14
" The Awakening Land" p628-629 Hardship and work, that's what his mother always harped on. Once when he had refused to work on the lot, she had said, " You're going to live longer than I do, Chancey. Watch for all kinds of new-fangled notions to take away folks' troubles without their having to work. That's what folks today want and that's what will ruin them more than anything else." Could there be something after all in this hardship-and-work business, he pondered. He had thought hardship and work the symptoms of a pioneer era, things of the past. He believed that his generation had outlived and outlawed them, was creating a new life of comfort, ease and peace. And yet war, the cruelest hardship of all, war between brothers, was on them today like a madness. Did it mean that the need for strength and toughness was to be always with them; that the farther they advanced, the more brilliant and intelligent they became, the more terrible would be the hardship that descended upon them, and the more crying the need of hardihood to be saved. "
20
" And then to Leo’s surprise, Catherine smiled at him. A sweet, natural, brilliant smile, the first she had ever given him. Leo felt his chest tighten, and he went hot all over, as if some euphoric drug had gone straight to his nervous system.
It felt like … happiness.
He remembered happiness from a long time ago. He didn’t want to feel it. And yet the giddy warmth kept washing over him for no reason whatsoever.
“Thank you,” Catherine said, the smile still hovering on her lips. “That is kind of you, my lord. But I will never dance with you.”
Which, of course, made it the goal of Leo’s life. "
― Lisa Kleypas , Married by Morning (The Hathaways, #4)
