1
Even they would think you a monster were you toorchestrate a divorce right after my confinement.”“ How long do you recommend I wait, then?”“ A long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted: The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child.”“ So you will contest the divorce?”“ To my last penny. And then I’ll borrow from Fitz and Millie.”“So we’ll be married ’til the end of time?”“ The sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off.” His ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must have enough rest.” He gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he’d already accepted it from the moment he’d said “I do”? .Sherry Thomas
2
He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world–there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he’d been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name. But more than anything, he wanted to–.Sherry Thomas
3
The next minute he realized what had happened to him, but not before she’d caught him staring. For a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman’s beauty. She knew. With surgical precision, she had peeled back his layers of defenses, until his heart lay bare before her, all its shame and yearning exposed. He could have lived with this if only he’d kept his secret whole and buried. But she knew. She knew.Sherry Thomas
4
The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He’d been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he’d been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean. He’d been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He’d been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name. And, of course, never showed her face. .Sherry Thomas
5
For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope. Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet. Perhaps– Three porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart. A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slabby its size and weight. She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.Sherry Thomas
6
..So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know. I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I sawyou last. You will find me a stooped old man when we meet again. Perhaps I might even need a pair of spectacles to recognize your veil. But I remain always, Your servant, C. One of Christian's onesided letters to the Baroness.Sherry Thomas