, please. What is it you’re trying to tell me, and where are you going?” “I’m going to Orbanith,” I said, and forced myself to look away from the steam curling up from the stew at his elbow. My mouth watered. I swallowed and turned my attention to pulling off my sodden gloves. “I guess I am trying to tell you what you already seem to know--that the Merindars are going on the attack, with hired mercenaries from Denlieff. But--why do you want me to tell you when you do already know all this?” I looked up from wringing out my gloves. “I am trying,” he said with great care, “to ascertain what your place is in the events about to transpire, and to act accordingly. From whom did you get your information?” The world seemed to lurch again, but this time it was not my vision. A terrible sense of certainty pulled at my heart and mind as I realized what he was striving so heroically not to say--nevertheless, what he meant. He thought I was on the other side.

And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently. I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…” There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse. I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late. He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing. Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.” No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves. “Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?” His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. I heard the scrape of a bowl on the table and the clink of a spoon. The ordinary sounds restored me somehow, and I untied my cloak and shrugged it off. At once a weight that seemed greater than my own left me. I made a surreptitious swipe at my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to assume nonchalance as I picked up my spoon. After a short time, he said, “Don’t you have any questions for me?” I glanced up, my spoon poised midway between my bowl and my mouth. “Of course,” I said. “But I thought--” I started to wave my hand, realizing too late it still held the spoon, and winced as stew spattered down the table. Somehow the ridiculousness of it released some of the tension. As I mopped at the mess with a corner of my cloak, I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. So you knew about the plot all along?” “Pretty much from the beginning, though the timing is new. I surmised they would make their move in the fall, but something seems to have precipitated action. My first warning was from Elenet, who had found out a great deal from the Duke’s servants. That was her real reason for coming to Court, to tell me herself.” “What about Flauvic?” “It would appear,” he said carefully, “that he disassociated with this plan of his mother’s.” “Was that the argument he alluded to?” He did not ask when. “Perhaps. Though that might have been for effect. I can believe it only because it is uncharacteristic for him to lend himself to so stupid and clumsy a plan.” “Finesse,” I drawled in a parody of a courtier’s voice. “He’d want finesse, and to make everyone else look foolish.” Shevraeth smiled slightly. “Am I to understand you were not favorably impressed with Lord Flauvic?” “As far as I’m concerned, he and Fialma are both thorns,” I said, “though admittedly he is very pretty to look at. More so than his sour pickle of a sister. Anyway, I hope you aren’t trusting him as far as you can lift a mountain, because I wouldn’t.” “His house is being watched. He can’t stir a step outside without half a riding being within earshot.” “And he probably knows it,” I said, grinning. “Last question, why are you riding alone? Wouldn’t things be more effective with your army?” “I move fastest alone,” he said. “And my own people are in place, and have been for some time.

Here I stand, regretting our missed opportunity to walk. A year ago I would have happily run up in the hills, whether it rained or not. And I was thinking that I could go out, in spite of the weather, but I wouldn’t enjoy it like I used to.” She gestured in amicable agreement. “There’s no fault in misliking the feel of a water-soaked gown.” “That’s part of it,” I said, seizing on the image. “Last year I wore the same clothes year round. My only hat was a castoff that Julen found me somewhere. I loved the feel of rain against my face, and never minded being soaked. I never noticed it! Now I own carriage hats, and walking hats, and riding hats, and ball headdresses--and none of them except the riding hats can get wet, and even those get ruined in a good soak. My old hat never had any shape to begin with, or any color, so it was never ruined.” I turned to face the window again. “Sometimes I feel like I didn’t lose just my hat, I lost my self that horrible night when I walked into Bran’s trap.” Nee was silent. I ran my thumb around the gilt rim of the cup a couple of times, then I made myself face her. “You think I’m being foolish?” She put her palms together in Peaceful Discourse mode. “Yes I do,” she said, but her tone was not unkind. “One doesn’t lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pin. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.” “Maybe I’ve changed too fast. Or haven’t changed enough,” I muttered. “Have you compromised yourself in any important way?” she asked. I opened my mouth to say Of course, when we were forced to give up our plans to defeat Galdran, but I knew it would be an untruth as soon as it left my lips. “I think,” I said slowly, “I lost my purpose that day. Life was so easy when all I lived for was the revolt, the accomplishment of which was to bring about all these wondrous miracles. Nothing turned out to be the way we so confidently expected it to. Nothing.” “So…” She paused to sip. “…if you hadn’t walked into that trap, what would be different?” “Besides the handsomeness of my foot?” I forced a grin as I kicked my slippered toes out from under my hem. No one could see my scarred foot, not with all the layers of fine clothing I now wore, but the scars were there. She smiled, but waited for me to answer her question. I said, “I suppose the outcome in the larger sense would have been the same. In the personal sense, though, I suspect I would have been spared a lot of humiliation.” “The humiliation of finding out that your political goals were skewed by misinformation?” “By ignorance. But that wasn’t nearly as humiliating as---” my encounters with a specific individual. But I just shook my head, and didn’t say it. “So you blame Vidanric,” she said neutrally. “Yes…no…I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound cross. “I don’t.” I looked down, saw my hand fidgeting with the curtain and dropped it to my side.

Two hours later, we pause along the road, in the midst of cornfields. Alex turns his horse away from me and stares toward the crops for a long silent moment, and all I can hear is the distant sound of a cow mooing. And then he turns his horse around and heads back in the direction we came from. “Are you supposed to…I don’t know…see anyone today?” He cocks his head to the side and smiles at me, like he knows he’s been caught, but like he doesn’t care. “Not entirely. There are days I simply want to ride and see the land that has been left to me. I fear I may never see it all.” “Oh.” We turn our horses and head back in the direction of Harksbury. I like the way he relaxes when we’re this far away from it all. I’m starting to realize where he gets his attitude. Why he’s so uptight. The world rests on his shoulders. But out here, it’s just us. A guy and a girl. Riding horses. Hanging out. “Thank you,” he says. Huh? “For what?” He twists his reins around in his hands for so long I think he hasn’t even heard me. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him fidget. The only sound is the crunching of the horses’ shod hooves over compact dirt and loose rocks. “For being who you are,” he says. “You don’t accept anything as it is. Not if you don’t agree with it. You see things the way they should be and not the way they are…and it makes me want to do the same.” I just stare at him. Where’s Alex and who is this guy? “I’ve never met a girl who…challenges me as you do. I find I’m seeing things differently.” He exhales slowly. “I should not have raised my voice to you earlier. I am sorry.” I almost choke on my own spit. First a compliment and then an apology? And yet his apology is for yelling. Not kissing me. So what does that mean? He’s not sorry he kissed me? Something warm spreads through me and makes it impossible not to grin. Somehow, after all those confrontations, I earned his respect. By standing up for something. For someone. “Oh. Um, thanks,” I say. “Does this mean you think I might know a thing or two you don’t?” I smile at him and stare straight into his eyes. Is this flirting? “Perhaps,” he smiles back at me, his eyes sparkling with amusement. I wish this moment would last forever. But it can’t. He reaches down to run a hand over the glossy white coat of his horse with one of his doeskin-gloved hands. Say it. Just tell him you like him. He looks up at me, and I dart my eyes away and stare straight ahead. I like you. But I can’t do it. The words are caught somewhere at the back of my throat.

And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. —Romans 11:6 (NIV) I couldn’t help noticing something on the dashboard of the cab I was riding in this morning: a snapshot of a college grad with mortarboard and gown, holding a diploma, smiling proudly; maybe the driver’s son. “Congratulations,” I said. “Your son?” “No,” he answered, “that’s me.” Momentarily mortified, I found myself thinking, Tough luck, driving a cab with a college degree. I got a better look at the driver. Middle Eastern, middle-aged. Probably has a PhD in astrophysics back in his home country. “Well,” I said awkwardly, “congratulations all the same. That’s great.” “An education is the best thing this country has given me. I just got an accounting degree and pretty soon I will find a job in my field, God willing. But meanwhile I have a family to support. Want to see them?” “Sure.” He flipped open the glove box where there were pictures of two boys and a girl, all in caps and gowns, all recent grads of high school and college. “I try to set a good example for them,” he said with a laugh. “God willing, they will find good jobs too. Education is the key to everything.” As we pulled to the curb, I thought of my own family coming to this country and struggling to reach the American dream, just like this man and his family. I thought of all the opportunities I’d been blessed with and how I can take it all too much for granted at times. “It was an honor to ride in your cab,” I said, handing the driver his fare. “Have a good day, sir,” he replied. “I shall,” I said, “God willing.” Jesus, they called You “Rabbi,” which means teacher. This month please bless all those who have worked so hard and so long for that great key to the future, a diploma. —Edward Grinnan

I talked yesterday about caring, I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at them flying through the breeze beside me because they have been there for so many years and are so old and so tired and so rotten there is something kind of humorous about them. They have become filled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and now when I set them down flat on a table, even when they are not cold, they won't stay flat. They've got a memory of their own. They cost only three dollars and have been restitched so many times it is getting impossible to repair them, yet I take a lot of time and pains to do it anyway because I can't imagine any new pair taking their place. That is impractical, but practicality isn't the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.

She looked suspiciously between Narian and me, and I went behind my desk, consciously mimicking what Cannan always did. I also wanted to put distance between myself and Nantilam, for her eyes seemed to pierce my flesh. Narian, on the other hand, went to stand directly in front of her. “We weren’t expecting you,” he admonished boldly. Having grown up a member of a royal family, I winced, knowing if anyone had addressed my father, the King, in such a manner, great offense would have been taken, followed by great retribution. “That much is apparent,” Nantilam responded, her words clipped. “I ask you once more, where is Rava?” “In the dungeon.” “What?” Nantilam was shocked--of all the answers she might have postulated, this was the most outlandish. She dropped her riding gloves on the seat of an armchair before the fireplace, then crossed her arms, her icy expression suggesting that Narian and I might trade places with Rava if we did not have a good rationale. “Narian, I grant you many privileges as the commander of my army, but imprisoning the shield maiden I have placed as your second is not among them.” She was patronizing him, and he glared at her. “Unless I gravely misjudge you, Rava was never granted the privilege of arbitrarily torturing and murdering Hytanican citizens.

The duke raises his arm and sort of flicks his wrist, and they swoop into action, coming at me with a platter full of food. The first guy is holding a tower of eggs. Ew. I don’t do eggs. “Oh, um, no thank you, I’m not an egg person.” All noise stops. Everyone stares at me. Am I not supposed to talk to the servants? I smile weakly at the duke and his mother as the servant walks away, and another approaches with ham. I clamp my mouth shut as he plops a hearty portion down on my plate. My mouth is suddenly very dry. I turn to the servant standing motionless behind me. “Can I get some water?” Yeah. Definitely not supposed to talk to them. The guy’s eyes flicker over to the old lady, as if he needs permission to get me some water. “There is lemonade in front of you,” the old lady says. “Oh.” Is that what that is? I take a quick swallow and try not to choke. This obviously is not Country Time, if you know what I mean. I was starving ten minutes ago, but now that I’m sitting in the same room as these weird people, my appetite is gone. This breakfast needs to be over, stat. I can barely keep up with the glove and servant etiquette; I’m bound to screw something up. I need to maintain my fake identity, wrangle a ride to town, and say sayonara.

Fraley leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “We found the guns in the glove compartment of your car,” Fraley said calmly. “They’re going to match the bullets we found at two murder scenes. Our evidence guys are going through your car with a fine-toothed comb, including the trunk. We think you gave Norman Brockwell a ride out to the woods in the trunk of your car. They’re looking for little pieces of his skin, fingernails, saliva, hair, blood, anything they can find. And

Emmie.” St. Just stepped closer, ignoring Stevens, Douglas, and Winnie across the yard. “I do not want to leave you.” “But you will,” she said simply, “and this journey will be good for you. Your family is anxious about you, too, and if you don’t go now, traveling will not get any easier until spring.” “I know.” He slapped riding gloves against his thigh. “I know all that, but I also know I will miss you and Winnie and… oh, hell.” He spun her by her shoulder and fastened his mouth to hers. It was not a chaste, parting kiss but a hot, carnal, daring, reminding kiss. He’d taken her off guard, and she was slow to respond, but when she did, it was to frame his jaw with her hand and circle her arm around his waist. She allowed him his moment, neither resisting nor encouraging, but when he broke the kiss, she stayed in his arms, resting her forehead on his chest. “Naughty man.” “Something to remember me by,” he murmured, pleased with himself. “Take care of Winnie, write, and I will see you in a few weeks.” “Take care of yourself, Devlin St. Just.” She held his gaze solemnly. “Let your family love you.” Her

I trust Lady Jenny made you welcome?” “Very.” Kesmore’s eyes narrowed, and like an idiot, Elijah babbled on. “She is knowledgeable about art, and her company is enjoyable.” Also a sore trial to his self-restraint, which was why departure this morning was a relief. Mostly a relief. The thwack of Kesmore’s riding crop against his boot punctuated the soft whistle of the winter wind. “Lady Jenny can handle the hellions gracing my nursery, which ought to recommend her to half the bachelor princes in Europe. She talks horses with me, poetry with Louisa, politics with His Grace, recipes with—” Kesmore broke off and waved one black-gloved hand in the direction of the house—a silly wave, hand up, fingers waggling madly. Elijah followed the man’s gaze and saw a woman in a third-floor window with a child in her arms. In a gesture ubiquitous among mothers, she was waving the baby’s tiny hand in Kesmore’s direction. “The child probably can’t even see you, Kesmore, and he has no notion why you’re fluttering your hand around.” “Neither do I, and someday, neither will you.” This time Kesmore waved his riding crop at the mother and child, who waved right back.

I learned that money was the object of life, and I wanted money. I wanted the servants, the fine clothes, the respect in the street, and a horse of my own. I wanted to ride into Stratford and spit on Thomas Butler and his sour wife, to spit on all those who had told me to work harder, work harder, work harder. To wok harder for what? To become a carpenter? a cobbler? A glove maker or a ditch-digger? To be someone who was forever pulling my forelock? To be always bowing, snivelling and flattering? And so I began to thieve, and I found I was good at it.

He saved for months (mowing lawns, taking extra shifts at the Dairy Queen) and when finally he brought it home, I helped him swirling rags, polishing until the hubcaps shone, the tires special ordered to fit. Easy ride, he'd say, slamming the brakes - his big joke - instrumental panel lighting the glove box filled with the manual's sweet talk - fuel injector, carburetor, exhaust manifold. So when the call came, I couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it all along - the shut garage, engine idling, sunglasses slung from the mirror. On the passenger's side a school book lay open; chewed gun on the seat.

Walking Blues Not Packaged for Individual Sale I learned the word bodega the same day I learned arbitrage riding with you down to Richmond to buy armloads of the cheap cigarettes, the ones you'd packed duffled aboard a Chinatown bus to resell on the sly in Brooklyn. Back on Earth, driving your truck home alone, I turned both words over in my mouth again and again, polishing the gemstones. My mother learned bodega from 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes' and asked me to take a picture of the first one I saw when I visited you When I tried, you told me Don't preserve the evidence, dumbshit so I never got one. Besides, whatever glitter Paul Simon burnished onto the word had gotten lost among the toilet paper rolls and rubber gloves that lined the ceilings, though I found a glimmer of it napping on the warmth of the ATM, a cat who was named Lucy not after diamonds but after the cigarettes. This was back before you figured out how much more you can make by just stealing what you wanted. Back when I still thought of myself as the kind of friend who would visit you in jail.

Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you hadn’t any money with you to pay your fare? I did, the other day. It’s quite awful. I had a nickel with me when I got on the car. I thought it was in the left pocket of my coat. When I got settled down comfortably I felt for it. It wasn’t there. I had a cold chill. I felt in the other pocket. Not there. I had another chill. Then I felt in a little inside pocket. All in vain. I had two chills at once. “I took off my gloves, laid them on the seat, and went over all my pockets again. It was not there. I stood up and shook myself, and then looked on the floor. The car was full of people, who were going home from the opera, and they all stared at me, but I was past caring for a little thing like that. “But I could not find my fare. I concluded I must have put it in my mouth and swallowed it inadvertently. “I didn’t know what to do. Would the conductor, I wondered, stop the car and put me off in ignominy and shame? Was it possible that I could convince him that I was merely the victim of my own absentmindedness, and not an unprincipled creature trying to obtain a ride upon false pretenses? How I wished that Alec or Alonzo were there. But they weren’t because I wanted them. If I HADN’T wanted them they would have been there by the dozen. And I couldn’t decide what to say to the conductor when he came around. As soon as I got one sentence of explanation mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could believe it and I must compose another. It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in Providence, and for all the comfort that gave me I might as well have been the old lady who, when told by the captain during a storm that she must put her trust in the Almighty exclaimed, ‘Oh, Captain, is it as bad as that?’ “Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and the conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me, I suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm. I hadn’t swallowed it after all. I meekly fished it out of the index finger of my glove and poked it in the box. I smiled at everybody and felt that it was a beautiful world.

The church was only round the corner and they made it as the last bell was an echo, marching down the aisle together, the old man and the old lady and the kids, the eight kids. Eight kids and not enough bread for one. Kneeling together, praying together, marching out again into the cold gloomy Chicago Sunday. The hot sweating Chicago Sunday. “It’s a fine family you have there, Mr...” The old man puffing himself up and accepting the compliments on the church steps and the old lady smirking timidly and fingering her worn black gloves. She blacked them with shoe blacking on Saturday nights. The kids standing like clodhoppers with their welts itching under their sawtoothed winter underwear, under their sweaty summer floursacks. The priest in his stained cassock looking like a pale, pious, nearsighted Saint. Saints didn’t belong in a slum church; there ought to have been a fighting priest like an avenging angel with a fiery sword. To whack the old man down. To strike the old man and his sanctimonious Sunday smile dead on the church steps

He saved for months (mowing lawns, taking extra shifts at the Dairy Queen) and when finally he brought it home, I helped him swirling rags, polishing until the hubcaps shone, the tires special ordered to fit. Easy ride, he'd say, slamming the brakes - his big joke - instrumental panel lighting the glove box filled with the manual's sweet talk - fuel injector, carburetor, exhaust manifold. So when the call came, I couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it all along - the shut garage, engine idling, sunglasses slung from the mirror. On the passenger's side a school book lay open; chewed gum on the seat.

Heavy turbulence shook the aircraft, yet it held course toward its destination. Its powerful engines barely produced any noise, and the black hull made it almost invisible against the darkness. Three more of the same type of aircraft followed it, traveling in formation, like silent birds of prey hiding in the shadows of the night. The passengers inside weren't bothered by the shaky ride. Highly focused and ready for anything, they sat there in silence, secured with safety bars into long rows of seats facing each other. All wore the same tight black combat suits and gloves, firearms were strapped to their thighs, and everyone had a rucksack on their back. Matching, tight-fitting helmets covered their heads, cheeks, and upper necks. Only a small part of their faces was visible, and their eyes. All of them had identical neon-blue eyes. Their stares were somewhat chilling and disturbing; the unnatural eyes and their unmoving faces made them look like an army of living dolls, waiting to spring into action.

Then I had one of those odd shifts of focus and looked down at my bike, and my dusty, worn gloves on the handlebars. We were in the greatest place in the world, but what had it taken to get here? Quite a bit. Learning to ride, getting a driver’s license in high school. Acquiring tools, learning to change flat tires and clutch cables. Gaining dirt experience and going to dealerships to shop for the right bike. Installing knobbies and handguards and a skidplate. After years of youthful indigence, moving through a series of jobs that finally allowed you to afford a truck or a bike trailer. Learning to read maps and cross rivers in deep water. Finding helmets and enduro jackets and motocross boots that fit. Getting a passport, paying your bike registration, learning a smattering of useful Spanish.… And living long enough to have friends who were crazy enough to do all these things, as well. People you could count on who’d gone through the same lifetime of motorcycle connections that had brought us to this perfect spot in time. As I put my helmet back on, it occurred to me that you are never more completely the sum of everything you’ve ever been than when you take a slightly difficult motorcycle trip into a strange land. And make it back out again.

One-fifth of Japan’s residents live in greater Tokyo, and 8.7 million people have to ride the metro every day. Rush hour is so crowded that white-gloved workers help shove people onto the trains, leading to another unique term, tsukin jigoku— commuting hell.

Meanwhile, I was kind of detached, despite the terrible pain. I was watching all the drama unfold. Later they told me I was in shock, but I remember enjoying the ride to the hospital because I never thought I’d ride in an ambulance with the sirens wailing. It was one of those things I had always wanted to do when I was growing up. When we got there, they told me there were news crews outside, so I asked for my glove. There’s a famous shot of me waving from the stretcher with my glove on.

His hair was a dark gold and worn long enough to reach his chin. It had been pulled back into a tight queue for riding and bound with a leather strip, but the wind had pulled it loose and now it flew around his face. Perhaps on another man, the style might have been unflattering. But on Linden Chevalier it only added something more alluring to his presence, and as he lifted a black-gloved hand to push it back, the set of his jaw and twist of his mouth made him look sharp and wicked.

Wanna try my ride for a change?” he asked her. “It’s not too cold today.” She looked around him. “On that?” “Just you and me, Shelby. Want to take a chance?” She gave him a soft smile. “Am I safe with you on that thing?” she asked. He presented the rider’s helmet. “Well, I’ll drive carefully. You should get a jacket and something to wrap around your neck. Boots and gloves. And you might want to tie up your hair.” “Why not,” she said. “Come in while I get ready.” He

I have never seen such an exquisite creature in the woods before," a deep voice suddenly said. My eyes flew open and I glanced around to discern the speaker; I could not see a man anywhere in the trees. "From the back, you resemble a pretty little deer," the man continued. I stood slowly, brushing my gloved hands along the sides of my gown, still trying to make out the speaker's location. I heard him chuckle and then the sound of twigs breaking beneath his feet. He emerged to my right, dressed in a brown leather hunting vest, black breeches and matching riding boots. He was holding a crossbow and had a dagger at his waist. "I would suggest you be more careful; I might have stuck you if I had not noticed your lovely...bonnet," he finished in good humour.

I seem to recall a rule regarding breeches,” he said. “They’re not breeches, they’re trousers.” He arched one brow. “So you think you’re justified in breaking the spirit of the law as long as you keep to the letter?” “Yes. Besides, you have no right to make rules about my attire in the first place.” Devon fought back a grin. If her impudence was intended to discourage him, it had the opposite effect. He was a man, after all, and a Ravenel to boot. “Nevertheless,” he said, “there will be consequences.” Kathleen shot him an uncertain glance. He kept his expression impassive as they headed through the stables to the saddle room. “There’s no need for you to accompany me,” Kathleen said, her pace quickening. “I’m sure you have much to do.” “Nothing as important as this.” “As what?” she asked warily. “Finding out the answer to one question.” Kathleen stopped near the wall of saddle racks, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him resolutely. “Which is?” She tugged meticulously at the fingers of her riding gloves and pulled them from her hands. Devon loved her willingness to stand up to him, even though she was half his size. Slowly he reached out and removed her hat, tossing it to the corner. Some of the defiant tension left her slight frame as she realized that he was playing with her. She looked very young with her cheeks flushed and her hair a bit mussed from the ride. He moved forward, crowding her back against the wall between two rows of empty racks, effectively pinning her into the small space. Gripping the narrow lapels of her riding jacket, he lowered his mouth to her ear and asked softly, “What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?

I’m sure you have much to do.” “Nothing as important as this.” “As what?” she asked warily. “Finding out the answer to one question.” Kathleen stopped near the wall of saddle racks, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him resolutely. “Which is?” She tugged meticulously at the fingers of her riding gloves and pulled them from her hands. Devon loved her willingness to stand up to him, even though she was half his size. Slowly he reached out and removed her hat, tossing it to the corner. Some of the defiant tension left her slight frame as she realized that he was playing with her. She looked very young with her cheeks flushed and her hair a bit mussed from the ride. He moved forward, crowding her back against the wall between two rows of empty racks, effectively pinning her into the small space. Gripping the narrow lapels of her riding jacket, he lowered his mouth to her ear and asked softly, “What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?

What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?” A breathless laugh escaped her. The gloves dropped to the floor. “I would think an infamous rake would already know.” “I was never infamous. In fact, I’m fairly standard as far as rakes go.” “The ones who deny it are the worst.

He moved forward, crowding her back against the wall between two rows of empty racks, effectively pinning her into the small space. Gripping the narrow lapels of her riding jacket, he lowered his mouth to her ear and asked softly, “What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?” A breathless laugh escaped her. The gloves dropped to the floor. “I would think an infamous rake would already know.

What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?” A breathless laugh escaped her. The gloves dropped to the floor. “I would think an infamous rake would already know.” “I was never infamous. In fact, I’m fairly standard as far as rakes go.” “The ones who deny it are the worst.” She strained as he began to kiss along the side of her neck. Her skin was hot from exertion, a little salty, and her scent was divinely arousing: horses, fresh winter air, roses. “I’m sure you caused no end of mayhem in London, with all your drinking, gambling, carousing, chasing lightskirts…” “Moderate drinking,” he said in a muffled voice. “Very little gambling. I’ll admit to the carousing.” “And the lightskirts?” “None.” At her skeptical snort, Devon lifted his head. “None since I met you.” Kathleen drew back, her perplexed gaze lifting to his. “There haven’t been women since…” “No. How could I take someone else to bed? In the morning I would wake up still wanting you.” He moved closer, his large feet bracketing her small ones. “You haven’t answered my question.” She shrank from him until her head pressed against the wood-planked wall. “You know I can’t.” “Then I’ll have to find out for myself.

A huge shape loomed beside her…a man mounted on a sturdy black dray. It was Devon, she realized in bewilderment. She couldn’t say a word to save her life. He wasn’t dressed for riding--he wasn’t even wearing gloves. More perplexing still, he was wearing a stableman’s low-crowned felt hat, as if he had borrowed it while departing in haste. “Lady Helen asked me to fetch you,” Devon called out, his face unfathomable. “You can either ride back with me, or we’ll stand here and argue in a lightning storm until we’re both flambéed. Personally I’d prefer the latter--it would be better than reading the rest of those account ledgers.” Kathleen stared at him with stunned confusion. In practical terms, it was possible to ride double with Devon back to the estate. The dray, broad-built and calm-tempered, would be more than equal to the task. But as she tried to imagine it, their bodies touching…his arms around her… No. She couldn’t bear being that close to any man. Her flesh crawled at the thought. “I…I can’t ride with you.” Although she tried to sound decisive, her voice was wavering and plaintive. Rain streamed down her face, rivulets trickling into her mouth. Devon’s lips parted as if he were about to deliver a scathing reply. As his gaze traveled over her drenched form, however, his expression softened. “Then you take the horse, and I’ll walk back.” Dumbstruck by the offer, Kathleen could only stare at him. “No,” she eventually managed to say. “But…thank you. Please, you must return to the house.” “We’ll both walk,” he said impatiently, “or we’ll both ride. But I won’t leave you.” “I’ll be perfectly--” She broke off and flinched at a bone-rattling peal of thunder. “Let me take you home.” Devon’s tone was pragmatic, as if they were standing in a parlor instead of a violent late-summer storm. Had he said it in an overbearing manner, Kathleen might have been able to refuse him. But somehow he’d guessed that softening his approach was the best way to undermine her.

A huge shape loomed beside her…a man mounted on a sturdy black dray. It was Devon, she realized in bewilderment. She couldn’t say a word to save her life. He wasn’t dressed for riding--he wasn’t even wearing gloves. More perplexing still, he was wearing a stableman’s low-crowned felt hat, as if he had borrowed it while departing in haste. “Lady Helen asked me to fetch you,” Devon called out, his face unfathomable. “You can either ride back with me, or we’ll stand here and argue in a lightning storm until we’re both flambéed. Personally I’d prefer the latter--it would be better than reading the rest of those account ledgers.