Sarah Mac’s Reviews > The Cinderella Countess > Status Update

"His name is Mr McFaddyen. A Scot, I would guess, & a Highland one to boot. Milly says he could probably snap a man in two with his bare hands if he wanted & he has the look of one that does."

'This conversation was going everywhere, running across the threads of what bound them together. Lucy. Medicine. Respect. Desire. That last realization made Belle blush & she sought for pragmatism & logic. Why was Thornton here? She could not ask. She could only sit & wait until he left.'

'He looked as if he might lean forward & take her hand. Indeed, she got the distinct impression that he started to before checking himself. The clock in the corner struck five thirty, a hollow sound in the oncoming dawn.' ....The darkest hour, etc etc.

'She had devoured FANNY HILL by John Cleland & read the compendium of poetry by the Earl of Rochester, clandestinely, under her sheets at night. The novel JUSTINE had come into her hands through a bookseller in London for whom she made medicines & she knew the erotic works of the Greek poets Strato & Sappho. She was no prude even if she was still a virgin. But she was lonely.'

'Belle lifted up a paintbrush, dipping it in oil & mixing it with red powder after finding a sheet of paper. Nothing was real. Everything was false. She liked the banal deceiving strokes she drew as they ran across the truth & banished it. Lives built on falsity. Paintings borne on fury.'