Meredith is a hot mess’s Reviews > My Lord Monleigh > Status Update

And need you ask, now that the tale is done, what became of them, the two who loved so unwisely and so well? Need you wonder, How did it go with them, how was it in the end?

I want to throttle Monleigh right now. I've never been more in love & more frustrated with a character in my life.

There was nothing left to say. He did not, I realized numbly, mean to touch me again; but even as I longed desperately for one last kiss, I knew as well as he that it would be past enduring.

“I must go,” I said at last.

“Aye,” he said

I'm at the point where I'm thinking: Is there going to be a hea?? If so, I have no idea how it's going to happen. I love it when a book brings me to that point of uncertainty.

I was under his spell, as I had come to be under the spell of this west coast of Scotland. There was a dark heritage in his blood, that heritage of violence and disquiet which had seethed through Highland history since the beginning of time; and I would imagine that this unrest, this dark vein of passion, must be guarded with a constant vigilance lest it stealthily conquer a man’s soul and abandon him to the darkness

He was no god, in truth, or even godly. He was only a man, a mere mortal, who went in leather breeks and a dark cloak lined with scarlet, wearing a long sword at his side and a wicked blue dirk in his belt—who felt anger, boredom, indifference, who loved and hated as other men; who stood taller than most and held his dark head with a greater pride.

He had enthralled me, bewitched and enraptured me; and I knew I played a dangerous and deadly game by so giving myself into his keeping.

“I had a purpose, but it was no’ so gallant as you imagine.”
“You wanted me to trust you,” I said softly. “I have for some time past.”
He put his wineglass on the table behind him, moving with easy deliberation, and came toward me.
“Trusting me,” he said, “is far more dangerous than walking the edge of a cliff.”
“I know, but you once said it would make matters easier for me.”
“So it has,” he said coolly, “until now.”

“Would you like to see the captain’s cabin?”

Oh.My.Goodness. There's about to be boat sex.

I was worried because of the publication date (1956), the author profile pic (Jan Cox Speas seems like a 'respectable' woman) this book might be preachy, or the type of romance my grandmother would have enjoyed. But no, this is exceeding all of my expectations spectacularly.

I think I did not know him at all in that moment. The man who smiled with so devastating a warmth and teased me into laughter was only an unreal figment of my imagination, and this stranger of the cruel quiet face and hooded eyes was the true Monleigh, the black earl who held so much of Scotland in dread fear of him.

This, then, is when he is most deadly, I bethought myself, for he controls his strength, as a fighter will, and fashions it into a weapon which is ever at his command. No violent, hot-headed rage is his, after all, that would render his judgment foolhardy and rash, but rather a cold and dangerous force tempered as finely as the edge of his sword.