Befouled Silk Quotes

#1. I thought you said you were the one in charge!" Ce'Nedra exclaimed.
I lied." Silk said. "It's a vice I have. #Quote by David Eddings

#2. Ronan raised his brows. "To the tune of fifty keystones?"
"What do I care?" Kestrel wanted to end this conversation. "I am wealthy enough." She touched Ronan's sleeve. "And how much" - she rubbed the silk between her fingers - "did this cost?"
"Ronan, whose deftly embroidered shirt was easily the same price the slave had been, allowed that a point had been made.
"He will last longer than this shirt." Kestrel let go of the cloth. "I'd say I got a bargain. #Quote by Marie Rutkoski

#3. Consider the mind-set of the anarchist who plans to sacrifice himself for a cause.
For the weeks, months, possibly years leading up to the day he straps a thermal detonator to his chest and executes his task, he has lived in and strengthened by the secret he carries, knowing the toll his act will take. So it has been for the Sith, residing in a secret, sacred place of knowledge for one thousand years, and knowing the toll our acts will take. This is power, Sidious. Where the Jedi, by contrast, are like beings who, as they move among the healthy, keep secret the fact that they are dying of a terminal illness. The true power needn't bare claws or fangs, or announce itself with snarls and throaty barks, Sidious. It can subdue with manacles of shimmer silk, purposeful charisma and political astuteness"
-Darth Plagueis #Quote by James Luceno

#4. I want to lie beside you and know the weight of your dreams," he said, brushing his lips against my knuckles. "I want to share whole worlds with you and write your name in the stars." He moved closer and a chorus of songbirds twittered silver melodies. "I want to measure eternity with your laughter." Now, he stood inches from me; his rough hands encircled my waist. "Be my queen and I promise you a life where you will never be bored. I promise you more power than a hundred kings. And I promise you that we will always be equals."
I grinned. "Not my soul then, Dharma Raja?"
"Would you entrust me with something so precious?"
I was silent for a moment before reaching for my foot and slipping off the worn slipper. "Here, my love, the dowry of a sole."
I began to laugh, giddily, drunkenly, before he swallowed my laughter in a kiss. I melted against him, arcing into the enclosure of his arms, my breath catching as his fingers entwined in the down of my hair. The music of the songbirds could not compare to the euphony billowing inside me, pressing against my bones and manifesting in a language of gentle touch.
In Naraka, he drew me into the small universe of his embrace, laying kisses at my neck, the inside of my wrists, the dip in my abdomen. Now, the hum had settled to a lustrous melody, ribboning us like silk. And when we clung together, we drank in the other's gaze, reveling in the secret hope and happiness that blossomed in the space between our lips. #Quote by Roshani Chokshi

#5. Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. #Quote by John Henry Newman

#6. As a youth, I listened to the rain from the bowers of pleasure houses,
Red silk drapes translucent in the glow of candlelight.
In my prime, I listened to the rain as a traveler,
The sky low, the river broad, the calls of the wild geese harsh and cold.
Now, grey at the temples, I listen to the rain beneath the eaves of an abandoned cloister.
Has mine been a futile life?
I have no answers, only the sound of raindrops upon worn stone steps,
And long hours yet to pass before the light of dawn. #Quote by Sherry Thomas

#7. Miss Chauvenet. Morgan willed himself to speak his tongue near to tied.
He was unable to take his gaze from her. She looked as fresh as springtime, her dark hair hanging in a braid beyond her hips, her eyes wide with surprise. Then her gaze moved over him, and he knew a moment of utter mortification.
She's thinkin' you look like a peacock, laddie.
With lace cuffs, silk stockings and drawers, and shoes with shiny brass buckles, he did look like a bloody peacock or, worse, like somoene that whoreson Wentworth would invite to his supper table.
-Morgan #Quote by Pamela Clare

#8. In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue... #Quote by Mary Roberts Rinehart

#9. The greatest sex toy ever invented may be the telephone. Sometimes there's nothing more erotic than a disembodied voice, no question more tantalizing than a whispered 'What are you wearing?' Especially when you can make up the answer. On the phone your hair always looks great, your legs are always shaved, your worst pair of underwear becomes a silk negligee. #Quote by Meghan Daum

#10. My brave husband came back from fighting the Turks and brought me a robe of silk and a necklace of human teeth. He sat up at night by his hearth telling tales of battle. Apparently the Turks are ten times more ferocious and fearless than the Scots. 'Perhaps we should invite them here to drive the Scots back,' I suggested, and he laughed, but he didn't kiss me. That's when I learned the truth about scars. A man with a battle scar is a veteran, a hero, given an honoured place at the fire. Small boys gaze up fascinated, dreaming of winning such badges of courage. Maids caress his thighs with their buttocks as they bend over to mull his ale. Women cluck and cosset, and if in time other men grow a little weary of that tale of honour, then they call for his cup to be filled again and again until he is fuddled and dozes quietly in the warmth of the embers.

But a scarred woman is not encouraged to tell her story. Boys jeer and mothers cross themselves. Pregnant women will not come close for fear that if they look upon such a sight, the infant in their belly will be marked. You've heard of the tales of Beauty and the Beast no doubt. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in fairytales. The truth is that the scarred woman's husband buys her a good thick veil and #Quote by Karen Maitland

#11. in the end
it is words
poetry. sunsets
someone's deep blue
silk voice.
mountain scents.
someone's smile.
eyes. that we have
no defenses against. #Quote by Sanober Khan

#12. His mother's Femme smelled of plums, flowers and smoky sandalwood. It made him think of the silk and linen dresses that fluttered around her knees on windy days. Her gloves smelled of it, and her shawls. It was his mother's scent only, and he liked that when she left a room it would trail in the air behind her, making him feel safe. #Quote by Gabriella Contestabile

#13. Work"


I laid telephone line, then cable when it came along. I pulled T-shirts off a silk-screen press. I cleaned offices in buildings thirty-five floors high. I filed the metal edges of grease fryers hot off a welding line. I humped sod in townhouse complexes, and when it became grass I cut it. I sorted mail. I washed police cars, and then I changed their oil. I installed remotes on gas meters so a truck could simply drive down the street and get the readings. I set posts and put up fences, wood and chain link. Five a.m. at the racetrack, I walked hot horses after their exercise. I bathed them. I mopped and swept aisles in a grocery store. Eventually, I stocked shelves. I corrected errors on mortgage papers for a bank. I racked tables in a pool hall. There's more I'm not telling you.

All of this befell me as an adult. As a kid, I cut neighbors' lawns and delivered newspapers, and I watched after little kids while their parents worked. I painted houses. I collected frogs from ponds and sold them to pet stores. And so on.

At fifteen, I went for a busboy position at an all-night diner, but they told me to come back when I turned sixteen. I did.

Sometimes, on top of one, I took a second job. It gave me just enough time to sleep between the two. And eat.

My father worked, harder than I did, and then he died. Then I worked harder. My mother said, "You're the man of the house now." I was seventeen. She kept an eye on me, t #Quote by Michael Stigman

#14. Then he kissed her again. When he licked her through the silk, she moaned. Catching the fabric, he tugged it aside and licked her again. "Hot … fuck, yeah, you're hot."
Hope shuddered and fisted her hands in his hair again. But this time, she tugged him closer, gasping out his name.
He smiled against her and then proceeded to do to her what she'd been doing to him from the first time he'd laid eyes on her - driving him out of his fucking mind. #Quote by Shiloh Walker

#15. I began to understand what bound Pearl to their simple mystery because i felt the same connection. in front of us, all around us, was the energy of life and growth. beauty was only a month away and it depended, in part, in what i could do. #Quote by Belinda Jeffrey

#16. Jahan took a breath and composed herself. "When I was a little sort of girl and I would see a gentleman or a lady with good, clean clothes I would run and hide my face. But after I graduated from the Korphe School, I felt a big change in my life. I felt I was clear and clean and could go before anybody and discuss anything. And now that I am already in Skardu, I feel that anything is possible. I don't want to be just a health worker. I want to be such a woman that I can start a hospital and be an executive, and look over all the health problems of all the women in the Braldu. I want to become a very famous woman of this area," Jahan said, twirling the hem of her maroon silk headscarf around her finger as she peered out the window, past a soccer player sprinting through the drizzle toward a makeshift goal built of stacked stones, searching for the exact word with which to envision her future. "I want to be a… 'Superlady'" she said, grinning defiantly, daring anyone, any man, to tell her she couldn't. p. 313 #Quote by Greg Mortenson

#17. It was Lillian Bowman-now Lady Westcliff- dashing and radiant in a wine-red gown. Her fair complexion was lightly glazed with color from the southern Italian sun, and her black hair was caught fashionably at the nape of her neck with a beaded silk-cord net. Lillian was tall and slender, the kind of raffish girl one could envision as captaining her own pirate ship... a girl clearly made for dangerous and unconventional pursuits. Though not as romantically beautiful as Annabelle Hunt, Lillian possessed a striking, clean-featured appeal that proclaimed her Americanness even before one heard her distinctly New York accent.
Of their circle of friends, Lillian was the one that Evie felt the least close to. Lillian did not possess Annabelle's maternal softness, or Daisy's sparkling optimism... she had always intimidated Evie with her sharp tongue and prickly impatience. However, Lillian could always be counted on in times of trouble. #Quote by Lisa Kleypas

#18. you're the fly on the wall hearing all, seeing all

ears of a wall hearing all the secrets

perhaps you're the vines creeping over

the old abandoned mansion walls

dusty, soulless and dead

bringing a certain curious life to rubble

and I think you're the jewel-eyed gecko

sneaking around the warm summer walls

between jasmine and olive branches

sticky pad toes, clinging to the walls

peeking in at lonely summer spicy love-making

through silk curtains from the bright orient

breathing in incense and tasting decadence

climbing the sharply barbed walls

the smooth cemented white-washed walls

because walls breathe too #Quote by Moonshine Noire

#19. Forgotten Stars. Time in the Flame.
Missing Shard. The Only Rain.
Door of the Memory. Waves in the Silk.
Silent Birch. Thoughts of Lunatics.
Secret of the Flowers. Soaring of the Souls.
Heart in the Night. And a Kiss Unfolds.
Forgotten Voyager. Voyage in the Words.
Nothing of the World. Someone of the Hemisphere.
Trembling Stones. Sucking Tears.
The Next Gift. The World in the Kisses.
Missing Angels. The Woman of the Girl.
Guardian of the Rings. Thorn in the Pearl.
Whispering Sword. Touching exclaim.
Soul in the Truth. Heat in the Flame.
Thy name, my name, Thy name!
Came. Became. To Remain. #Quote by Jasleen Kaur Gumber

#20. He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with pot-pourri; in one comer a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinee, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur - such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan - one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tassellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.

("The Accursed Cordonnier") #Quote by Bernard Capes

#21. Babies in silk hats playing with dynamite. #Quote by Alexander Woollcott

#22. All the linear delicacy of the boy he had once been stood exposed now in the still, blindfolded face of her son. The clinging yellow hair, orderly on the white linen, was the same silk that had veiled her rings when she had smoothed his pillow in childhood; the cheekbone under the bandage had once, fresh and firm, been pressed to her own; the beautiful hands, lying loose on the damask, belonged to him and also to another man, whom she had placed before all others, and always would. #Quote by Dorothy Dunnett

#23. Sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds ... my cheeks recalled the effects of its profound caress. #Quote by Muriel Barbery

#24. They spell-caught the sounds of cat paws, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman's beard, and the roots of a mountain, and spun them around the sinews of a bear. That made a bond that looked as fine as a ribbon of silk, but, since it was made of things not in this world, it was so strong nothing in the world could break it. #Quote by Ingri D'Aulaire

#25. It was going to be hard, she was learning, not to be crushed or diverted by the criticism of strangers. She would have to be tough and look to herself for confidence. She remembered noticing as a child, when she had shuttled so often back and forth between her intellectual German grandmother in Italy and the silk-gowned and bourgeois grandmother in England, that people had very different attitudes about what was right and what was wrong, and were generally inclined to believe that only their own way was correct. Freya resolved to keep her mind open. #Quote by Jane Fletcher Geniesse

#26. If someone skilled at studying moons, planets, stars and other celestial bodies such as galaxies, comets, asteroids and gamma-ray bursts were to analyse the Romani migration and settlement patterns, as they wandered India and Persia 1500 years ago, passing through Armenia in the early 9th century, trading spices, incense, rugs, fabrics, colouring agents and jewellery along the Great Silk Road, and then beginning to establish themselves in Europe, arriving in Transylvania in the 13th century, and then onto Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and England in the 14th century they may very well discover that their routes mirrored that of the stars #Quote by Karl Wiggins

#27. I put on some smooth jazz and change into a smooth silk lungi. #Quote by Sidin Vadukut

#28. When I get home, I'm not the boss like I am at work - I slip into a more feminine role. I take everything off and put on my Stella McCartney silk robe. I'll put on a red lip or red nails, and it lifts my mood. Sexy underwear also gives you a spark. #Quote by Miranda Kerr

#29. Her unintended striptease was all the more sensual because Belle was lowering her stocking with agonizing slowness not because she had an audience but because she seemed to love the feel of the silk sliding along her soft skin. #Quote by Julia Quinn

#30. This is in thee a nature but infected;
A poor unmanly melancholy sprung
From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place?
This slave-like habit? and these looks of care?
Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft;
Hug their diseased perfumes, and have forgot
That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper.
Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive
By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,
And let his very breath, whom thou'lt observe,
Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,
And call it excellent: thou wast told thus;
Thou gavest thine ears like tapsters that bid welcome
To knaves and all approachers: 'tis most just
That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again,
Rascals should have 't. Do not assume my likeness. #Quote by William Shakespeare

#31. Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of quantum reality because everything we touch turns to matter. #Quote by Nick Herbert

#32. There's more truth in a grain of sand than you'll ever hear from man, woman, saint or sage. We classicists would sooner trust a potsherd. #Quote by Casper Silk

#33. White marble bridges with dragons sleeping on the end-posts; paved courtyards replete with trees, each strung with twinkling silk lanterns in lieu of fruit; courtiers clothed in a myriad of jewel tones. #Quote by Nalini Singh

#34. International friendly games are not worth the lives of the silk worms who perish to make the pennants. They do not even have the philanthropic excuse that softens the otherwise unendurable tedium of testimonial matches. Quite simply, they are rotten games staged to pick the public's pocket, tiresome red tape left over from an era when nations and players were still insular and therefore curious about each other's potential. #Quote by Danny Baker

#35. As for Nina, Genya had offered up a glorious red kefta from her collection and they'd pulled out the embroidery, altering it from blue to black. She and Genya were hardly the same size, but they'd managed to let out the seams and sew in a few extra panels.
It had felt strange to wear a proper kefta after so long. The one Nina had worn at the House of the White Rose had been a costume, cheap finery meant to impress their clientele. This was the real thing, worn by soldiers of the Second Army, made of raw silk dyed in a red only a Fabrikator could create. Did she even have a right to wear such a thing now?
When Matthias had seen her, he'd frozen in the doorway of the suite, his blue eyes shocked. They'd stood there in silence until he'd finally said, "You look very beautiful."
"You mean I look like the enemy."
"Both of those things have always been true."
Then he'd simply offered her his arm. #Quote by Leigh Bardugo

#36. When she was done, I said, "Thanks, Ria. That's as good as an afternoon nap in the summer."
"A shame you have to put it up again," she said, smiling. "It's so pretty--the color of autumn leaves. Promise you'll never cut it."
"I won't. It's the only thing I have left to share with my mother, the color of our hair. And she always wanted me to grow it out." My fingers worked quickly from old habit as I braided it up again, wrapped it twice around my head, and tucked the end in. "But I can't parade around in long hair during a war. Or, I suppose I could, except then I'd end up carrying half the mountain in it."
"You can wear it down after we win, then, and start a new fashion."
"You'll be the one starting the fashions," I said, laughing up at her.
"Duchess Oria," she said, swishing around my tiny tent. "New silk shoes every day--twice a day! I can hardly wait."
"That'll do," Julen said to Oria. She was vigorously brushing mud off my alternate pair of woolen trousers. "You stop your nonsense and go and get your rest. We'll have to make a supply run again tomorrow." Oria stuck her tongue out at her mother, grinned at me, and ran out. Julen laid my other tunic down. "This is the best I can make of these trousers; the mud will not come out. Your brother's old tunic looks even worse," she said, frowning heavily. "I wish I could wash these properly! Even so, they wouldn't look much better. 'Tis shameful, you not dressing to befit your station. Especially o #Quote by Sherwood Smith

#37. Lalie had helped her undress, down to her sheer silk shift, and Marisa had removed even that, feeling stifled by the moist heat and the netting over her bed. She slept, but there were strange dreams hovering on the edge of her unconsciousness. She dreamed that Inez came back from the city with a stocky, red-faced man with a sheaf of papers in his hand, and that while they stood looking down at her and talking about her she tried to move and protest, but she was caught in the netting that stopped up her eyes and her mouth. The netting turned into a sea of sand under which she was buried. And somewhere above her, booted feet astride her face, she knew that Dominic stood scowling, as she remembered him last. #Quote by Rosemary Rogers

#38. Against firelight, he sees the face of the woman / Lean over, and the lips purse sweet as to bestow a kiss, but / This is not true, and the great glob of spit / Hangs there, glittering, before she lets it fall.
The spit is what softens like silk the passage of steel / On the fine-grained stone. It whispers. #Quote by Robert Penn Warren

#39. It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.'
'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.'
'What gives her that curious idea?'
'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.'
'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?'
'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.'
'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.'
'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last #Quote by Julien Duvivier

#40. You look so beautiful in that gown... didn't you once tell me that blue was McKenna's favorite color?"
"I don't remember."
It had indeed been blue. Tonight Aline had not been able to prevent herself from reaching for a silk gown the color of Russian lapis. It was a simple gown with no flounces or overskirt, just a demi-train in the back and a low, square-cut bodice. A string of pearls was wrapped twice around her throat, with the lower loop hanging almost to her waist. Another strand had been artfully entwined in her pinned-up curls.
"You're a goddess," her sister proclaimed cheerfully, raising her wineglass in tribute. "Good luck, dear. Because once McKenna sees you in that gown, I predict that you'll have a difficult time keeping him at bay. #Quote by Lisa Kleypas

#41. The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on the flat rock.
Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at all, but their normal blue; they were also wet.
Harry stooped, pretending he had not seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle's eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act.
The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it off.
"After you left," he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron's face was hidden, "she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn't want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone…"
He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them.
"She's like my sister," he went on. "I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. I #Quote by J.K. Rowling

#42. I reached out to hold a daydream. They looked like they were spun from glass and yet their touch was silk-soft. As they drifted between my fingers, I felt them - a nap in the sleepy sunshine of a winter afternoon, a reverie where a sea alight with flowers and bright candles washed over my ankles. #Quote by Roshani Chokshi

#43. It is with eight lengthy legs we use to catch food, balance and knit a beautiful silk bed,
but as babies we had lost our bones and skin, and hence our legs we had shed. #Quote by Jasmine Jean

#44. She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her teeth. Just a little bit, she thought, that's all I need to free my eyelids. She pulled the tasteless web between her teeth and ground, pulling her jaw down in a grimace - it felt as it she was eating the very skin off her face. But the silk over her eyelids shifted. #Quote by Stephen M. Irwin

#45. You never know what to expect on encountering royalty. I've seen 'em stark naked except for wings of peacock feathers (Empress of China), giggling drunk in the embrace of a wrestler (Maharani of the Punjab), voluptuously wrapped in wet silk (Queen of Madagascar), wafting to and fro on a swing (Rani of Jhansi), and tramping along looking like an out-of-work charwoman (our own gracious monarch). #Quote by George MacDonald Fraser

#46. Are you too frightened to go any farther?" asked the silk-monkey, who found all this very easy, having four legs herself.
"I'm never afraid," answered Sniff. "But I think the view is better from here. #Quote by Tove Jansson

#47. The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the courtyard, There is not sound of footfall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. #Quote by Ezra Pound

#48. What the-" he began, already heading toward the house, with Elizabeth walking quickly behind him.
Ian opened the front door just as Jake came hurrying in from the back of the cottage.
"I got some milk-" Jake began, then he stopped abruptly as the stench hit him. His gaze snapped from Ian and Elizabeth, who were just rushing inside, to Lucinda, who was sitting exactly where she had been, serenely indifferent to the smell of burning bacon and incinerated eggs as she fanned herself with a black silk fan. "I took the liberty of removing the utensil from the stove," she informed them. "However, I was not in time to save its contents, which I sincerely doubt were worth saving in any case."
"Couldn't you have moved 'em before they burned?" Jake burst out.
"I cannot cook, sir."
"Can you smell?" Ian demanded.
"Ian, there's nothing for it-I'll have to ride to the village and hire a pair o' wenches to come up here and get this place in order for us or we'll starve."
"My thoughts exactly!" Lucinda seconded promptly, already standing up. "I shall accompany you."
"Whaat?" Elizabeth burst out.
"What? Why?" Jake echoed, looking balky.
"Because selecting good female servants is best done by a woman. How far must we go?"
If Elizabeth weren't so appalled, she'd have laughed at Jake Wiley's expression. "We can be back late this afternoon, assumin' there's anyone in the village to do the work. But I-"
"Then we'd best be about it." Lucind #Quote by Judith McNaught