Nikka Blanco

“One question I feel compelled to ask; Before they agreed to marry, did all the Cynster females behave as irrationally as Heather is?"
He glanced briefly up, but Richard didn't look up from the lure he was tying off as he unperturably replied, "Prickly at the best of times, then 'have-at-you' the instant you set a foot, nay, a toe, wrong?"
"Exactly."
"Then yes." Richard straightened, tipping his head as he examined his lure. "It seems to be a family failing, even when they're not Cynster-born."
Breckenridge humphed.
He was carefully placing the fresh hook into his clamp when Richard continued, "There seems to be this prevailing wisdom, not just over marrying for love, but what that actually equates to. They seem to all have it firmly in their heads that without some cast-iron assurance, preferably in the form of an open declaration from us, then no matter the reality of any love, that love won't be solid and strong."
Unwinding the vise to release his completed lure, Richard grimaced. "It's almost as if they think that unless we state our feelings out aloud, we won't know what they-our feelings-are." He snorted. "As if we somehow might not notice that our lives have suddenly shifted to revolve solely about them and their well-being."
Breckenridge grunted in masculine agreement.
"Sadly," Richard said, selecting another hook, "it appears futile to expect them to go against the familial grain.”
― Stephanie Laurens, Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue

“Alicia Pevensey said to Anthony Blake: "I love you. Not because you'll protect me and our family, not because you're wealthy, or have a wonderful house. I love you because you're you — because of the man you are."
He was silent for a long moment, then his chest swelled as he drew breath. "I don't know what love is, only that I feel it. All I know is I love you—and always will.”
― Stephanie Laurens; A Gentleman's Honor

“..the family motto, after all, is 'To Have and To Hold'. We were always a warrior breed, but we don't fight solely for lands and material wealth. There's an understanding, drummed into all of us from our earliest years, that success-true success-means capturing and holding , something more. That something more is the future-to excel is very well, but one needs to excel and survive. To seize lands is well and good, but we want to hold them for all time. Which means creating and building a family-defending the family that is, and creating the next generation. Because it's the next generation that's our future. Without securing that future, material success is no real success at all.”
― Stephanie Laurens, Scandal's Bride

“Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.”
― Constantin Stanislavski