Summers At Castle Auburn Quotes

Do you love me?" he asked. I fell silent. "For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.

Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.

But I am king. And the well-being of my kingdom depends on my sound judgment and clear head. And those things depend on my state of happiness. And I have known for a long time that my state of happiness depends on you.

she had something I could not have, and so I resented her—but I realized the fault was mine and not hers.

Would you not marry even for love?" "Love does not seem to bring anyone much happiness as far as I have observed. So I think the lesson learned is never to love." "The lesson is to love wisely," he replied.

The promises of the future cannot undo the harm of the past.

So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.

He looked down at his empty glass. "One of the other ways in which I am different from my father," he said. "I am not interested in marrying where I do not love." I spoke in a jesting voice. "And of all the women in the eight provinces, you have not been able to find one you could love?" Now he looked at me again, and his face was completely serious. "That's the problem," he said. "There is one.

No such thing as too tall,” she said. She had automatically reached for a brush and now she began uncoiling the tangles of my hair. “It’s good for a woman to be able to look into a man’s eyes. Then she’s not afraid to tell him what she thinks.

My shoes made an odd, clacking sound on the cobblestones of the courtyard, no matter how quietly I placed my feet. It was like being followed by the audible manifestation of my own shadow.

You're just afraid," I flung at him. "Of what would happen to you and your life at court if you were to carry Elisandra away. Of what your father would say. Of what Bryan would do to you." Now he, too, looked angry. "I am afraid of many things, but those are not the fears that keep me from action," he said. I turned my back on him. "Then I don't understand you," I said. I heard the door open. "No," he said, "and you never have.

I had been right the first time. His sonorous voice echoed through a hollow place of sorrow, catching its reverberations from those ragged walls. His gaiety masked a deep well of loneliness; he was a bright outward shape wrapped around shadows.

You seem sad, Coriel.” I nodded. “The world makes me sad these days. Things I would not have noticed a year ago seem dreadful to me now. Is that a function of growing older? And will everything seem more dreadful every year, from now until I die?

Now his grin lit his face with a sunny halo.

Elisandra read while I tried my hand at embroidering a pillowcase that she lent me. The results were execrable. I had no skill with a needle, and no desire to learn, either. "I wouldn't shame a dog by laying this upon his bed," I remarked, showing Elisandra my efforts. She actually smiled. "I like it," she said. "I'll put it on one of my pillows." "Bryan won't let you sleep in the same bed with him if you bring this as your dowry," I said with an attempt at humor. She bent her head back over her book. "Then stitch me another.

You do not decide first if you want to live in a village or a court. You decide if that is the man you want to live with, and then you say yes or no.

Perhaps I will someday. When there is nothing left in my own world that pleases me.' 'Then you will never visit, for you are a girl who will always find pleasure in something.

I was irritable, Kent was taciturn, Damien was withdrawn, and Bryan was downright sullen. It was hard to tell if Roderick had any sort of mood upon him; he did not seem like the type to inflict his humors on his companions.

And how is your head? Better?" he asked. "Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved." "Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?" I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender." And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.

I could come up with no answer. He had kissed my hand. The forces of gravity came unraveled; there was no cohesion at the core of the world, no order in the universe. Clouds and trees and birds and suns spun around of their own volition, freed from their laws and routines. Bryan had kissed my hand. I could not be rational; and so nothing in the world would make sense again.

I did no such thing as sit there with my mouth open, though I may as well have, since I felt as if my mind was gaping. It had simply never occurred to me to wonder what kind of person I was, what kind of person I wanted to be. I had not envisioned this as something I had any control over, just as I could not alter the round shape of my face or the dense black curl of my hair.

I had been right the first time. His sonorous voice echoed through a hollow place of sorrow, catching its reverberations from those ragged walls. His gaiety masked a deep well of loneliness; he was a bright outward shape wrapped around shadows. It frightened me to see this so clearly, as if I suddenly found I was waltzing with a ghost through the multicolored fantasy of a dream. All my love rushed back for him, complicated and partisan.

But there was something else about Elisandra that was even more striking, and that was her air of absolute, unbreakable calm. Even when she spoke and gestured in the course of an ordinary conversation, a great stillness lay behind the animation of her features and the glances of her eyes. Even when she danced, she seemed to move as a figure in a frieze would, stately and frozen in place from panel to panel. There was no exuberance in her, no matter how she laughed or smiled. There was a great watchfulness that hung about her like a curtain of light or shadow, and filtered out any thoughts, any expressions, that she wanted no other to see.

I was silent a moment. He still had not dropped my hands, and it amazed me how desperately I did not want him to let me go even now. “I cannot be cheered tonight,” I said finally. “I can only be distracted.” “Comforted?” he suggested and slowly, as if waiting for a protest that did not come, he drew me into his arms. I leaned against his chest and his arms wrapped around me. I felt safe and warm and hopeful as I had not felt in weeks. I turned my face into the cloth of his shirt and felt the tears rise. I knew that I would not be able to stop them, and knew that he would feel their wetness through the cotton to his skin, and knew he would know why I was crying and that he would not care. We stood embraced that way for minutes, hours, I could not guess how long. I cried and he held me and neither of us spoke a word.

Elisandra’s lips moved in a silent prayer of gratitude. Color actually washed across her face. That was bad; that was actually terrible; but there had been a hero, nonetheless, some mercy shown, and that made the story more bearable.

He turned toward the door, but lingered on the threshold, seeming to want to say more. 'You should not let just anyone kiss your hand, you know,' he said, the mock seriousness still in his voice. 'Greta will tell you that. And definitely no kissing anywhere off the dance floor—in the gardens, for instance, or in empty hallways when no one else is near.' I believe she’s covered that in one of her lectures,' I said demurely.

He is to be the king, after all. He should learn to guard his emotions a little more closely.' 'Like you, I suppose,' I said in a huff. 'You’re never edgy or out of sorts.' He grinned lazily. 'I am, all of the time. There is much about the way the world is ordered that does not please me at all. But I think it foolish to vent my displeasure on every poor soul who happens to cross my path.

He looked straight ahead at the path before him. “You realize that if something were to happen to Bryan before he bore an heir, I would be king—my father abdicated all hope of the throne when he agreed to be regent. So do I wish I was to be king? That is not the question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick-witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge. Some days I am more successful at it than others.

Because I was raised to believe that every man has a responsibility, and the strongest man has the heaviest responsibilities...