Eloisa James Quotes

I didn't leave you. We couldn't-you have to-

Theo is like the huntress Diana," Cecil said, rocking a little on his heels. He was thoroughly enjoying the burst of popularity his cousin-by-marriage was experiencing. "Beautiful and yet slightly deadly, ready to to whip out a bow and arrow, or turn a man into a squealing swine. Sensual, and yet with just a snowy touch of the virginal about her.

Tess took a deep breath. 'You are not marrying me for love, Lord Mayne. Nor-as far as I can see-due to any overwhelming feeling of a less...less proper nature.' She could feel color rising into her cheeks.
'Now that's not true,' Mayne said. There was a hint of wicked laughter in his eyes, and his fingers tightened on hers. 'I feel quite improperly toward you.'
Goodness, but he was attractive when he wasn't hedging, when he was being honest. 'Are you not disturbed by the fact that we do not feel warmer emotions for each other?' she asked him.
'I would be disturbed if we /did/ ... I do not wish for a tempestuous marriage, although I am quite certain that there will be sufficient warmth between us.'
'And in your estimation, tempests must accompany love,' she said, raising an eyebrow.

She leaped away from Villiers the moment the note sounded in the air, sadness falling from her like a discarded cloak.

There was some rustling as the gown was cast over the soprano's shoulders, or so Lina assumed, and then the alto and Madame Rocque started cooing.
But the soprano cut through it decisively. 'I look like an orange without its rind,' she said firmly.

I'm fat," she blurted out.
"You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower.
"I want every inch of you," he said, growling it. "I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips." He reach out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife.

It was awful, this love.

I did it," Gabriel said, conversationally. "I met the woman, the only woman for me. I met her, and now . . . I'm going to meet my wife.

He wanted to grow old with her, or not grow old at all.

I suppose this is your way of telling me that you are outrageously happy?'
Quill nodded. 'Of course.'
'Living with you is an act of interpretation, do you know that?'
'Living with you is ... bliss. Did you know that?

Is he your very first gingerbread man?'
She nodded.
'You eat him.'
'Eat his head?'
'I always start with the feet,' Edie suggested.
'But if I eat him, he'll be dead.'
'No, he'll be in your tummy,' Layla said. 'There's a difference.'
'I think I'd better eat his head first,' Susannah said ... 'That way he won't know what's happening to him.'
'That's a very kind thought,' Layla approved.

They were partners. She would always make impulsive decisions and he would make slow, reasoned ones. He would always be a little terrified that she would look at him with the scorn he saw in his mother's eyes. And she would always be a little terrified that he would look at her and not love her enough.
In short, they were made for each other.

Theo shook out the half square of heavy silk. "It will make all the difference to this insipid gown." With one sharp wrench she pulled out the lace fichu tucked into her bodice and replaced it with the scarf. It flashed raspberry red against the almond-colored muslin of her gown.

Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars.

[...] But do you know what I have in mind, Kate?'
She shook her head. 'Devilry, no doubt,' she muttered.
'I'm going to drive you mad,' he said conversationally. 'I'm going to kiss you and tease you and taste you... and leave. And then I'll come back and do the same thing again. And again.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and the color of his eyelashes was like the color of regret.

Piers looked up at him. 'You're new. What's your name?'
'Neythen, my lord.'
'Sounds like a terrible illness. No, more like a bowel problem. I'm sorry, Lord Sandys, your son has contracted neythen and won't live a month. No, no, there's nothing I can do. Sandys would have preferred hearing that to syphilis.

He'd never seen a lady's hair down in a public place, and here was Miss Jerningham - Gabby - blithely shaking her curls, as if the crowd of stevedores, sailors, and boatmen around her were naught.
'A lady does not groom herself in public!'
'I'm afraid I'm used to being on display,' she said brightly. 'In the village, my father and I were the only Europeans. My hair was considered to be a good-luck charm-

The year Grace turned fourteen, Colin walked through the door in a uniform, and her heart gave one big thump and never beat exactly the same way again.

She had always looked like some confectioner's fantasia, a wee thing created of spun sugar, gossamer light, pale and shimmering, so fragile she might melt away in the morning dew. The years had made her seem even more unearthly. Yet, she looked older, too, riper, no longer sprite but faerie queen ... Everything about her was brighter, clearer, lighter. Everything but her eyes. They had darkened into something more complicated, deeper, more intense and intoxicating: pansies in shadow, the Cretan sea at midnight.

Life should not be measured by time. The only thing that counts is how one uses the time one has.

My duchess," James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. "She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.

Has no one ever taught you it is rude to pry?'
'Would you rather I sneaked about, ferreting things out? Of course not. 'Twould be most distasteful. All in all, I'd rather be thought rude than artful.

I get most of my inspiration from two places: my own life, and reading. I read widely - in my genre (romance), and in all sorts of different genres, from urban fantasy to literature. Then there's your own life. Romance is a fantasy genre, but if the rock core of your characters doesn't come from your own life, from emotions you know intimately, the book won't fly. I don't mean you have to be married to Casanova - I mean that a heroine will feel genuine to readers if she shares some of your fears or triumphs. Craft the emotional part of the plot from truths you learned from your own life, from watching your friends' lives, or from reading books.

Layla, darling, I shall be ready whenever you decide to retire to the country and commence on a life of unending debauchery.

I don't know why you're crying, Count. I lost closer friends than you when I was deloused!

He thinks that there's no reason to eat breakfast unless Eleanor is there to give him that silly wide grin of hers. He wants to have an argument with her just so he can kiss her into a good mood again. He wants to sleep with her every night, see her holding a baby with brandy-colored hair like hers ... He wants her forever ... He can't bear the idea that she might ever love another man.

Come on. We've just time to find you a doll before the shops close.'
Rose sat up directly. 'But the ribbon broke on my right slipper and Mrs. Stella said I can't go outside until I have new shoes.'
...
He stood, and she looked up at him. She did not hold out her arms, but it seemed he was expected to pick her up.
'Didn't you announce that you don't like to be carried?'
'I make exceptions when I am ill shod.'
The child stared back at Thorn as if there was nothing odd about her speech. He gathered her up into his arms and remarked, 'At least you smell better now.'
He glanced down in time to see cool gray eyes narrow.
'So do you,' she said.
Thorn stared down at her. Had she? Yes, she had. 'That was not a polite comment,' he told her.
She looked off, into the corner of the bedchamber, but her implication was obvious: *he* had been impolite to point out her former odor.

Attention to her words was at such a fever pitch that Theo was visited by a delegation of three diamond sellers who begged her aid. That very evening Lady Islay appeared at a ball wearing a necklace that featured no fewer than eight strands of diamonds, caught together by an extraordinary pear-shaped diamond pendant, and casually remarked that she thought a woman should rival the Milky Way at night: *We give babies milk, but ladies? Diamonds.*

Give me one last time," he begged. "Please, please. I beg you." "I - " She stopped and started again. "I'm afraid, Gabriel. You'll break my heart." "Mine is already broken.

When you fall in love, your heart will pound so much you won't be able to throw a mouse let alone a cow pat.
I don't think I could throw a mouse now. I dislike the idea of scrabbling little feet in my palm, unless they are yours, of course.

It was blue. All of it: rugs, hangings, curtains ... 'This room looks as if someone vomited the sky,' Layla said.

God Almighty, your ruined, and you didn't even eat the gingerbread.

If you throw me out of this house, I shall sleep on the path outside. If you return to the Continent without me, I shall follow you. I will build a willow hut at your gate; I will sleep under your window; I will be waiting for you at your own front door.

At some point Ewan had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were bulging with muscle, and his shoulders appeared likely to rip through the thin linen of his shirt. Annabelle swallowed, thinking of Ewan without his shirt at their picnic. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"Where do you get all these muscles?" she asked.
"Lifting damsels in distress." He grinned at her, and there was a slight lurch as he leaped off the carriage and landed with a splash in the ditch.

nights?" Something unraveled in her heart, destroying the last of her defenses, the final shard of sanity she possessed. "Yes! It is, it is.

Those kisses ... repaired and soothed and knit together the weave of married life.

There was something aggressively masculine about Toloose ... perhaps it was the look in his eye. Or the way he was holding his billiard cue. It was amazing the way a man in an embroidered coat could take on the air of a dockworker.

Esme Rawlings is as intelligent as she is dissolute.

She shrugged and, with one
gulp, drank half a glass of champagne.
"How long has she been like this?" The look on Edie's father's face was edging from half to threequarters
barbarian.
"Oh, about two years," Edie said, considering. "In the stages of marital harmony, I'd say the two
of you are at about stage eight of ten - ten being the slough of utter despond.

His grin eased the bleakness in her heart. "You're my friend, Merry. Bloody

You know I don't know a chestnut from a conker.'
[ ... ] 'A Chestnut is a conker

Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.

She was playing something so low and soft that it felt as if she were humming it ... notes built and subsided, as if a giant were softly breathing them, as if each note was a drop of water going down a stream filled with rocks.

I shouldn't think I'll have the slightest problem playing a man," she said. "I shall merely remember to rearrange my breeches in front at least once an hour, thereby drawing attention to the padding I carefully placed there in the morning, and I'll blend in perfectly.

To have him walk toward her with that intent look on his face, as if nothing in the world could satisfy him but her. Damn

Rage is a useful emotion. Rage burns away sorrow and disgrace.

Dogs do tricks. Cats play tricks.

How can I not think of you as Daisy when your hair is all about your face like the petals of a flower?" He crouched down on his heels before her chair and picked up a thick curl. "It's glossy, like sunshine.

But then a pirate had slit his cousin's throat and almost killed him, and the same man had slashed Griffin's thigh. And James had realized he was still in love with his wife, and decided to return to England. There was no such realization in store for Griffin, since had known his wife for precisely one day. But he did know that a pirate with a game leg is a soon-to-be-dead pirate, which was just as important an insight.

Will Peter be joining us for tea, do you think?'
'I doubt it. Peter rarely returns home before late in the evening.'
'Oh.'
Quill felt as if he had told a baby chick that his favorite dish was roast fowl.

She was everything he'd ever wanted in a woman, and nothing he'd ever thought to find in a lady.

It was as if the world was presenting her with everything she wanted ... in all the wrong ways.

From here she could see miles of dark emerald forest with just a few birds erupting from its depths like flying fish skimming an ocean ...
'Annabel!' Ewan called.
She looked down. He was standing in water, after all. So without a moment's trepidation, she launched herself from the downed carriage, coming home to his arms with all the security and the pleasure of child leaping from the second stair.

In case there is any question in your mind," he said, cupping her face with his hands. "What I want, what I most desire, the loveliest sight on this dark earth, is you.

The only thing I regret about age are the wrinkles. But I have high hopes
for this new almond cream! Do you know, that Italian apothecary promises the cream will make one's
skin as soft as a baby's cheek? Once your child arrives, we'll have a viable comparison. Not having seen
a baby in years, how would I know what its skin looks like?"
"I'm glad my condition will prove to be of use," Esme said rather tartly.

She pulled back, but not abruptly. His eyes were the darkest indigo blue that she had ever seen. She let a faint smile curl on her lips. "You inquire how many kisses of yours would be enough, and more to satisfy me," she said, and was startled to hear a husky catch in her voice. "As many as the grains of Libyan sand that lie between hot Jupiter's oracle… as many…" She paused. The look in his eye had made her forget what she was saying. What came after hot oracle!
He didn't look sardonic now, but truly surprised. She had to leave. This was all entirely too intimate and uncomfortable.
"Alas," she said, gathering up her skirts again and turning toward the rockslide. "I have quite forgotten the next line, so we shall have to delay this learned discussion." He was at her shoulder in a moment, helping her over the stones.
"As many as the stars," he said, conversationally, as if they were talking of gardening, or Romans, or any number of polite topics. "As many as the stars, when the night is still, gazing down on secret human desires.

The boy in me will always love you," he said, disarming her with a smile. "The man I am doesn't know you yet." And now there was a look in his eyes that she recognized, that resonated deep within her.

I decided that since my curves aren't going to disappear due to gorging on lettuce, I might as well flaunt them. If men like the bovine appeal, as you said, they're certainly going to get it.

Do you have a handkerchief?" she asked. "No," the prince said, looking amused. "I suppose you have servants who carry around that sort of thing in case you sneeze," she said. "You aren't carrying one either," he retorted. "I don't have room; my reticule is full of cheese." "I thought you had an interesting smell! Most ladies smell rather French.

Gabriel actually laughed. Luckily for Philippa, she's beautiful enought that another man will come along who has the balls to accept what she's offering.

You idiot,' Layla said. 'You sneering, despicable - '
'You're beginning to repeat yourself.

Life does not always gives us the choices that we want

chaise longue and slowly pulled on a stocking. Her body twinged

Grace had so many complexities, so many layers and feelings, and thoughts ... he would happily spend his life trying to unwrap her.
Thinking about it, he tore a strip off the hem of her gown.
'What on earth are you going to do with that?'
Without answering, he put a knee forward onto the bed, making certain he knew precisely where she was. The last thing he wanted was to land on her like a felled tree.

The pigs are confiscated until these two idiots work out heir marital problems. Gowan, Once Upon a Tower by Eloisa James

I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly. She visibly paled. :My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear.

They were talking about things that didn't matter a fig, not with the huge yawning grief burning a hole in his chest because of what had happened to her. To Josie. His Josie, now.

Quin reached out, spun her back to him, and pulled her into his arms, held her tight, so tight that she could hardly breathe. "I need you," he said, low and fierce, into her hair. "Oh, G-d, Olivia, how did I ever live without you?"
She reached up, pulled his face down to hers. "I'm yours, for good or ill."
There was a little click as the door to the ballroom closed, but Olivia paid no mind.
"You're the missing piece of me," Quin said. "You make me feel.

A lady should never feel anxious about her behavior. The status is bred in the bone. To show anxiety is to lower oneself. Anxiety is vulgar.

She counted the seconds with the beats of her heart.

From the Earl of Hellgate's Memoirs, Chapter the Twenty-Sixth
I realized then that I had mistaken the nature of love. Love has nothing to do with desire; it's the quest for the divine, found on earth. It's finding a woman whose soul preserves a shard of heaven, and worshipping her ... worshipping at her feet. I was a new man.

The books weren't exactly Linnet's general reading fare, but a desperate woman will read anything.

A pungent smell of manure blew in the window. "The odor of these Scottish wildflowers is astonishing," Edie said,

I'm quite certain that Theo plans to wear her cape for at least part of the evening." There was a note of amusement in his voice.
"If you're quite sure that you won't grow overwarm," Claribel said uncertainly, eyeing the cape. It sprang out from Lady Islay's shoulders and then swirled to the ground, managing to look surprisingly light. The inside was lined with a gorgeous rosy silk, and the outside...
"What on earth is that made of?" Claribel couldn't help asking as she reached out to touch it.
"I can guess," Cecil put in, the thread of amusement in his voice even stronger.
"Oh, can you?" Theo remarked. "Then tell me this: am I being altogether too obvious?"
Claribel hadn't the faintest idea what she meant. But Cecil, clever Cecil, obviously did, because he bellowed with laughter.
"Swansdown," he said. "Gorgeous swansdown, and every man and woman in this room has taken note of your swanlike triumph."
"I could not resist," Theo said, with that smile that was all the more attractive for being so rarely seen. "How lucky you are in your husband," she said to Claribel. "It's a rare man who knows his fairy tales.

thirty is a watershed year for men. If they're going to develop intelligence, they do it around then, and if they don't, it's too late. So you mustn't hanker after men in their twenties.

My wife is a lovely, intelligent woman. She has the kind of curves that a man longs to find in his bed. I may not have been the first to wish to marry her, but I am the one who succeeded." To his total astonishment, he discovered that he meant every word.

He had thought she was like a drink of clear water. But now, meeting her gaze, she was a river that tumbled with life and danger. She would change his life. She would change everything about him.

They were outside. It was oddly quiet, with just a muffled roar from behind the closed door, as if the ocean were contained on that side.

She'd always thought that a broken heart sounded rather romantic. But in truth it was physical. Her whole chest ached, as if she'd been struck with a knife. With all her witless calculations about how to make a man desire her, she'd never realized that the most important thing was to make him like her. Or even love her. What a fool she was.

Oh, I have felt lust. And I've indulged lust. But no other woman has turned me into another person.

I would prefer not to throw myself on a funeral pyre. Please come back to me.

She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.

Dowry doesn't rhyme with many words, so I had to rhyme dowry and peach tree [ ... ] My nephew will inherit the estate, but the orchards are unentailed and will go to you.

Offended you again," her godmother said with satisfaction. "Come along, then. We'll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it's utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows.

Fletch took his wife's arm. 'We aren't going to turn anyone out into the cold and dark, are we, Poppy?'
She looked up at him and said, 'Absolutely, we are. If you pay them double, Fletch, they'll probably be quite grateful.'
He always knew that women were the crueler sex. But there was something slightly unnerved in her voice that he found interesting. Unkind wench. I don't turn people out into the dark. It's coming on to snow.

So this book is my phone call
not from the top of a mountain, or even the top of the Eiffel Tower: the "here" is negotiable. It's so beautiful here. You must come visit before you die.

True love cannot be denied," Layla said. "You know that yourself, Betsy, given your sad
experiences. Life is fleeting and one should gather rosebuds - or is it rainbows? At any rate, one
should get on the stick before it's too late.

You never wore that blue gown for a lover?'
'Absolutely not!' She felt a little indignant at the very idea. 'You think I have a wardrobe just to satisfy my illicit desires? My maid took off its underskirt because she wanted to make sure you found me desirous.

Tess retreated toward the back of the room. How could Imogen have done this to all of them? But she knew the answer as well as she knew the question. Imogen had eloped because, even if Draven Maitland did not love Imogen the way Romeo loved Juliet, Imogen herself was every bit as passionate as the Shakespearean heroine. More, perhaps. She had simply reached out and taken what she wanted. She was no passive observer. Although, Tess reminded herself, naturally Imogen will be a great deal happier and longer-lived than Juliet.

I didn't realize you needed a response. When Hamlet is giving a monologue, he just goes on and on by himself.

you're delicious and the right man will adore every curve.

The last person Jemma expected to welcome into her bedchamber that night was her husband. Though of course she would have to invite him in at some point if they were to embark on their heir-making activities.

Your mother never would have spoken to me in such a fashion.'
'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the tone of my voice doesn't change the truth.

Yes Leopold," Eleanor said in a low, mocking voice. "Do start to shine, please. I think I saw the rising, but I definitely missed the shining.

He walked until his heart was as dreary as the sky, until some sort of truth came to him.

So our chess game begins tonight, Duchess. At eleven o'clock. I will give you one hour to try to win, blindfolded or no." His teeth showed very white when he smiled. "And then I shall win."
Jemma sniffed and turned up her nose. "Pride goeth before a fall, Duke."
"You will fall before me," he said, his smile a blatant challenge. "Backwards.

They continued on to London, and she's there, safe and sound, waiting for you.'
'You can't know for sure.' Piers swung up into the carriage.
'You will never know for sure if she's dead or alive unless you keep her near you all the time,' Sebastian said with perfect, if maddening, accuracy.

Let go of the anger, hang on to the good lessons.

Sick unto death, I think they call it