Question for you: which do you think are the most memorable scenes from a romance novel wherein the hero or heroine (or both!) reveal how they feel about one another? Which scenes do you adore wherein the hero or heroine confesses how they feel – or asks openly for the other person to be with them?
I remember being breathless when I first read the final scene between Jason and Victoria in Judith McNaught’s Once and Always, where he thinks she’s dead and doesn’t quite believe she’s in the room with him. Seeing his misery and what it reveals about his feelings was more than my young teenage heart could handle. I think it probably swooned.
Among my favorites of late:
“Come,” she repeated, patting the bedclothes. “I want to show you my treasures.” She folded her legs to sit cross-legged….
She opened the box and started taking them out: the packets of letters he’d written to her, the little painted wooden man—the first gift he’d sent her, the bracelet with the blue stones, the piece of alabaster . . . on and on. Ten years of little treasures he’d sent her. And the handkerchief with his initials she’d stolen a few weeks ago.
She looked up at him, her eyes itching and her throat aching. “I do love you,” she said. “You see?”
He nodded, slowly. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”
Last Night’s Scandal, Loretta Chase
What about you? What scenes that reveal true feelings have always and continue to rock your world?
The big emotional reveal in Persuasion is my favorite part of the book when Capt. Wentworth writes the letter to Ann. I still go back and just read that little bit. Persuasion is my favorite Austen book still.
Agree about Shards of Honor and the Cordelia/Aral scene when she goes to Barrayar.
I also happen to love the “big mistake is revealed” scenes where the hero/heroine realize what an ass they’ve been in assuming
One of my favorites is the Black Lace historical erotic book White Rose Ensnared by Juliet Hastings. (My review: http://thearmchaircritic.blogspot.com/2010/02/white-rose-ensnared-by-juliet-hastings.html ) In this book (massive spoilers follow), the hero (squire Geoffrey) and heroine (lady Rosamund) have both been led to believe the other is dead by the book’s villain, the treacherous Sir Ralph (who stole Rosamund’s lands and wealth). After they both escape, Rosamund works in a brother while Geoffrey still serves the king (and finds and kills Ralph). They see each other, Rosamund runs away (fearing her new job would hold him back), they meet and hit the sheets. Post-coitus, lying together, Geoffrey says the king would give her her lands back—then swallows hard and tells her she’s young and beautiful and could marry well, someone rich and good looking. She says she ran because she was afraid she’d hold him back and that she can only marry him—and when he protests, she says she’ll scandalize the countryside by keeping him as her lover until she agrees. And, sure enough, the next paragraph the two are married—where the king gives her her lands back *and* makes Geoffrey a lord, giving him all Ralph’s property.
(Of course, the thinking part of me wonders how much “scandal” there would be, considering at this point in the book Rosamund’s not only worked as a prostitute but slept with Geoffrey, Ralph, Geoffrey and Ralph together (I didn’t use the word “erotic” in the first sentence by accident), the king, her female handmaid, and several other people.)
I think my favorite In Death book is Divided In Death – they have this horrible fight, where it seems like neither can yield without betraying something that is fundamentally their core self… and yet, they overcome this, and become stronger together. I can’t say more without major spoilers for the plot, but DID is probably my most re-read of the In Deaths because of that emotional intensity that is throughout the book.
Spike’s whole speech to Buffy in the last season, but most wonderfully the line, “When I say I love you, it’s not because I want you. It has nothing to do with me”. A perfect flip from the previous seasons of obsession which were all about what he could get from her – it shows us in just a few words why they’re relationship was so twisted before and how profoundly his love for her has changed.
I agree with Liz on the scene in The Courtship Dance.
My current favorite is from Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas. Leo admits that he wanted to be the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge since the age of 11 because he thought it would impress the older, serious Bryony. She in turn is stunned because she barely remembers anything about him from that time.
Another one is Devlyn finally finding the AWOL Bella in Terry Spear’s Heart of the Wolf, and dropping a glass bottle upon seeing all of the photos of the pack members on her refrigerator. (Of course most of them are of him.)
I also have to mention one emotion scene between two brothers that gets me every time: Bentley Rutledge’s confession to Cam in The Devil You Know by Liz Carlyle.
I read so much and my memory is not great enough to keep the scenes that touch me in order but I would have to say the marriage proposal I received from my current husband is noteworthy.
It is a second marriage for both of us – late in our 30’s – two kids a piece – and we’d been trying haphazardly to fit our lives together. I’d gotten quite used to my independence in the 7 1/2 hours I was single after my first marriage went up in a fiery ball of crap. Over the year that we’d been dating it was clear this man was not a master at verbal communication but more of an actions speak louder type of man.
Case in point – On our first night he took me to a waterside restaurant for dinner, strolled with me in the moonlight and bought me a rose crafted out of a palm leaf. The seller told us if we put it in the freezer the next morning it would be a reddish pink. It was a beautiful evening but again – he’s not a talker – so I wasn’t really sure if I was interested enough to go for date #2. In the midst of our stroll my son called me in a panic, his computer crashed, he had a video project due the next day, he was going to fail the world was going to end… you get the point. Now because we’d been set up thru mutual friends, I knew the man I was with was a techie so I bounced the problem off him, for advice only. Next thing I know he’s swinging by his home, grabbing computer equipment and whatnot, then driving me home and setting my son up with a whole new system. He spent hours recovering my sons project from the dead machine to the new one and working with him to finish his project. He was fighting dirty, I knew, he knew it, and when at 3am they had a finished project I told him it was pointless for him to drive home so late. Ever the gentleman he slept fully dressed, on top of the covers, in my bed.
Fast forward a year – in the weeks leading up to Valentines day he began sending me a present a day, flowers, candy, chocolates, trinkets, etc. The ladies at my office were super jealous (he gets major points for that!). Then he took my boys out for a guys day at the sports bar and asked their permission to marry into our little family. On Valentines day I received a ox at the office with a ring and a note saying he would pick me up at my office promptly at 5.
He arrived with the boys who he consulted on the best place to pop the question. What do young teenage boys know about such things? They chose longhorn steakhouse, and there under the bull horns hanging off the wall this man stammered out his proposal while ordering a steak… yes the waitress had come over and asked if we were ready to order, we went around the table and he ordered last, saying “I’ll have a sprite, no ice, a t-bone medium well and her to marry me.”
Silence. The waitress, me, the tables around us, the boys – I was like, what did you say? He was embarrassed because now all eyes are on him, the boys are nudging him, the waitress had a big ass grin on her face and I’m like “your going to propose to me while you order steak with bull horns on the wall!”
And this man, who finds words hard, said “I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life making you crazy, I want to greet every morning and end every day looking in your eyes. Here under the bull horns say that you are only mine as I am only yours.”
Well, hell, so I got engaged under the bull horns and he’s been making me crazy ever since.
Well, if people are going to mention tv shows, then I’ll mention movie scenes –
Corrina, Corrina – He wasn’t even talking to her, but when an avowed atheist starts praying to a God he never believed in before – that was a moving “I love you” scene even though she wasn’t physically there.
Music & Lyrics – Two scenes – when Alex is going to kiss Sophie and he’s just holding her face, rubbing his thumb under her chin, then kisses her and basically says “That’s nice” – the body language in that scene spoke way louder then words. Then later when he sings the song he wrote for her – even the line about her killing his plants – OH! I love that scene! Course I have a soft spot for May/December (older man/younger woman) romances and I always wanted someone to write a song for me.
You know, I mentioned my parents’ romance and my maternal grandparents – but I didn’t mention my paternal grandparents. Of course I didn’t know them that well. Grandpa Russell got Alzheimers while I was young and grammie Russell developed a brain tumor that started as skin cancer. Plus they lived in New Hampshire. (Grandpa Pavlick I never knew at all, he died in 1971 because he was a heavy smoker, but Grandma Pavlick spent the worse part of Illinois’ winters with us.) But while I don’t know any proposal stories or anything – I do know Grammi was the stubborn one.
See, Grandpa Russell was 11 years older then Grammie and her family had a FIT! They hated the fact an “old lecher” was courting her. So they would tell her lies about him, claiming he had a wife and kids in another town. They harassed and harangued her daily, trying to break them up.
Grammie never believed her family and ended up with Grandpa Russell. (Who did NOT have a family in another town.) She stood up to her own family and said, “This is the man I love” basically. Married him, and had a slew of children.
So stubbornness runs in the family.
Yes! Spike’s speech:
I’m also a sap for an old Nora Roberts short called Ending’s and Beginnings. I read it far more times than is healthy. Its ridiculously over the top. The guy spends the whole book chasing her; the heartless bitch. On the second ‘date’ he lets her know his plan.
Then after several paragraphs of heavy kissing that they both enjoy thoroughly she tell him:
The entire book is full of this nonsense and culminates in a full declaration of love from her in front of the entire Washington DC press corps. Ahh, cheese.
Georgette Heyer usually gives the goods too.
Well, if we’re going to mention movies, there was a period there where I was watching Much Ado About Nothing once a week whether I needed to or not [wry g]. That’s the movie that started my still ongoing fangirl squeeing on the subject of Kenneth Branagh.
I always liked both of Darcy’s confession scenes in Pride & Prejudice: both the one that he does really, really wrong and then the one at the end where it works out. D’aww.
Also a fan of Eowyn and Faramir. Benedick and Beatrice too, for that matter.
My favorite would have to be from Whether the Strom by Jean Ferris, it was my first romance series..my first romance…so my favorite part is in the last book when Rosie finally confeses that she’s in love with him and has always wanted him but she just thought he married her so she would be safe not because he loved her..he continues to confess his love and then they start to kiss passionately and he’s about to run his fingers through her hair but is stopped by the billion pins she has in her hair so he spends a good chunk of Time picking them out and is so fraustrated that he finishes and rips of her dress and makes wild hot sex with her…
Gina said
So funny (for me, behind my screen, not for you that day in front of him I guess), but the declaration after that was so much better !
JamieSing, thank you for sharing your family’s proposal
One of my favorites is from Johanna Lindsey’s “The Magic of You.” Amy’s been chasing Warren since the beginning of the book. She’s loved him since her first sight of him, even though he’s the angry one who loves a fight and has vowed to never again love a woman. She chased him and won his body but not his heart. After being discovered naked and in bed by her Mallory Uncles, she refuses to wed Warren unless it’s what he wants. He says he doesn’t love her and never pretended otherwise so she returns to England.
Later, he goes back to England, enraged at her apparent fling with his worst enemy. After trouncing the enemy in a fistfight, he goes to see Amy to tell her he’s sailing back to America. She just says, “I know.” It stops him cold and he says, “Wait. You can’t give up on me.”
I adore that book and I particularly love that scene.
I’m not too good at remembering love scenes like that- I tend to remember the more angsty scenes where the hero/heroine believes the other DOESN’T love them (what does that say about me?
I loved Laura Lee Guhrke’s “Secret Desires of a Gentlemen” and it reminds me of that scene from “Last Night’s Scandal” except in reverse. Phillip Hawthorne is a Marquess and he paid Maria Martingale to leave his younger brother alone because she was not good enough for him, but really it’s because he loves her himself. He has kept a daisy hair ribbon of her’s for years and keeps it in his pocket and when she discovers it there it’s this great angsty wonderful reveal and I loved it.
Also a book I read long ago who’s name I can’t remember featured a hero who’d left the heroine on their wedding night because he felt forced into it and when he came back he realized what he’d been missing and proclaimed his love for her on the docks in front of so many people and she ended it by pushing him into the ocean!
In To Desire A Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt, the hero, Reynaud was presumed dead but was in reality a captive for several years. He returns to England and sets out to regain his title and wants to find the traitor who was responsible for his capture and the deaths of a lot of men during that battle in the French and Indian War. Beatrice, the heroine, is kidnapped by that traitor to draw out Reynaud. He comes to her rescue and then exchanges himself for her.
Of course she doesn’t just leave and they get their HEA.
Here’s mine. It’s from Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins.
It’s Chastity’s mom’s wedding reception, and Chastity is just about to give the toast when Trevor, who she’s loved forever and who she thinks she’s lost, walks in with a ring.
“Chastity,” he says quietly. “I can’t live without you for another minute.”
The mike falls to the dance floor with a thunk as I cover my mouth with both hands. Tears spill out of my eyes, and I can’t seem to draw a breath. The room is absolutely silent.
“I’ve loved you my whole life, Chas, from that first day you took me home after Michelle died. And I’m terrified you’ll leave me or you’ll stop loving me or even worse, something will happen to you. But I can’t be without you anymore.” He takes my hands, which are shaking wildly, and swallows. “Today I watched Mike give away the woman he loves. I can’t do that, Chas. I thought I could, I thought it would be better if you were with someone else, but I was wrong. And I swear to you, I will love you for the rest of my life and nothing will ever come before you. Please, Chastity. Forgive me and marry me and have a bunch of babies with me…”
And it goes on for several more paragraphs as Chastity’s big family all gets into the act and then I’m laughing and crying at the same time—every single time I reread it!
Lynne Connolly already nailed mine (big surprise, I know, LOL!). It’s Heyer’s Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle (love those old skool double titles!). My original copy had a big fat crack that opened right to that scene. Though I will admit that both Venetia and Frederica also have scenes that have stuck with over the years (stoopid and pig’s foot jelly!).
Heyer’s Venetia is absolutely full of heart-stopping moments, from the kiss in the barn to the agonising moment when Damerel sends her away, to the protracted final scene in which he progresses, under the guidance of Venetia’s confident machinations, from drunken despair to levity, from contemplating a barren future to discussing the marriage settlements with Mr. Hendred. Both sexual and emotional tension are amazing in Venetia. It is my favourite Heyer (which is saying a lot) and a story that never fails to move and delight me.
@Alice said: “Also a book I read long ago who’s name I can’t remember featured a hero who’d left the heroine on their wedding night because he felt forced into it and when he came back he realized what he’d been missing and proclaimed his love for her on the docks in front of so many people and she ended it by pushing him into the ocean! “
Alice, I’m not sure, but you may be confusing two different Edith Layton Regencies. In THE ABANDONED BRIDE, Julia pushes the man she loves into the water at the docks in a way to “equalize” them (he had hit her once—there’s a long backstory there—and he thinks she will never forgive him for that act). In another Layton Regency (I think it’s SURRENDER TO LOVE), the hero feels that he’s been forced to marry the heroine and she senses this, so on their wedding night she leaves him. Eventually, of course, in both books, the couples have their HEA.
I absolutely loved that speech, and in a way i wish that he wasn’t brought back in Angel because that would have been a nice way to cap off the character. He loves Buffy so much that he dies for her (not to mention the world at large).
I remembered another book scene that I really loved. It was in the last book of Nora Robert’s Circle Trilogy when Cian shows up at Moira’s and she sees him standing in the sunlight and knows that he gave up immortality for her.
@Jamisings, Corina Corina is one of my favorite movies, and I love the scene where he shows up at her family dinner, letting everyone know that he loves her.
Another movie scene that I adore is the one from the Sound of Music when the Captain goes looking for Maria and tells her that “there isn’t going to be a Baroness anymore…You can’t marry someone when you’re in love with someone else” Oh, my 5 year old heart just swooned when I heard that.
On tv, there were 2 shows that just did it for me. 1. The Nanny. There were several on this one (starting with Max declaring his love for Fran on the plane—too bad he took it back in the 4th season premiere and ending with Niles confessing to loving C.C. for 20 years). 2. Gilmore Girls (In the 4th season finale, Luke gets up the courage to ask Lorelai on a real date, and bring flowers to the test run of the inn. Then, Jason shows up and tells him the he is dating Lorelai, forcing Luke to confront Lorelai, who tells him that she isn’t dating anyone. Then, the kiss. I also have to mention the scene from their first date when he reveals that he has carried the horoscope she gave him in his wallet since the day that they met “I was with a customer. She interrupts me, wild-eyed, begging for coffee, so I tell her to wait her turn. Then she starts following me around, talking a mile a minute, saying God knows what. So finally I turn to her, and I tell her she’s being annoying – sit down, shut up, I’ll get when I get to her…She asked me what my birthday was. I wouldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t stop talking. I gave in. I told her my birthday. Then she opened up the newspaper to the horoscope page, wrote something down, tore it out, handed it to me…So I’m looking at this piece of paper in my hand, and under Scorpio, she had written ‘You will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she’ll go away.’ I gave her coffee…She told me to hold on to that horoscope, put it in my wallet, and carry it around with me – [takes a piece of paper from his wallet and gives it to her]).
One of my favorite couples is Jorick and Katelina from the Amaranthine series by Joleene Naylor. She is an indie author and her two books are awesomely cheap on an ebook, but they are so real and she depicts what a relationship between a human and a ancient vampire would probably be like. Not many scenes bring tears to my eyes, but they did and I’ve read a lot of books
. I rank this couple (and Jorick, sigh especially) up with Kate/Curran and Bones/Kat.
Laurie King’s A Monstrous Regiment of Women offers an exquisite unfolding of romance against a nice, tight mystery backdrop. In the final pages, Holmes kisses Russell:
“God, I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“But Holmes, the first time you laid eyes on me you thought I was a boy.”
“And that caused me no end of consternation…[?]”
Well, that’s my best effort from memory. The book is in a box in my storage shed which makes me very edgy and revisit my impulse to buy the eBook so I can put my hands on it any time I like.
I also have a huge girlie weak spot for The Scarlet Pimpernel when Percy, convinced that the Lady Maguerite is a treacherous spy for the French Revolution who never really loved him, kisses every place her hand has rested and her foot has trod. So cheesy, so indulgent, and soooooo fabjous.
And that’s what’s awesome about books. They can do stuff like watch someone sleep or kiss the ground she walked on and it’s swoonworthy. IRL, it’s borderline icky if not downright alarming.
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned Wuthering Heights yet, but since it’s not a romance (not even remotely, in my opinion), I guess that makes sense. 😉 But it does have a pair of the most amazing reveal scenes I’ve run across.
The first time I read that, I was twelve years old and positively riveted. This was some sexy stuff!
Also, Phèdre nó Delaunay and Joscelin Verreuil in the cave in Kushiel’s Dart. Le swoon.
Tae it’s my favourite Austen too. I especially love the scene after she’s read the letter and she meets him on the street. When her brother-in-law asks Wentworth where he’s going and he answers “I hardly know” because he’s so happy to see Ann and her reaction to him, swoon! Then they wander through the park together completely unaware of everyone else but eachother. I re-read that book all the time, just for the letter scene!
I think Persuasion is the reason I love Romance so much and even after I’ve read a really crappy book I still keep reading Romance because I know how great they can be when an author gets it right.
A short story by Meljean Brook called Thicker than Blood (I think…) has just the loveliest way of revealing how the heroine feels about the hero Jack that she refers to as her sunshine boy.
Cue extreme sobbage….
I had to think about this question. As a series reader there are often times when the payoff is not the big scene, but the fact that a big scene existed at all since the reader has seen this coming…and the fact it did come is almost scary…(will it ruin the rest of the series?). This prevented me from selecting Curran and Kate from the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. After all when is the big moment? When he informs she is his mate? Or when she tames his beast? or maybe when she fights for 11 days, while he is in a coma…see my problem?
Miles and Ekaterina’s wonderful letter has already been put up, from Lois McMasters Bujold’s Vorkosigan books.
And the publisher is not publishing any more Samantha Jellicoe books by Suzanne Enoch (Please everyone do read these wonderful books, I want the rest of the story).
Perhaps I can find a different example, (ahh yes, big moment, big pay off):
There we go, big moment delivered for big finish after 5 books of characters totally screwing up their HEA…
My favorite scene of this kind in a movie from The Village
Ivy Walker: When we are married, will you dance with me? I find dancing very agreeable. Why can you not say what is in your head?
Lucius Hunt: Why can you not stop saying what is in yours? Why must you lead, when I want to lead? If I want to dance I will ask you to dance. If I want to speak I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying that I sometimes cannot think clearly or do my work properly? What gain can rise of my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others. (pause) And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night.
And if you all could pretend that I didn’t bork the html, that would be awesome.
Redheadedgirl I’m so with you on that scene in The Village. It also has a very good tear dropping from her eye with backlight that I always found mesmerising.
I’m also on board with Persuasion, the whole book always tugs my heartstrings.
I just remembered my favorite moment from Outlander. Jamie is about to get himself into another dangerous situation, and he tells Claire that “An I die without telling ye I love ye, ye’ll ken it was because I dinna hae the time.” Oh swoon.
I have two favorite bits from Outlander. The first is when, for the first time, Clare tells Jamie she loves him.
The second is when Ian is recounting how he proposed to Jenny- rather that he doesn’t remember what was said, but that it ended with her kissing him and saying “We’ll be married on St. Martin’s Day then” and that he kept explaining why they couldn’t do any such thing until he “found myself before a priest swearing to a lot of very improbable things.”
Actually, that’s from the end of The Fiery Cross—and just one more reason that book is woefully underrated! It’s the final scene of the book, I believe, and takes place when they’re just sitting there, calmly. Jamie’s not about to dash into danger.
I have lots of favorite scenes from the Outlander series. Gabaldon writes them so well!
Here’s the scene from TFC:
Sigh. So lovely.
Ok, I’m totally cheating. I can’t remember the “I love you” scene that rocked me, but there was one scene in a book that I thought was so good and so realistic that it’s stuck with me over the years. Too bad I can’t remember the name of the book!
She owned a dance studio and she needed money for something…her sister, perhaps. And she agreed to have this guy’s baby in exchange for the financial help. The first time they had sex she just laid there, praying for it to be over and that peeved him, and I’m guessing hurt his male ego. He in as much told her that he didn’t care whether she was having a hard time with it or not, he was fulfilling his end of the bargain and she needed to do the same. Next mating was somewhat smoother. I loved that reaction because it is so much more natural than the majority of these types of stories I read. It’s always that she’s disgusted by what she’s about to do but she suddenly loves it the minute the stranger touches her. This woman was sick at what she was doing and showed it, until she knew him better. EXCELLENT scene. Sorry! I just had to cheat:)
I love that scene in The Village. The not-talking stuff while still feelings things pretty intensely reminds me of my husband. Or, I pretend he is feeling all sorts of squishy stuff for me under his long, contented silences 🙂
Ok, it’s completely sappy, but I love the big emotional scene at the end of JR Ward’s Love Awakened. The hero, Zsadist, begins the story as an angry, misogynistic, illiterate vampire who, after decades of abuse, hates everyone and everything. He falls for and eventually pushes away the heroine, Bella, because he doesn’t thinks he’s good enough for her (and that whole ‘hating women’ thing he has to get over). By the time he realizes he needs Bella in his life, she’s already gone. So, he does a complete 180 to get his life in order before going after her. She beats him to the punch, however. She surprises him to give him some news, not expecting him to reciprocate her feelings. After stumbling through some socially awkward pleasantries, Zsadist painstakingly writes “I love you” on a scrap of paper and gives it to her, letting her know that he’s learning to read and changing himself to make a relationship with her work. It gets me every single time I re-read it.
In a book, one of my favourite ‘reveal’ scenes happens near the end of Lucilla Andrews’ The First Year. The book is about Rose, a student nurse in her first year of training at a London hospital, and she ends up falling for the SSO (Senior Surgical Officer) Jake Waring, though she keeps this to herself because she’s sure he doesn’t see her in that way, and near the end she learns he’s taken another job and will be leaving the hospital, and she’s devastated, and…well, to make a long story short, they run into each other outside the hospital, when they’re both off duty, and Jake takes Rose for a stroll though the docks, and they sit on a bench and watch the ships:
“The stone seat was built to the right of one of the long line of sheds. It directly overlooked the water in the now half-empty lock. As we sat down Jake looked round nostalgically; he looked as if he was taking a photograph in his mind.
I asked, ‘Are you going to miss all this?’
Slowly he turned to look at me. ‘Yes.’”
And then, after some awkward small talk, he starts to tell her how he truly feels about her, how he’s always felt about her from the first time they crossed paths.
“He looked down at the cigarette in his hand. I noticed the cigarette was shaking slightly as he added quietly, ‘Does this worry you? I can I go on?’
‘Please—go on.’
His grey eyes looked into mine, and I wondered how I could ever have thought them cold.”
It’s that one little thing—the fact his hand is shaking—that never fails to get me, because he’s normally so calm and controlled, and he’s a surgeon so his hands are always steady for his work, and that slightly shaking cigarette reveals the depth of his emotion at that moment better than anything else could.
Anyhow, it’s a great, swoon-worthy moment in a great romantic book.
Almost as great as the moment in the movie ‘Crossing Delancey’ when Sam the pickle man tells Isabelle, ‘And I said, “Yes, Mrs. Mandelbaum, this one I’ll meet”.’ Which never fails to choke me up. (For those who’ve never seen that movie, the lead-up to that moment starts around the 4:30 mark on this clip:
)
And the porch scene from the Village, which is indeed all kinds of awesome, is also on YouTube, here:
it’s a great, swoon-worthy moment in a great romantic book.
Eloisa James’ “Taming of the Duke”- not the big proposal scene, but a moment during, ah, intimacy where she says ‘oh, I never knew….,’ revealing that in fact, she knows who he is despite the elaborate masquerade he’s been belaboring to convince her that he is his own illegitimate cousin (god I love spelling out romance plot lines. Hilarious). (Rather than meaning what it sound like in this context- dirty!- i swear, it’s very sweet!) Anyway- I love this scene because I read it as the moment she figures out who he is, and as such it’s very touching. According to the author’s website, she (Imogen, the character) already knew, which also makes sense, since having her actually having sex with him under false pretenses is a little icky, but hey. That’s how it works for me.
I love the scene in Portrait in Death by J.D. Robb when Eve comes to Ireland because she knows that Rourke needs her. Don’t have the book with me so I can’t quote it, but when he sees the helicopter and at first thinks something’s happened to her, then realizes she’s braved her fear of flying to come to him… *sigh*