Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 2
1863
The sea took her love. The man she married may have known exactly what happened to him. Sylvia Robson gave her heart to Charley Kinraid, a bold sailor whose dangerous life on the waves promised adventure and passion. Then came the news every woman in Monkshaven feared: his ship was lost, her lover drowned. With her prospects dwindling and her family pressing, Sylvia made a desperate choice. She married Philip Hepburn, a man of steady means but stiff manner, a man who had always loved her in silence. But as months pass, a terrible suspicion takes root. What if Philip knows more about Kinraid's fate than he has ever admitted? What if the man who promised her security is the one who sealed her true love's doom? Set against the grey Yorkshire coast and the press gangs of the Napoleonic Wars, Gaskell builds a tragedy of class, coercion, and the lies we tell to survive. Volume Two unfolds the devastating aftermath, as Sylvia discovers that some betrayals come wearing a wedding ring.
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“... that kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations ...””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“Daniel was very like a child in all the parts of his character. He was strongly affected by whatever was present, and apt to forget the absent. He acted on impulse, and too often had reason to be sorry for it; but he hated his sorrow too much to let it teach him wisdom for the future.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“The morning brought more peace if it did not entirely dissipate fear.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“Ay! but mother's words are scarce, and weigh heavy. Father's liker me, and we talk a deal o' rubble; but mother's words are liker to hewn stone. She puts a deal o' meaning in 'em.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“All the morning since he got up he had been trying to fight through his duties”
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“But between the busy heads and over-reaching arms he could see Charley and Sylvia, sitting close together, talking and listening more than eating. She was in a new strange state of happiness not to be reasoned about, or accounted for, but in a state of more exquisite feeling than she had ever experienced before;””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“in St Jean d'Acre;””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“Fancy is three parts o' love.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“La atracción son tres cuartas partes del amor.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
