Home > Work > Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love, #2)
41 " Pembroke simply sat and stared at her, trying desperately to ignore the knife lodged in his chest. She had set that knife there ten years before. It was still there, just where she had placed it, cutting his heart in two. "
― Christy English , Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love, #2)
42 " That this woman took men into her bed for money was distasteful, but no more distasteful than being forced to marry an elderly man for a title. She and Titania had a great deal in common. Like all women, both lived their lives at the whims of men. "
43 " You came to me for help, and now you have it, madame, whether you want it or not. "
44 " In spite of all that had happened between them, she remembered one simple truth. Every promise Pembroke had ever made to her, he kept. "
45 " She was afraid to voice her desires, lest they be taken from her. But the fact that he had thought to ask the right question, when no one else on Earth . . . ever would, made her heart catch in her throat. "
46 " You are safe, Arabella. No matter what we have lost, no matter what once passed between us, you will always be safe with me. "
47 " She drew it out only rarely, for it was a piece of her past that never failed to pierce her heart. "
48 " Arabella had had her fill of those who would take from her, giving nothing back but grief. "
49 " It was as if their younger selves had never left that place but had haunted it, suspended in time, caught in the moment before everything between them was shattered into dust. "
50 " If he would not listen to her, there was nothing left to say. "
51 " You are a fool to have love show up on your doorstep twice, only to turn it away. "
52 " She would think of the future later, but she would wear this gown tonight. "
53 " But she wanted a home like this. She longed for it, for a place to belong, with almost a physical pain. "
54 " I have always loved you," he said. "I never stopped, not for one moment, from that day to this. "
55 " This moment was what he had waited for all his life. This moment was why he had not died in Spain, or Italy, or Belgium. He had lived so that he might one day stand with her like this. "
56 " Longer. "
57 " Arabella pulled back a little so that she might look up at him again. This time her eyes were clear. They bore no tears and held no fear. Only her love shone on him, reflected in the ghost of a smile that touched her lips. "
58 " She saw his honor war with his desire. She fought on the side of his desire, for it matched her own. "
59 " I did not know what desire was until I saw you," she said to him. "
60 " Another woman seemed to have taken over her body, and yet she had never felt more completely herself. And it was not wine this time, or mead, for she had not taken a drop. This night she was drunk on her love for him and on the fact that, for this night, he was hers. "