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Happy Valentine's Day weekend! Whether you enjoy the whirlwind of chocolate and champagne or find the holiday too commercialized, I hope you had/are having a great weekend (it's a three-day weekend in the states). My daughter and I enjoyed wearing red and having the excuse for presents :-). I've running a favorite literary romantic moments contest on my website and one comment reminded me of a particular category of romantic moments that can be especially poignant and powerful. Farewells. Whether it's the end of a love affair or a moment of separation on the road to a happy ending, farewells can bring out confessions of emotions that are suppressed in less tumultuous times. In Imperial Scandal , I loved writing the farewells between the various couples at the Duchess of Richmond's ball before the battle of Waterloo. It was a bit of challenge to write so many different goodbye scenes, but I also found it was a great way to differentiate how each couple's relatio...

I like to do a romantic moments blog around Valentine’s Day. This year I thought I’d focus on moments where a happy ending for the couple in question seems an impossibility. Sometimes they are the ending to a story. Sometimes they are the bleak moment before a triumphant ending. Either way, they can be intensely romantic, despite or perhaps because of the edge of sorrow. My examples are mostly historical and come from novels, films, and a Broadway musical. Venetia by Georgette Heyer . Damerel sending Venetia away for her own good. I feel a heart tug every time I read about him throwing her up into the saddle for the last time. Much as I want to shake Damerel, there’s something that always gets me about a guy trying to be noble. Atonement by Ian McEwan . Cecilia running after Robbie and embracing him before the police take him away. The fact that she stands by him against the seeming evidence, against her family, against the pressures of class prejudice stunned me the first time I read...