#i will also say! autumn is currently p easy to get online in its original form

[mermaidsirennikita]

marcus, lord westcliff, are those your luscious locks and giant hands i see before me in gorgeous painted detail??? god i need to get my hands on a copy. please, ma'am, won't you share some golden marcus lines from the novel?

I have good news and bad news:

The bad news is, that stepback was not from It Happened One Autumn (but it is a Kleypas stepback, for sure, and it is tooootally in line with the Wallflowers stepbacks). The good news is, I own not one but two unedited/stepback copies of Autumn, because nobody is going to catch me slipping once people start realizing en masse that there's a difference between the edited and unedited copies and start buying up the latter lol.

So here's the Westcliff/Lillian stepback!

It's really quite beautiful. The detail on her dress is exquisite, and the foot pop--please.

And I also do have some quotes, though I will say that some of my favorite Westcliff quotes are when he's being a bit... of a mess lol

When he highkey negs Lillian in the butterfly garden about how she actually can't kiss, which is a shame, and maybe she needs lessons and I wonder whoooo could teach her???

Then one of my favorite parts of the book, where he's a total asshole and stops fingering Lillian (still in the butterfly garden) to be like "well DAMN Lillian, if I can get that far with you, imagine what would happen with someone who has ACTUAL GAME like St. Vincent???" Ridiculous self-own

When he almost comes in his pants while Lillian starts babbling drunken entendres about how something soooo biiiiiiig could fit into something soooooooo smaaaaaaaallllllllll

his voice cracking kills me, truly the man was suuuuufferiiiiing

When he had one of the best classic "I COULD HAVE PLANTED A BABY IN YOUR FERTILE WOMB TWENTY MINUTES AGO" moments

Like it's some of the stupidest shit I've ever read and it's SO. FUNNY. YOU COULD BE BREEDING LILLIAN. I SMELLED YOU OVULATING. SHUT UP. MARRY ME.

In my head he has his hands on his hips

And then I have the actual legit romantic speech he does, which is one of the only big romantic things he says in the book, which is why it goes on for a huge paragraph that bleeds onto the next page

"do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise" PERSUASIVE, SIR

also pretty sure this led to the scene where he and Lillian end up grinding on the floor until Simon Hunt walks in and is like "bro I thought you said you only needed to fuck once a week