Once Upon a Dream

daughters’ misfortune. I know they both had their hearts set on marriage

showing.
“You like Hugo,” he repeated, his brow drawing down. “And why not? He probably

“Hope,” she said softly. “And dreams. The wonder of stars that make those dreams come true.”

She drew in a sharp little breath, her heart catching painfully. “I think I saw past everything the first time I saw you,” she said in a small voice. “I stood just over there and saw a solitary man on a horse, his heart in his eyes and poetry on his lips. I saw the other half of myself and for the first time in my life I felt complete.

Oh, God. He’d never felt anything like this, not like this. Lucy. She was life itself, the sun that drove the dark nights of his soul away, the wind that blew happiness into his lonely heart, the rain that made hope blossom in his chest like flowers spreading over a wasteland. His joy went far beyond physical pleasure, an elation of love found and claimed.

he was sick of it. Sick of the simpering females dangling after him in hopes of becoming the next Duchess of Southwell, sick of the platitudes, the empty flirtations. Sick of the banality of it all. He wanted Egeria and only Egeria, and by God, he’d find her if it was the last thing he did.

Be strong, my Lucy, and always stand firm in your beliefs and your love for your country—continue to pray for her freedom.

But in all fairness to herself, hehad looked like a prince of old, sitting on his white horse, with his halo of golden hair and handsome features, his piercing eyes that gazed at her as if she were the princess he’d been seeking in all the four corners of the earth.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.