Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  had given him before leaving. Marilyn Lovell reported that she was trying to recover from all the excitement of the past several days. She told how daughter Susan had been jumping on her pogo stick. Susan Borman said she’d spent much of the morning cleaning the house for friends who would join her for reentry and splashdown, and for Frank’s return home. She noted that her two sons, seventeen-year-old Fred and fifteen-year-old Ed, would be helping her with clean-up duties. There was a reason for that. Earlier that day, away from home, Fred and Ed had gotten into a fight, and Ed broke his left thumb throwing a punch to Fred’s head. The boys knew this would be a problem and swore each other to secrecy. When they returned home, Ed walked around hiding his hand from Susan, but the pain only grew worse. The boys sneaked out of the house, drove to NASA, and found a doctor, who X-rayed Ed’s hand. A short time later, Ed left wearing a giant white cast that reached halfway up his forearm. There would be no hiding that from their mother. When they returned home, Susan was angry that they could even think of fighting as their father plummeted toward Earth. At the same time, she was proud that they’d figured out how to handle the problem themselves. Helping her clean would be light penance. About three hours after the television broadcast, Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie found rides to the home of astronaut Fred Haise, one of Apollo 8’s backup crew, where a get-together hosted by his wife, Mary, was under way. These gatherings had become a tradition during space flights, and forty other astronaut wives welcomed the Apollo 8 ladies with ice cream and homemade cookies. Reporters dubbed the event a “hen party.” Several hours after the wives returned home, Apollo 8 was just 35,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean and had increased its speed to 7,700 miles per hour. By now, it was clear to Mission Control that the fourteen- second midcourse correction burn done a day ago had been so accurate that no further trajectory corrections would be needed. Backup recovery forces in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were sent home. It would now be the Pacific Ocean or bust. Four hours remained until scheduled splashdown. NASA’s public affairs officer noted “unusually high” traffic in congratulatory messages

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  He longed to smash something, to tear something apart. Furious, torn open by her censure, Sebastian grabbed her shoulders and yanked her to him. His voice came low and full of scorn. “Your words reveal the astonishing depths of your naïveté.” Her lovely face flushed at his disparagement. “I have given you no reason to be cruel.” “Perhaps I am always cruel,” he jeered, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms. “You know nothing of the man I am.” Her chin lifted, her eyes sparked with anger. “Unhand me, Phoenix. Now.” He pulled her closer. “What would you know of rebellion?” he growled. “You, the dutiful daughter, marrying a man sight unseen to please your father. I’d wager you’ve never rebelled in your life!” “I have!” she yelled, shaking with fury. Her lips, red and moist, parted with her rapid breathing. He arched a disbelieving brow, his entire body hard with anger and fierce desire. “When?” “Right now.” And then she yanked his head down and mashed her lips to his. Chapter Two He wasn’t kissing her back. Olivia noted that fact immediately, but her stubbornness would not allow her to desist, even though her pride begged her to cease her foolishness. “Kiss me, damn you!” He’d caused this fever in her blood with his half-dressed state and fierce eyes. Phoenix was driving her mad, drawing her to him while pushing her away. “Don’t swear!” he muttered. And then his arms came around her, and his mouth moved hungrily over her own. His tongue swept across her lips, teasing, urging. He tasted like brandy and wicked things, and her core throbbed in response. Her lips parted in a breathless gasp, and he took the invitation to slip inside. His tongue sought out hers, brushed across it and under it, finding sensitive nerve endings and stroking them with velvety licks. Oh. Dear. Heaven. The man knew how to kiss. Her toes were curling in her slippers. Angry and possessive, hungry and bold, Phoenix took over her senses with blatant skill. Unable to resist, she surged into him, wanting more. More of him. “Steady,” he murmured, securing her body against his strength, his large hand moving to her neck and tucking her head into the crook of his shoulder, keeping her still for the ravishment of his mouth. Olivia moaned when his other hand slipped beneath his shirt and found the curve of her breast, wrapping around the underside, testing its weight. His thumb caressed in gentle strokes, teasing her. Over and over Phoenix circled the straining peak, causing sparks of pleasure to radiate outward and down to the place between her legs. Oh, why wouldn’t he touch her where she ached? “Touch me.” She grabbed his wrist and thrust her hardened nipple into his palm. “Here.” She moaned as her body melted. “Oh, God, . . . touch me everywhere.”

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord.’99 Besides the continuing involvement of politicians in Christian life and structures, there remain contests for power between and within the Churches which reflect the cultural wars within Christianity and in wider society. Most of the traditional Churches have witnessed battles patterned after the struggles within the Catholic Church in the wake of Vatican II. Southern Baptists and Australian ‘Continuing’ Presbyterians have both experienced determined and largely successful attempts by conservatives to take over institutional control in their Churches’ decision- making bodies. One of the most notorious and complicated stories has been the series of running battles within the Anglican Communion. Often these have been simplistically presented as a fight between a compromised and compromising liberal affluent West and a global alliance of developing countries devoted to defending old certainties. Such a narrative suits one side of the contest, but as always in Anglicanism, matters are not that simple. Much of the rhetoric and the financial muscle backing conservative self-assertions come from Evangelicals who feel that they have lost the cultural battle in the USA, Europe and anglophone ex-British dominions, but who are prepared to direct their resources elsewhere. One major powerhouse of this movement is the Australian Anglican Diocese of Sydney, heir to most of the historic endowments from the early days of Australia, when the Church of England seemed set fair for established status in the new land. Two successive (bloodless) coups d’état in the diocese created a stronghold not just of Low Church Anglicanism, but eventually of a particular variety of Reformed Protestant Evangelicalism. First of all, a good deal of hard work and attention to key committees produced the election as Archbishop of Sydney in 1933 of Howard Mowll, a Church leader of outstanding gifts, still open to mainstream ecumenism despite his steady attention to expanding Evangelical influence in East Asia. He set the tone for the future of Sydney diocese to the end of the 1990s.100 In that decade, a group around two brothers called Jensen set out to harness this Sydney Evangelicalism towards a much more aggressive agenda. This was no less than altering the direction of worldwide Anglicanism towards what it might have become in a more radical sixteenth-century English Reformation, combined somewhat anachronistically with a campaigning style of evangelism borrowed from American revivalism. Though their hopes were balked in one archiepiscopal election, much lobbying secured the succession for Peter Jensen in 2001; there followed appointments of members of the Jensen family to key roles in the diocese. Despite the new archbishop’s Oxford doctoral work on the Elizabethan Reformation, the Jensen circle proved as unsympathetic to the Book

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  earning no gratitude from Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. During the First World War he had been domestic chaplain (in effect, secretary) to Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had managed to steer the Church of England’s official statements away from the path of egregious patriotism represented by Bishop Winnington-Ingram. Bell, now Bishop of Chichester and, from 1938, occupying one of the Anglican episcopate’s places in the British House of Lords, took Davidson’s line much further; he was determined to separate out Germany from Nazism in the conduct of the war. The issue for which he came to be particularly notorious was his criticism of the systematic indiscriminate aerial bombing of German cities, made possible by the Allies’ crippling of the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe) in the second half of the war. The Bishop of Coventry, whose city had been wrecked by the Luftwaffe in 1940, threw his moral weight behind the British policy of retaliatory bombing; in contrast, from 1943 Bell used his public position to denounce saturation bombing as ‘a wrong deed’. It is widely held that Churchill’s anger at Bell’s outspokenness cost him the succession to the See of Canterbury – but inspiring moral leader as Bell was, this might not entirely have been a disaster. After the war his warm friendships with German churchmen and natural impulse to Christian forgiveness led him into some questionable judgements as to which Germans ought to escape the consequences of their involvement with the Nazis.70 The Second World War was at its most destructive and bestial in Eastern Europe, and it may seem strange to suggest that it brought any benefit to the Soviet Union. Yet it is difficult to see how, without the boost to Soviet prestige provided by the repelling of Nazi armies in what Russians rightly term the Great Patriotic War, Soviet Russia could otherwise have staggered on as late as the 1980s, devoid as it was of any popular legitimacy and having already ruined the lives of so many by the time of Hitler’s invasion. Stalin, whose criminal complacency had blinded him to Hitler’s readiness to betray their alliance, was transformed by the war into a leader comparable to the first Romanovs or Peter the Great as defender of his people. And that same patriotic war effort saved the Russian Orthodox Church from institutional extinction, although not from a great deal of moral compromise. In 1939 there were only four bishops who were still at liberty in the Soviet Union; in September 1943, with Russia fighting desperately to keep the German Army from overrunning its heartland, Stalin invited the Patriarch and three metropolitans to a meeting which was to lead to a council of the Church, the first in Russia since 1917. The council saw to it that the Church was enrolled in the war effort, urging sacrifices on its faithful. The Georgian and Armenian Churches benefited likewise from their own patriotic

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  of the cities, was never averse in his long career to spicing his thrilling speeches with a good dose of home-cooked religion. The conviction was overturned on a technicality in the Tennessee Supreme Court, and two more states went on to pass similar laws in the aftermath, but the damage had been done. Facing Bryan for the defence was Clarence Darrow, a lawyer who had likewise made his name championing the causes of the humble and powerless. Darrow was another masterly performer in a courtroom, unscrupulous in a good cause, and, relevant to the present case, he was that rarity in American public life, an avowed agnostic. He made the grand old man look foolish: he forced Bryan off the sure ground of parental say in children’s education towards the dangerous territory of small details in the Old Testament (Darrow had more sense than to be satirical about the Gospels in public). It was all a gift for humorists, and laughter is never good news for those seeking to impose the authority of the Word of God on others. Less comic was the sudden death of Bryan, before he had the chance to leave Dayton.96 Far worse in its long-term effects was the experiment with total national prohibition of alcohol, which came into effect as the Eighteenth Amendment to the American Constitution in 1920, after a bitter fight, in which it had survived a presidential veto by that staunch establishment Presbyterian, Woodrow Wilson. In the nineteenth century, temperance or total abstention had not been a party issue, but a campaign involving people right across the spectrum of denominations from Catholics to Fundamentalists, especially the womenfolk. Yet as the cleavage grew between liberal Protestants and conservative Evangelicals, the Anti-Saloon League established in 1895, eventual victors in the campaign for the Amendment, seemed more and more the voice of angry small- town Evangelical America: suspicious alike of the big coastal cities and wicked old drink-sodden Europe, and determined to assert what now, after a century of temperance campaigning, seemed to be an old-time cause. Even the Southern Baptists, still nursing the grievances of the white South from the civil war, dropped their distaste for entanglements with hypocritical Yankee moral campaigners, in order to bring succour to the fight for godliness.97 The result has often been portrayed on the cinema screen as gangster entertainment, but it was the cause of much human tragedy, providing a perfect opportunity for organized crime and its corruption of otherwise law-abiding society. No issue more effectively divided conservative Evangelicals from those among their fellow Christian Americans who could see no harm in a glass of whiskey. It was a rerun of Cromwellian England’s bitter divisions over social regulation back in the 1650s (see p. 652). After President Franklin D. Roosevelt presided over the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment in 1933, for half a

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  held a teaching post; his close affinity with the twice-divorced visionary Adrienne von Speyr raised some clerical eyebrows, and his wide sympathies aroused the unfriendly attention of Pius XII’s Curia. Yet what became a long- term asset was his coldness towards Vatican II, to which he had not been invited as a theological consultant (probably not for theological reasons). Von Balthasar’s writings could openly present opinions about the council and its leading theological voice, Karl Rahner – a bête noire for him like Schleiermacher for Barth – which neither John Paul nor Ratzinger was prepared to express. John Paul II made von Balthasar the first recipient of the Pope Paul VI International Prize in 1984, and in his presentation speech, the Pope used the phrase ‘the splendour of the truth’, which later became the title of one of the most important statements of his absolutist views on moral truth, his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993). Von Balthasar died three days before he was to receive a cardinal’s hat; a slew of his devotees have subsequently worn it in his stead.68 Pope John Paul had no time for Vatican II’s discussion of collegiality in the episcopate. He sought to centralize appointments of bishops with a thoroughness which has no parallel in Catholic history, and which was often explicitly designed to override the wishes of the local diocese. Occasionally he met his match, notably in Switzerland. In the years after 1988 the quiet Swiss valleys of the Grisons, long since pioneers of religious toleration amid Reformation conflicts (see pp. 639–40), witnessed an extraordinary ecclesiastical drama over a new bishop for the diocese of Chur. Centuries of tradition gave the right of election to Chur’s cathedral clergy, but the Pope did not trust the Swiss to elect a sound Catholic; he sent his own combative and ultra-conservative nominee, Wolfgang Haas, to ‘assist’ the old bishop in preparation to replace him on his retirement. The people of Chur were not having it. The new assistant bishop arrived at his consecration to find crowds of the faithful lying down full-length, blocking the cathedral entrance. Haas and his distinguished guests, even the Prince of Liechtenstein, had to clamber as best they could over prone parishioners for what must have been a rather muted celebration. Matters did not end there. Mothers refused to send their children to be confirmed by the Pope’s bishop. Church bells tolled in protest when Bishop Haas succeeded the old bishop and appointed his own officials, and the city council even withheld the keys to his palace. Eventually the Pope grudgingly gave way and replaced his unwanted prelate, who got a newly invented archbishopric of tiny Liechtenstein as a face-saver. Haas was not much more appreciated by the good folk of the principality.69 The aspect of the cultural revolution of the 1960s which remained most

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Catholic pulpit on Palm Sunday 1937; it denounced the harassment of the Church and condemned the presuppositions of Nazi racism. The encyclical was one of the few nationally coordinated public acts of defiance of the regime before it fell in 1945; yet it did nothing to alter the steady crescendo of wickedness which was Nazi foreign and domestic policy. Since the days of the Kulturkampf (see pp. 837–8), German Catholics had trumpeted their loyalty to the German state, while carving out their own devotional space within German society. The protection of that space was what they had expected from the 1933 Concordat; they had no second strategy when they discovered that Hitler was not Bismarck and that the Concordat had proved worthless.44 The best that the Pope could do was to work behind the scenes to separate Fascist Italy from Nazi Germany, and passively express his profound disapproval when Hitler visited Mussolini in 1938. The Pope was away, there were no decorations on Rome’s churches and the Vatican Museums were closed. That was a different sort of papal silence to that which had greeted Mussolini’s invasion of Christian Ethiopia three years before (see pp. 891–2).45 Rome still saw Communism as a greater representative of evil than Fascism. In that same Holy Week of 1937 which sent Mit brennender Sorge to Germany, a papal encyclical addressed to the world, Divini Redemptoris (‘Of the Divine Redeemer’), denounced Communism in far stronger terms than German congregations had heard expressed against Nazism. It was a movement which among much else ‘strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse’. At the time, the imbalance of approach seemed a reasonable if depressing calculation, contrasting Nazi harassment of the Church with the wholesale destruction and death being visited on Christianity in the Soviet Union – and also in Spain. There, the Pope was actively supporting an attack on a democratically elected government by forces strongly backed by Fascism. The Spanish case is one of the most tragic alignments of the interwar papacy, and yet one can see precisely why the Vatican should turn against the Republican government. The Spanish Republic set up on the fall of the monarchy in 1931 mimicked amid a raft of social and economic reforms all the anticlerical policies with which the Church was familiar from Latin America and Republican France: an end, for instance, to religious education and to state financial support for church upkeep or clerical stipends. Without fully considering the effects of their actions, the Republicans charged destructively over the small certainties of everyday Catholic life, infuriating large numbers of ordinary Catholics who might not otherwise have had any special animus against the Republic or nostalgia for the exiled King Alfonso XIII. Worse still, Catholic

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Every time the pendulum swings, love shifts to hate. So they must orchestrate everything carefully. Their absences cannot be too long, their bouts of anger must be quickly followed by smiles. Coquettes can keep their victims emotionally entrapped for a long time, but over months or years the dynamic can begin to prove tiresome. Jiang Qing, later known as Madame Mao, used coquettish skills to capture the heart of Mao Tse-tung, but after ten years the quarreling, the tears and the coolness became intensely irritating, and once irritation proved stronger than love, Mao was able to detach. Josephine, a more brilliant Coquette, was able to adapt, by spending a whole year without playing coy or withdrawing from Napoleon. Timing is everything. On the other hand, though, the Coquette stirs up powerful emotions, and breakups often prove temporary. The Coquette is addictive: after the failure of the social plan Mao called the Great Leap Forward, Madame Mao was able to reestablish her power over her devastated husband. The Cold Coquette can stimulate a particularly deep hatred. Valerie Solanas was a young woman who fell under Andy Warhol's spell. She had written a play that amused him, and she was given the impression he might turn it into a film. She imagined becoming a celebrity. She also got involved in the feminist movement, and when, in June 1968, it dawned on her that Warhol was toying with her, she directed her growing rage at men on him and shot him three times, nearly killing him. Cold Coquettes may stimulate feelings that are not so much erotic as intellectual, less passion and more fascination. The hatred they can stir up is all the more insidious and dangerous, for it may not be counterbalanced by a deep love. They must realize the limits of the game, and the disturbing effects they can have on less stable people. Charm is seduction without sex. Charmers are consummate manipulators, masking their cleverness by creating a mood of pleasure and comfort. Their method is simple: they deflect attention from themselves and focus it on their target. They understand your spirit, feel your pain, adapt to your moods. In the presence of a Charmer you feel better about yourself. Charmers do not argue or fight, complain, or pester—w hat could be more seductive? By drawing you in with their indulgence they make you dependent on them, and their power grows. Learn to cast the Charmer's spell by aiming at people's primary weaknesses: vanity and self-esteem. The Art of Charm

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  end its association with a military think tank and halt its plan to build a gymnasium in Harlem on the site of a park used by lower-income residents. Columbia officials resisted, only growing more entrenched as the students smashed furniture and shattered windows, destroyed academic research, and hung posters of Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X on the walls. For a week, the university administration tried to wait out the protesters. Finally, they asked police to remove them. At 2:20 A.M. on April 30, a thousand officers, many carrying flashlights and billy clubs, stormed the occupied buildings. Some students resisted passively, others by punching, biting, or throwing bottles and batteries. Many police officers used force, some of it brutal, to pull out the protesters and gain control. To some who watched, a class distinction could be seen in the collision of weathered boots with fresh faces, a working-class force smashing into private-school privilege. The confrontation lasted past dawn. When it was over, more than seven hundred people had been arrested and nearly one hundred fifty injured, including twelve police. Shocked parents and other citizens looked at the photos of the aftermath and wondered what had become of their country. — Down Broadway from Columbia, a new musical was opening. Hair told a story of hippies, the antiwar movement, the counterculture, and the sexual revolution in 1960s America, and it featured drug references and group nudity. The sixty-seven-year-old reviewer John Chapman of the Daily News in New York called the show “vulgar, perverted, tasteless, cheap, cynical, offensive, and generally lousy” and recommended that “everybody connected with it should be washed in strong soap and hung up to dry in the sun.” But even octogenarians who saw the musical had a hard time not singing along to the hit songs Hair produced, including “Aquarius” and “Let the Sunshine In.” In May, CBS television aired a special in prime time, Hunger in America, which told of the growing problem of malnutrition in the world’s richest country. According to the documentary, there were ten

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  demonstrations of outrage provoked still greater fury among anarchists and socialists. Quickly, in 1931, the burning of church buildings began.46 Now battle lines were drawn, and once more the newly emerged image of Christ the King became the figurehead for the political Right, as had already happened not merely in Mexico but also among militant Catholics in Belgian politics.47 Electoral gains for a new Spanish Catholic party in 1934 provoked fury from anarchists and socialists; attacks on church buildings were now accompanied by the killing of clergy. When the parties of the Left won elections in 1936, a group of army leaders, now in alliance with a mushrooming ‘Falangist’ movement inspired by Fascism, determined to overturn the result by force. Among them was a primly Catholic little general from Galicia, Francisco Franco, who had been sent in semi-disgrace to the Canary Islands because of his political activities, but who eventually emerged from the rapidly moving events as chief commander. Arranging Franco’s crucial flight to take command in Morocco, and providing an alibi for the British-hired plane’s true purpose, was a John Buchanesque British MI6 officer, Major Hugh Pollard, undertaking this as a freelance operation because he was a devout Catholic (as well as an enthusiastic admirer of Nazism and Italian Fascism). Pollard, who subsequently publicly and indignantly defended the Nazi obliteration bombing of the Basque capital Guernica, was proud of having fulfilled ‘the duty of a good Catholic to help fellow Catholics in trouble’. He was duly decorated by a grateful Franco when the Nationalists had rolled back the defenders of the Republic with Hitler’s and Mussolini’s military assistance.48 Through three years of exceptionally brutal civil war in Spain, the Vatican perceived only Republican atrocities, which were indeed vile: clergy murdered, churches systematically torched and even corpses in graves exhumed and ridiculed. Nationalist propaganda lingered over Republicans’ rape of nuns, though there is no documented case of this occurring, the prospect apparently offending Republican notions of military honour. What undoubtedly did take place was what one historian of the events has called ‘the greatest anticlerical bloodletting Europe has ever known’. In the Andalusian diocese of Málaga, for instance, 115 out of 240 clergy were killed in the year before Italian troops seized the city in 1937. Often before their deaths, clergy were sexually tortured, or equally frequently posthumously mutilated, reflecting lay male neuroses about their celibate state and uncontrolled lusts, ancient fears which were a standard trope of anticlericalism.49 Rome took less notice of the fact that in the Basque country in the north of the peninsula, most clergy were on the side of local autonomy and the Republic against Franco’s Nationalists, and that the Nationalists brutally punished them along with all the other enemies of the

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  And I said, “Yeah, probably. Yeah. So she gets into the car, and she just wants to get to her mom’s grave, but there’s this jackknifed truck and the cops there, and she’s drunk and pissed off and she’s in a hurry, so she thinks she can squeeze past the cop car, and she’s not even thinking straight, but she has to get to her mom, and she thinks she can get past it somehow and POOF.” Takumi nods slowly, thinking, and then says, “Or, she gets into the car with the flowers. But she’s already missed the anniversary. She’s probably thinking that she screwed things up with her mom again—first she doesn’t call 911, and now she can’t even remember the freaking anniversary. And she’s furious and she hates herself, and she decides, ‘That’s it, I’m doing it,’ and she sees the cop car and there’s her chance and she just floors it.” The Colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping it upside down against the COFFEE TABLE. “Well,” he said. “That clears things up nicely.” one hundred eighteen days after SO WE GAVE UP. I’d finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be discovered. We’d failed, maybe, but some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved. I still did not know her as I wanted to, but I never could. She made it impossible for me. And the accicide, the suident, would never be anything else, and I was left to ask, Did I help you toward a fate you didn’t want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction? Because they are different crimes, and I didn’t know whether to feel angry at her for making me part of her suicide or just to feel angry at myself for letting her go. But we knew what could be found out, and in finding it out, she had made us closer—the Colonel and Takumi and me, anyway. And that was it. She didn’t leave me enough to discover her, but she left me enough to rediscover the Great Perhaps. — “There’s one more thing we should do,” the Colonel said as we played a video game together with the sound on—just the two of us, like in the first days of the Investigation. “There’s nothing more we can do.” “I want to drive through it,” he said. “Like she did.” We couldn’t risk leaving campus in the middle of the night like she had, so we left about twelve hours earlier, at 3:00 in the afternoon, with the Colonel behind the wheel of Takumi’s SUV. We asked Lara and Takumi to come along, but they were tired of chasing ghosts, and besides, finals were coming. It was a bright afternoon, and the sun bore down on the asphalt so that the ribbon of road before us quivered with heat.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  The two identical brothers remained seated, gazing at him with soul-weary eyes. Sebastian was aware that most of the lightskirts in town found the Robidoux brothers attractive, but not a one would service them. The siblings’ sadistic carnal tastes were well known to all. He looked them over with loathing. Many times over the last year he’d regretted his decision to join with them. One evening, inebriated and wretched, hating his life and the depths to which he’d sunk, he’d shared a bottle with the Frenchmen, and they’d shared an idea—rotating voyages with a split share. At the time, it had sounded like a reasonable plan and one that would lessen his risk. Now it was his most lamented decision. Where he made every effort to spare lives and had yet to take one that wasn’t actively trying to take his, Pierre and Dominique killed and tortured just for their amusement. “Word has it we’re divvying up an amazing booty,” Dominique drawled in his unctuous voice. To the ignorant eye, he appeared to be the more civilized of the twins. Sebastian, however, knew him to be the more vicious. “I saw part of the spoils crossing the wharf to you this afternoon—a prime article. The curtsy was a nice touch. You’ve broken her well, Phoenix, although I personally prefer a bit of spirit in my lovers.” Sebastian’s insides coiled with repressed violence, and his hand slid to the blade strapped to his thigh. The thought of these men within viewing distance of his wife made him physically ill. He’d known this confrontation would be difficult, but he’d failed to consider the danger to Olivia, assuming her to be far removed from the devil’s bargain he’d made long ago. “There has been a change of plan,” he said. “I’ll be paying your share in coin.” Pierre leapt to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor. “Bastard!” He shot a furious glance at his brother. “I told you he couldn’t be trusted!” “Calm down,” Dominique growled. “I’ll see that you receive your fair share.” “Like hell!” Pierre retorted, his voice lowering, but his rage no less evident. “I’ll claim my fair share now. I’ve heard the tales of the cargo in that fat-bellied merchant—fine French laces and brandy, Oriental vases and plates, rich materials, exotic spices, and chests of gold. We’ve not had a catch of such magnitude in the last year, and it may be just as long before another like her comes along.” The Frenchman turned a feral grin toward Sebastian. “If you refuse to share the wealth, my Judas friend, I may be required to come and get it myself.” “I should like to see you try,” Sebastian scoffed. “I’ll burn the ship and its cargo before that happens.” Dominique placed a restraining hand on his brother’s shoulder and eyed Sebastian speculatively. “You’re breaking the code, Phoenix. Slitting your own throat, I’d say. Is that what you want?”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “I’m truly sorry, but I haven’t the means to help you.” She fled the room with as much haste as the maid. Mouth agape, he decided something truly heinous polluted the water hereabouts. There was no other explanation for this craziness. Flushed, slightly disoriented, and quickly becoming mad as hell, Hugh strode out the open doorway, bearing down on the dark figure who scurried away. “Oh, Your Grace,” he called out with deceptive courtesy. “Another moment, if you please.” Her pace quickened. So did his. His legs were longer. She hit the steps, hiking up her skirts, and he lunged forward, catching her elbow. She gasped. He almost did, too, but restrained himself. Her arm was firm and well-formed under his fingers, not at all as he imagined. “Perhaps I misled,” he said dryly. Her lace-covered face turned to his. “I wasn’t asking.” She stiffened. “You’re ill; I collect that.” His gaze narrowed as he attempted to discern the facial features hidden behind the veil. “It appears you are unaware that a blizzard is fast approaching, and this is one of the coldest winters on record. My servant’s arm was broken in the fall, and one of my horses is lame—” “Lame?” she repeated, her voice tight. Ah! He suddenly remembered Her Grace’s love of horses, as professed by the ancient Artemis. Cad that he was, Hugh had no hesitation in playing on her sympathies. “Yes, lame. I’m certain the beast will recover, given the proper care and rest. So, too, will my footman, if also provided with proper care and rest.” He released her arm and stepped back, prepared to give chase if she fled again. “I haven’t the time to seek out another domicile, Your Grace. I am the Earl of Montrose, not some thief set to rob you. I will return your horses and conveyance to you at my soonest, I can assure you of that.” She stood silently for a long moment, her damaged brain seeking something to say, he was certain. Finally she gave a jerky nod of agreement and turned, taking the steps with remarkable agility for a woman of her vast years. Relieved, Hugh turned and bellowed for Artemis. He had no notion if the madness was permanent or not, but he had no desire to catch it in any case. “Go with him.” Charlotte looked out the upper-floor window and watched the dashing earl hitch the horses to a cart. He was a tall man, broad of shoulder, with the most glorious shade of dark-honey hair. He stood silhouetted by the snow, his elegantly dressed body moving with latent power, his shoulders bunching and flexing beneath the velvet of his coat. She couldn’t see his face from here, but she guessed he would be handsome. Or at least she hoped he would be. A man blessed with so fine a form should have a face to match. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  His hand dropped to his side, his fist close to crushing the empty glass. “Stay if you like. I’m going out.” “With your cock as hard as a poker?” His mouth curved mockingly. Best she witness the depths to which he could sink now. Fruit never falls far from the tree. “You needn’t concern yourself with my cock.” “Whose concern would it be if not mine?’ she asked with a soft snort. “You cannot go about town in that condition.” “I don’t intend to.” Her eyes widened as she understood his meaning. “You intend to find a whore to sate your lust on?” “Perhaps.” Sebastian shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll sample two. My need is fierce tonight.” Olivia stood, her hands clenching into tiny fists. “Why? When I am always eager for you?” He laughed. “Yes, you do like my cock, don’t you?” “Yes, and I am not ashamed to say so.” Her chin lifted, her dark gaze burning into his. “Take me, Sebastian, and spare yourself the coin.” Deep inside, his conscience writhed in shame, but he squelched it ruthlessly. “But after years of pirating, sweet, I have coin to spare. Or have you forgotten what I am?” Her eyes narrowed. “I am well aware of what you are. You are my husband, and if you walk out that door and take a whore, you’ll be my husband in name only—for the rest of your miserable life. Consider that, my lord, before you depart.” Turning, she stalked toward the adjoining door. It took everything Sebastian had to keep his face impassive, when inside he felt scraped raw. His hand reached out to her retreating back, and in his mind, he was screaming for her to return, his heart begging for her forgiveness. But when he opened his mouth, only bitterness came out. “I thought we discussed this when we first met. I can take your body whenever I choose. The law says a man cannot rape his own wife.” Olivia spun to face him. “I’m offering myself to you! You’ve no cause to find a whore.” “I want one.” “I’ll be one.” Her statement hit him like a physical blow. “Beg your pardon?” “If you want a whore, I’ll be one for you.” She came toward him, licking her lips and swaying her hips like a harlot. “What’ll it be, govna? A rut? Or would you rather I suck your cock?” The empty tumbler fell from his hand and rolled away, forgotten. “Stop it.” She cupped her breasts in her hands, pinching the nipples. “You can fondle these, govna, for a couple quid.” He gripped her shoulders, shaking her. “Stop it!” Her gaze met his, full of anger and pain. “Fuck me.” With a curse, he threw her away from him. “You’re not a whore, Olivia. You’re my lady wife. Act like it.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “She is not a mistake! In fact, Guinevere is the only decent thing you’ve ever accomplished in your lamentable life. In return for your scorn, she has remained hidden, at the cost of her childhood and the chance to make friends. What more could you ask of her?” “To know her place, something you never appeared to have learned.” “I have remained hidden as well,” she argued. “No one knows who I am, nor do they know who Gwen is. Ignore us, and no one will be the wiser.” He yanked her closer, hovering over her like an avenging specter. “I want to know why you’re here and what you intend, and I want to know now! If your aim is to extort money from me, I’ll tell you now I refuse to give you a shilling more than what was bequeathed to you.” “Release her, Your Grace.” The voice down the hall, though soft, was laced with menace. Charlotte turned her head to find Hugh coming toward them with obvious predatory intent. His shoulders squared, his jaw tense, he looked ready to do damage, and she was awed. She simply couldn’t think for a moment, arrested by the sight of him, beautiful in black and shrouded in fury. A force to be reckoned with. The duke, unaware of the danger, didn’t even spare him a glance. “This is none of your affair, Montrose.” “I would listen to him, Jared,” she murmured, having no doubt, by the look of him, that Hugh was willing to ignore the Glenmoore title to protect her. As she relaxed under his touch, Jared stiffened and glared at Hugh. “What do you want?” “At the moment I want you to release my fiancée. Then I want you to step away and go about your business.” Charlotte gaped. Then her heart began racing so fast, she swayed on her feet. Jared looked at her with raised brows. “Marrying down, Charlotte? At least this peer isn’t on his deathbed.” “Go to hell,” she snapped, tugging at her arm. Rescuing her was one thing. Lying to a duke of Glenmoore’s power would only lead to trouble. Releasing her, Jared stepped back. “She’s after money, Montrose. She’s a mercenary female, if I ever saw one. Do you know anything about her? Her past? Anything?” Hugh stopped mere inches way. “I know everything about Charlotte and Gwen and the whole morass. I shall be taking them all off your hands. The only thing you need concern yourself with is the dispersing of Charlotte’s trust, which I’ll set aside for Gwen, as your father intended.” Jared’s face broke out in a grin. “Ah, I see. What a perfect match you two are.” “What are you talking about?” Charlotte asked crossly. “This is about the widow’s trust, Charlotte dear.” His gaze returned to Hugh. “You should know, Montrose, that the stipend is negligible. Not enough to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed. Certainly not enough to wager.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Lucien’s hands clenched right along with his jaw. He was ashamed by how badly her words cut him when it was his own ill humor that had goaded her into saying them. Stung, he spoke rudely. “Fontaine will never be faithful to you. He’s just like me. He’ll bed anything in a skirt.” “I know.” Her voice held no censure, no sadness. Her ready acceptance of another man, one who didn’t deserve her any more than he did, infuriated Lucien. “That doesn’t disturb you?” he bit out. “Certainly I wish things could be different,” she admitted, her fingers fidgeting with the file. “But it’s a common arrangement, Lucien. You are lucky to have two parents who care deeply for each other. They’ve been together for many years, have they not? Your mother and the duke?” So, she knew who his father was. “Yes, almost two-score years now.” “A lifetime of happiness. Some of us will have only fleeting moments of it. Your birth is nothing to be ashamed of. You have choices, many paths you can take. Some of us have only one.” “And what of your happiness?” he asked harshly. Julienne’s smile was brittle. “I am one of those born with only one choice.” Lucien swallowed hard, his gaze dropping to the folder. He recalled every name it contained, men who were considered his superior because their parents had married while his had not. He had more money than every one of them, more property, more affection for Julienne. If she would give up her station for him, he would give her the world. Words tumbled out of his mouth before he thought them through. “If you are so open to having a philandering husband, why not wed me?” The file slipped from her hands, papers spilling out and spreading all over the floor. She dropped to her knees, scrambling to gather the sheets together. Lucien joined her, noting the shaking of her hands and her rapid breathing. He said nothing, startled by what he’d asked and afraid to say something that would affect her decision. Long, torturous moments passed in silence. “Aren’t you going to answer?” he asked finally, unable to bear the suspense any longer. “Beg your pardon?” She turned her head to look at him, her expression bemused. “Bloody hell! I just asked you to marry me.” Her lashes lowered, shuttering her gaze. Julienne hesitated before choosing her words carefully. “While I admit to the need for haste, I’m not desperate. I have several excellent prospects. There is no need for you to make such a sacrifice.” Lucien stared blindly ahead. He’d never imagined proposing to anyone, but he also never imagined being refused. He felt ill. Maybe Marchant was right. Perhaps he had caught the fever.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Presently he enters and slams the door. You stretch out on the couch. “Take a seat,” you say. He remains standing in front of you. This is not really fair, you think, aggravating, as it does, his advantage in height. “What the hell is going on with you?” he says. He is growing larger by the minute. You shrug. “I’ve been trying to track you down for over a week. I called your office, called here.” “When did you get to the city,” you ask. “And then when I take the goddamn bus down to the city and stake out your doorstep, you bolt when you see me.” “I thought you were somebody else.” “Don’t give me that shit. I left about a hundred and fifty messages at your office. And then yesterday I go to your office and they tell me you are no longer employed as of Wednesday. What the fuck is going on?” His fists are clenched. You would think it was his job you had lost. “What did you want to see me about?” “I don’t want to see you. I’d just as soon leave you here to drown in coke or whatever it is you’re doing. But Dad’s worried about you and I’m worried about Dad.” “How is Dad?” “Do you care?” You have always thought that Michael would make a great prosecuting attorney. He has an acute sense of universal guilt and a keen nose for circumstantial evidence. Although he is a year younger than you, he has appropriated the role of elder. He takes your foibles and lapses from good citizenship as personal affronts. “Dad’s in California on business. At least he was until last night. He asked me to call and make sure you got home for the weekend. Since you never answer or call back, well, here I am. You’re coming home with me whether you want to or not.” “Okay.” “Where are you keeping the Healey?” he says. “Little problem there. A friend of mine totaled it.” “You let some guy wreck your car?” “Actually, I told him just to put a few dents in it but he got carried away.” He shakes his head and sighs. He has learned to expect no better from you. Finally he takes a seat, a good sign. He looks around the apartment, which he has never seen before, and shakes his head at the mess. Then he looks at you. “Tomorrow is the anniversary, in case you’ve forgotten. One year. We’re going to spread her ashes in the lake. Dad wants you to be there.” You nod your head. You knew this was coming. You weren’t watching the calendar but you could feel it coming on. You close your eyes and lean your head back against the couch. You surrender. “Where’s Amanda?” he says. “Amanda?” You open your eyes. “Your wife. Tall, blond, slender.” “She’s shopping,” you say. For what seems like a long time you sit across from each other in silence.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Hugh stiffened. “This is not about money.” “It is for Charlotte,” the duke said. “It’s always about money for Charlotte.” He looked at her. “Do you know anything about your intended, dear? Did he tell you how he wagered away almost every shilling of the La Coeur funds? He was forced to sell his sister to Remington to bail them out of debt. Why do you think an earl’s daughter married a bastard?” Suddenly Charlotte’s nausea became a very real hazard, and she clutched her stomach in a vain attempt to still its roiling. “Lady Julienne chose Remington of her own accord,” Hugh growled. “She was set to marry a marquess,” Glenmoore continued, digging in deeper, as he relished Charlotte’s obvious distress. “But then Lord Fontaine cast her aside when he realized how far in his pockets Montrose was.” “Lies!” Hugh glanced her way, his face flushed, his fists clenched. Glenmoore arched a brow. “Are you claiming you weren’t nearly destitute from irresponsible gambling?” Hugh’s expression could have been set in stone. “That was long ago.” “Only a few years, I believe.” The duke’s smile was filled with malice. “Regardless, I was on my way to join the rest of the party, and I don’t wish to hold up the proceedings. Congratulations, Montrose. Charlotte. I’ll await your missive detailing where I should direct Charlotte’s pension. Also, since you won’t require the manse anymore, I’ll make arrangements to sell it.” Glenmoore walked away, leaving destruction in his wake. Hugh was so furious for a moment, he could hardly think. When Gwen collided with him on the stairs and blurted that her father had cornered Charlotte, the rage he’d felt had almost overwhelmed him. If he had any doubts earlier about his feelings for his paramour, he didn’t any longer. “You should never have told Glenmoore we were affianced!” Charlotte groaned. “He will mention our engagement to someone just to embarrass you. This is a disaster.” Hugh stepped closer to offer comfort. She was frighteningly pale, her mouth and eyes rimmed with lines of tension. Trying for levity, he placed a hand over his heart and gave an exaggerated sigh. “You know, a man could be irreparably damaged by such a response to his proposal.” She flinched. “We must go down and correct this mistake. Whatever will your family say when they hear of this?” Hugh tapped a finger to his chin. “Congratulations?” he suggested. “You are impossible. Lady Julienne warned me that you were known for being irresponsible and jumping into situations headfirst. I had no notion what she was talking about until now.” She attempted to pass him, and he sidestepped into her path. “Hugh, the guests will gossip if we hold up the meal.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Giving an almost imperceptible nod, Olivia allowed him to tuck her hand in the crook of his elbow. She held her tongue until they were safely ensconced in the carriage, but the moment he reached for her, she slapped his hand away with her reticule. “Damnation!” he yelped. She smiled. “You will not be touching me again, I vow.” Sebastian eyed his spitfire wife in wounded astonishment. He’d noted the changes in her immediately. Olivia looked harder somehow, her eyes furious, her lush mouth pursed tightly together. He had hoped for a warm and eager reunion. Instead, his wife vowed never to allow him to touch her. What in blazes was going on? “What in blazes is going on?” he growled. She shot him an incredulous glance. Hang it all, she was supposed to be pleased to see him! “Olivia, love—” “Oh, please,” she muttered. Staring out the window, she heaved a disgusted sigh. “You do not know how to love. You merely desire your allotted conjugal visitation.” “My conjug—” he sputtered. “Bloody everlasting hell! What the devil are you talking about?” “Oh, I apologize,” she replied in mock innocence. “Did I shock you? I meant your breeding rights.” “My ‘breeding rights’?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “This is ridiculous.” “You would think so.” Sebastian sat in an agony of confusion. He had gone directly to their townhouse from the docks, only to discover her out for the evening. Learning from the butler that she had gone to the Dempsey ball, he’d changed quickly into evening attire and hastened to find her. He’d been torn about making his belated first appearance as Lord Merrick at such a large gathering, and truly, the silence of the ballroom upon his arrival had momentarily flustered him. Then he’d found Olivia, and everyone else had ceased to matter. He would deal with the rest of the world tomorrow. Right now all he wanted, all he craved, was his wife’s lush body pressed against his and her dark eyes warm with pleasure at his return. “What have I done to anger you so?” he asked softly. “I cannot believe you even have to ask. You left me here alone,” she snapped. “In the midst of the vultures, after you promised me you would stay at least long enough to see me settled in Society. You could not even muster the courage to tell me good-bye. Well, my lord, if you cannot honor your promises to me, I am not bound to honor mine to you.” “Hell’s teeth,” he muttered. “It was in my keeping of that promise that I was forced to leave.” Her eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you going to inquire as to what I was doing?” he grumbled. “No. It’s far too late for that now. You should have discussed your plans with me before leaving.”

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Everyone on the sidewalk looks exactly seventeen years old and restless. At Sheridan Square a ragged figure is tearing posters off the utility poles. He claws at the paper with his fingernails and then stomps it under his feet. “What is he, political?” Michael says. “No, just angry.” You walk down into the Lion’s Head, past all the framed dust jackets of all the writers who have ever gotten drunk here, heading for the back room where the lights are low. When you sit down, James, long-haired and black, jumps up on the table; the house cat. “I never really liked her much, to tell you the truth,” Michael says. “I thought she was fake. If I ever see her I’m going to rip her lungs out.” You introduce Michael to Karen, the waitress, and she asks you how the writing is going. You order two double vodkas. She tosses down a couple of menus and ducks around the corner. “At first,” you say, “I couldn’t believe she left me. Now I can’t believe we got married in the first place. I’m just starting to remember how cold and distant Amanda was when Mom got sick. She seemed to resent Mom’s dying.” “Do you think you’d have married her if Mom hadn’t been sick?” You have made such a point of not dwelling on the incidents associated with your mother’s death, almost denying that it was a consideration at all. You were living with Amanda in New York and marriage wasn’t high on your list of priorities, although on Amanda’s it was. You had your doubts about in sickness and in health till death do us part. Then your mother was diagnosed and everything looked different. Your first love had given notice of departure and Amanda’s application was on file. Mom never said it would do her heart good to see you married, but you were so eager to please her you would have walked through fire, given your right and left arms … You wanted her to be happy and she wanted you to be happy. And, in the end, you might have confused what she wanted with what Amanda wanted. Before it happened you couldn’t believe you would survive your mother’s death. Torn between thinking it was your duty to throw yourself on her pyre and her wish that you should not waste time mourning, you knew no reaction that satisfied both conditions. You spent so much time in anticipation that when her death came you didn’t know what you felt. After the funeral it seemed as if you were wandering around your own interior looking for signs of life, finding nothing but empty rooms and white walls. You kept waiting for the onset of grief. You are beginning to suspect it arrived nine months later, disguised as your response to Amanda’s departure. Michael orders the shepherd’s pie. You wave the menu away. You talk about the past and the present.