Jodi Ann’s Reviews > Bear > Status Update

She was different. She seemed to have a body of a much younger woman. The sedentary fat had gone, leaving the shape of ribs showing. Slowly, she turned and looked over her should n the pier-glass at her back: one long, red, congealing weal marked her from shoulder to buttock. I shall keep that, she thought. And it is not the mark of Cain.

It gave her a strange peace to sit beside him. It was as if the bear, like the books, knew generations of secrets; but he had no need to reveal them.

Without giving up her work (which she loved), she was deposited in one of the great houses of the province, at the beginning of the summer season and in one of the great resort areas. She was somewhat isolated, but she had always loved her loneliness. And the idea of the bear struck her as joyfully Elizabethan and exotic.