Meredith Duran

“For what is love but a great rebellion against caution and sense?”

“If a woman could win love with her body, the world would have no bastards.”

“You came for me,” she whispered.His hand wound through her hair, cradling her. “I will always come for you,” he said.”

“I admit, that the brain does not govern the body as well as one might wish- else all men would be saints and hell would be empty of lechers.”

“Surely this is what death would be like: nothingness, oblivion, as the world continued to turn, heedless of her absence.”

“Spoken often enough, words become [became] nonsense.”

“Force persuades a person to speak, but it cannot guarantee his honesty. Quite the reverse: it will extract confessions from innocents and lies from simple sinners...”

“Lord John: 'The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.' Lady Nora: 'I am sorry to hear that, I suppose it takes some wit to produce one's own entertainment. Are you often bored?”

“For a woman's words to wound would require a man to listen first!”

“In love my temperament found a new taste for life: it found a cure for the pain, and a pain without cure.'" –Ghalib”

“She had always loved him, after all. And perhaps he knew it. Perhaps he saw more than she had suspected. And despite it, he did not look away.”

“I'm here," he said into her ear, as the tears came faster. "Emma, I'm here with you now. Listen to me: I will always be here."Always, she thought. He said "always," but he had forgotten to say finally. Finally you are here. Thank God, finally at last.”

“She did not feel anything so boring as beautiful. She felt fierce.”

“Some people were like that; they could not escape criticism, because they never quite managed to convince themselves of the role everyone believed they should fill.”

“On a breath, he leaned forward. It was such a small space to close. Such an infinite distance to cross.”

“It is not proper, you being closeted up here with him --""Delphinia, don't be absurd. I am so firmly on the shelf that the maids are tempted to dust me.”

“There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.”

“He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.”

“She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.”

“She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others' responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved.”

“And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him - facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jelaous besides; diwowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?”

“and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights.""No", she said. "Not particularly.""Only missteps."She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer." "So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.”

“You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.”

“I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.”

“Good heavens, ogling was addictive.”

“What modern art required was an imagination drawn to possibilities, rather than braced by smug presumptions.”

“Alex understood such discipline. He knew the rarity of it, and the cost. And on the rare occasions when he happened to touch her, he did wonder what else she might have been, if she had not been so determined to be typical.”

“...nobody belongs to that world...Nobody feels as if they belong, at any rate. They're all watching each other--fearful of the laughter coming from across the room, wondering to themselves, are they the target? Are they the joke?”

“His smile faded a little, growing softer, more intimate, like the look he'd showed her in bed this morning. 'You haven't learned yet when to lie.' Slowly, as if the words were being dragged from him, he added: 'I confess, Nell, I hope you never learn.' She found herself staring at him. Unsteadying thought: there was something hot in his eyes that wasn't purely want. It was too tender, too ... affectionate.”

“You interest me,' he said, and his tone suggested this fact itself surprised him, meant something more to him than perhaps it should: a man surprised by being interested was living a piss-poor facsimile of life, in her view.”

“He smiled at her: he simply couldn't help himself. He was so glad she'd wandered into his house to kill him.”

“Modesty, if you consider it, is the most unforgivable sort of falsehood: it's a lie that does damage to no one but yourself.”

“I've heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness”

“I deserve better —such a dangerous, mad thought for a woman to entertain.”

“Was not love a terrible thing? One thought one had learned to manage it, and then it sprang free again, rattling its claws in one's liver.”

“His slow smile might haved lured angels from heaven, flocking noisily, arms outstretched,happy to burn for him.”

“He see's the world the way cynics do; Not looking for false Hope.”

“Manners, you see, come down to a single principle: talk of nothing that might actually prove interesting.”

“Miss Masters was not content with threatening to hire away his staff, oh no. First, she had to perfume it.”

“He smiled. "How kind of you to confirm what I already know. Perhaps next you will introduce me to myself. I hear I am quite popular.”

“His hand still rested on her breast, but his fingers had stilled. The touch that had been so agitating now felt comforting. As though he soothed her by it.”

“It means that you are my freedom, love.""Yes," she whispered. That was it exactly. "And you are mine.”

“Canada is lovely," she breathed against his lips. "And you are lovely."His laughter ghosted into her mouth. "That's my line, Lyd. You are supposed to think me handsome”

“After a long moment, the Countess sat back down. "So," she said. "You … do love her. I must say, you look peculiarly resigned to it."He shrugged. "It is not fresh news for me.""And for Emma?""Neither welcomed nor openly acknowledged.""But acknowledged all the same, you believe.""Perhaps," he said. "I cannot know. Not anymore."-Delphinia, Lady Chad and Julian”

“When he entered after her, she saw that he meant to come straight to her, and she raised a hand. "No," she said. "Wait."His footsteps halted. He had always listened to her, hadn't he? Had always heard her."-Emma and Julian”

“Words are not the only way we communicate, you and I. They never were.”

“Yours if you want it."- Julian to Emma.”

“With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience—character—knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant.”

“She had told herself she should be reassured by his squeamishness; a man who balked at scars would not give her new ones. Now she suddenly wondered if she’d had it wrong. A man without scars would always underestimate their value. He would not see them as marks of courage.”

“—that if she touched him right now, their flesh would recognize each other. The wildest thought: these scars, his and hers, would speak to each other, communicating intimacies that could not be unshared.”