How do you seduce a man like Salieri?

Susan and the man in black make a palaver.

Ding Rong, in his narrowed dagger-keen focus on his task, is unsure of the time when he is first made aware of Wang Zhi’s approach. He knows only by the dark of his workroom, dim-lit by his low-burned candle, that it is well into the evening. He knows only that it is no other visitor but Wang Zhi, circling into his periphery, portended by a flutter of draping fabric, because no other but Wang Zhi would dare to come unannounced.

Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Irving gets pissed on and has the time of his life.

Nathan is there in the kitchen, waiting for him, unwrapping his hands.

Jonathan was much the happier, being mourned by one king and loved by two, and do not the loves and griefs of kings exceed those of other men?

Or, capture and death.

If they cannot be vulnerable with one another as brothers, who else will shoulder that weight for them? Who else could survive it? Who else would dare risk their back and their life in the trying?

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his …

Six years later, Fitzjames and Crozier broach a delicate topic in the privacy of a well-heated room.

Sequel to More Fools Than Wise.

Tozer struggles to impart some discipline to one Mr. Hickey.