An Offer From a Gentleman

“I can live with you hating me,” he said to the closed door. “I just can’t live without you.”

"At the masquerade," she said, her voice uncharacteristically shaky, "even before I saw you, I felt you.

As he watched his mother's face, finally realizing�no, finally understanding� the

How many times do you expect you can reject me before I stop trying?"

But it occurred to him�and frankly, he was rather surprised he had the presence of mind at such a moment for anything to occur to him�that part of the reason he cared so much for her was her remarkably solid and unflinching sense of herself.

she could remember standing on the doorstep in the rain,

Sophie knew she was a bastard.

Sophie Beckett was a bastard.

“She’ll marry a duke . . . or a Bridgerton.”

Nothing is ever as complicated as it is in one's mind."