Olga

“Elizabeth, if you want to be kissed, all you have to do is put your lips on mine.”
― Judith McNaught, Almost Heaven

“There is revenge and then there is justice. Sometimes the two are met as one."

-Christopher”
― Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, A Rose in Winter

“That reminded him of how thrifty she was, and he promptly decided-at least for the moment-that her thriftiness was one of her most endearingly amusing qualities.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
He tipped his chin down so that he could better see her and brushed a stray lock of golden hair off her cheek. “I was thinking how wise I must be to have known within minutes of meeting you that you were wonderful.”
She chuckled, thinking his words were teasing flattery. “How soon did my qualities become apparent?”
“I’d say,” he thoughtfully replied, “I knew it when you took sympathy on Galileo.”
She’d expected him to say something about her looks, not her conversation or her mind. “Truly?” she asked with unhidden pleasure.
He nodded, but he was studying her reaction with curiosity. “What did you think I was going to say?”
Her slim shoulders lifted in an embarrassed shrug. “I thought you would say it was my face you noticed first. People have the most extraordinary reaction to my face,” she explained with a disgusted sigh.
“I can’t imagine why,” he said, grinning down at what was, in his opinion-in anyone’s opinion-a heartbreakingly beautiful face belonging to a young woman who was sprawled across his chest looking like an innocent golden goddess.
“I think it’s my eyes. They’re an odd color.”
“I see that now,” he teased, then he said more solemnly, “but as it happens it was not your face which I found so beguiling when we met in the garden, because,” he added when she looked unconvinced, “I couldn’t see it.”
“Of course you could. I could see yours well enough, even though night had fallen.”
“Yes, but I was standing near a torch lamp, while you perversely remained in the shadows. I could tell that yours was a very nice face, with the requisite features in the right places, and I could also tell that your other-feminine assets-were definitely in all the right places, but that was all I could see. And then later that night I looked up and saw you walking down the staircase. I was so surprised, it took a considerable amount of will to keep from dropping the glass I was holding.”
Her happy laughter drifted around the room and reminded him of music. “Elizabeth,” he said dryly, “I am not such a fool that I would have let a beautiful face alone drive me to madness, or to asking you to marry me, or even to extremes of sexual desire.”
She saw that he was perfectly serious, and she sobered, “Thank you,” she said quietly. “That is the nicest compliment you could have paid me, my lord.”
“Don’t call me ‘my lord,’” he told her with a mixture of gentleness and gravity, “unless you mean it. I dislike having you address me that way if it’s merely a reference to my title.”
Elizabeth snuggled her cheek against his hard chest and quietly replied, “As you wish. My lord.”
Ian couldn’t help it. He rolled her onto her back and devoured her with his mouth, claimed her with his hands and then his body.”
― Judith McNaught, Almost Heaven

“His heart is weak, but his will is strong-more so now than ever,” he continued, shrugging into the light cape Ormsley was putting over his shoulders.
“What do you mean, ‘more now than ever’?”
The physician smiled in surprise. “Why, I meant that your coming here has meant a great deal to him, my lord. It’s had an amazing effect on him-well, not amazing, really. I should say a miraculous effect. Normally he rails at me when he’s ill. Today he almost hugged me in his eagerness to tell me you were here, and why. Actually, I was ordered to “have a look at you,” he continued in the confiding tone of an old family friend, “although I wasn’t supposed to tell you I was doing so, of course.” Grinning, he added, “He thinks you are a ‘handsome devil.’”
Ian refused to react to that admonishing information with any emotion whatsoever.
“Good day, my lord,” the doctor said. Turning to the duke’s sisters, who’d been hovering worriedly in the hall, he tipped his hat. “Ladies,” he said, and he departed.
“I’ll just go up and look in on him,” Hortense announced. Turning to Charity, she said sternly, “Do not bore Ian with too much chatter,” she admonished, already climbing the stairs. In an odd, dire voice, she added, “And do not meddle.”
For the next hour Ian paced the floor, with Charity watching him with great interest. The one thing he did not have was time, and time was what he was losing. At this rate Elizabeth would be giving birth to her first child before he got back to London.”
― Judith McNaught, Almost Heaven