“I just want to make sure Mama. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want. A lot of times I’m just tired.” Mama reached up and smoothed Liza’s curls away from her face. “Well darlin’, that’s the sign of a life being lived. I think we’re all tired when we’re giving it our best.”
— Gwenn Wright
“Liza took her time sipping her tea. “That’s what I hear Janet. Of course, living it up can take years off your life and add them to your face.”
— Gwenn Wright
“I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!”I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!”
— Gwenn Wright
“It was enough to drive me mad. I was no longer myself and yet I was so much more me than I had ever been before. ~Katherine Demure”
— Gwenn Wright
“They don’t teach kidnapping at Eton, dad”
— Gwenn Wright
“He had touched her. Bare skin to bare skin. She needed a bleach wipe. She would absolutely use a bleach wipe on her leg. Even if it ate her flesh off.”
— Gwenn Wright
“He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball. No. I really don’t. He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It’s a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal’s fan. “Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.”
— Gwenn Wright
“That Abbie is such a freaking brat who doesn’t know anything! My William is wasting away in that castle and that stuck up, self-righteous cow doesn’t even care because now she’s just all ooooo, Peter I love you! Well I don’t love Peter and he’s a jerk. Let’s go bust down the door!” She sat back and calmly pushed her hair from her face, “Now would you get me a soda?”
— Gwenn Wright
“I came from across the ocean and through the wilderness and landed here and found you hiding behind a tapestry. My fate was sealed at the sight of your stockinged feet.~Viktor von Strassenberg”
— Gwenn Wright
“I can see how your mother would have a point. Having a debate with a politically minded woman can be intriguing and even entertaining but to share a house with her and have her always campaigning and protesting at the dinner table,” he slanted his gaze down toward me. “That could be very tiring indeed.”
— Gwenn Wright
“And Mother, I love her dearly, but she flies into a panic whenever I mention women’s rights. As she sees it, it will be so much more difficult to marry me off if I am not only of a weak constitution but of a progressive mind as well.”
— Gwenn Wright
“My dear lady, you have no idea just how scandalous I can be. ~Peter Viktor von Strassenberg, 1905”
— Gwenn Wright
“I can also speak to small woodland creatures,” he grins at me.”
— Gwenn Wright
“A glance would not be enough to tell you this was the daughter of Katherine Raquel Demure. Even a lingering gaze would not suffice. No. Only careful study of the original and a comparative inspection of her only child would even hint at a relation between the two. Viktor could see it and knew, beyond doubt, that Henrietta not only saw it but was also vexed by it on a daily basis.”
— Gwenn Wright
“Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man.”
— Gwenn Wright
“Are you all right,” he whispered, his lips brushing the tips of my spiky hair. Granted, I knew he was only being discreet so as to save poor Hillary from being reamed again, but my knees didn’t know the difference. They betrayed me, buckling under his hot breath on my ear and the deep whisper that tickled my senses.”
— Gwenn Wright
“It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.”
— Gwenn Wright
“Another tug and a yank at my chestnut curls and she snarls at me, “You are so much like her.”This is something my mother often says and never explains. Though it is a great mystery to me it is also a blessing, for she always hurries from the room after saying it.”
— Gwenn Wright
“She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.”
— Gwenn Wright
“They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of me. It took less than six weeks for him to realize his mistake. Maybe even less than six hours, but he never abandoned me. He clung to me as though I was the last remnant of some great and powerful love. And that gave me hope that maybe my mother was really something else and not just some girl who got knocked up by a guy whose name she didn’t even know. She was something special, someone worthy of a man’s loyalty and devotion.–Rocky Evans”
— Gwenn Wright
“These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady’s things—hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell.”
— Gwenn Wright
“And you were always nothing but slime, Henry Wallace. Fancy trash”
— Gwenn Wright
“Don’t you believe any man who makes you feel like you were just a one-time thing.” His arms tighten around me and his words tickle my ear, “You could never be any man’s forgettable moment.” He holds me away from him and I feel ridiculously like I could melt in the dark pools of his eyes. “You are a force to be remembered, Dacie Mae.”
— Gwenn Wright
“You may suppose that perhaps this Walter T. Wallace found his destiny in food and passed down to his progeny a legacy like that of the great Colonel Sanders. The folks here in Wallace County would love to be able to tell you this is so. But no, like their granddaddy, the Wallace men were thievin’ crooks, always with a scheme ready to separate the weak from their hard-earned money.”
— Gwenn Wright
“All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father’s home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in.”
— Gwenn Wright
“The image of him shifted with the violent frenzy of leaves. He was there and he wasn’t, as the leaves whipped and the lightning fell away in a slow strobe effect across the expanse of sky. How he had gotten up there, I had no idea, but he had been there. Crouched in the tree in the middle of the courtyard, he watched me intently through the open window.”
— Gwenn Wright
“Wicked eyes are not a good prospect for seminary boys. They want a gentle, soft sort of wife, not a wife who looks as though she may sprout wings and carry off the young children of the village. ~Maria “Smythe”
— Gwenn Wright
“We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out.”
— Gwenn Wright
“A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.”
— Gwenn Wright
“If he looks at me like that again Dottie will need a bucket and mop to get me back to my room.”
— Gwenn Wright