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81 " You left me,” David said at last.“You were angry company.”But the fingers that traced his brow and cheek were anything but angry. “I wasn’t angry at you. "
― Elizabeth Bear , New Amsterdam (New Amsterdam, #1)
82 " A little after three a.m., as a cold whispering rain fell over steep-gabled slate, husbands pulled wives close in the clammy darkness. Nursemaids rose from narrow beds to check on bundled babes; massive-headed mastiffs whined by banked heartfires as household cats insinuated between dream-running; and in their warm, summer-smelling loose boxes, arch-necked carriage horses stamped and rolled white-rimmed eyes, leaning against the barred partitions to press flank to flank. The City of New Amsterdam tossed restlessly. "
83 " David had been angry with the Church, the King, himself, the tissues of lies that he’d been raised on. But not with Sebastien, not except briefly and at first, when Sebastien had taught him that the desires David had been raised to consider anathema were not merely a matter of unconfessable groping in filthy alleys, of lewdness and whoring. "
84 " David had his reasons to be angry. But after a century or two, one did grow tired. Mortal lifetimes were a mercy to love, Sebastien thought. It could endure that long. "
85 " David’s hand rest on Sebastien’s shirt front and cravat, over where his heart would have beat when he still lived. The pressure felt like a trap, suddenly, and Sebastien pulled away and stood, flicking his suitjacket straight, with his thumbs. "
86 " The hand trembled like any human’s, with spent passion and frustration. "
87 " It wasn’t difficult to discover where the courtesan in the domino mask lived: not far from the murdered boys, which was as Sebastien would have wagered. "
88 " She shook out her skirts in the hall, and retrieved her silver-tipped ebony wand. "
89 " She studied him; he did look drawn, with the waxen countenance she had come to associate with his need. "
90 " His knock apparently startled the scullery maid, but a good suit and a sober-headed cane opened many a door, including this one. And if she seemed inclined to shut it in his face again quite promptly, a silver shilling slipped into her hand with his visiting card corrected the matter. "
91 " Sebastien recognized the rangy, beaky man within. He was perhaps thirty-three, thirty-five. His eyes were lined with kohl, his cheeks rouged, his forehead pale with powder. But he wore a dark worsted suit, a good waistcoat crossed with a platinum chair, and his hair was cropped quite short and oiled back from a razor-line part. He moved painfully, as if he had been sitting for too long and he stretched against the stiffness of his muscles. "
92 " She thought of him shedding names and lives and lovers across the centuries, and wondered how he bore it. And then he turned and caught her eye and smiled, and thought that rather, perhaps the shedding was how he bore it. "
93 " The violet seemed inclined to linger, but Sebastien’s host-or hostess-gestured him to shut the door with one commandingly whirled finger. "
94 " She let her hand slide across the tailored dark fabric of his trousers before leaning back, curling against the arm of the loveseat in a manner that would have horrified her tutors. "
95 " The Parisian attitude toward sorcery-that its public practice was little more interesting and certainly more gauche than sex in the doorways or pissing in the gutter-was refreshing. "