“They had known each other for many years. Young Jacob had found his way onto a ship borne for the tropics, indentured to a pair of wealthy male planters, and he’d run away, ending up at the decaying ruins of La Briere, the plantation house of the de Malheurs. Lucien had been living there alone, the only survivor of a virulent outbreak of cholera, and the two young men, barely more than boys, had bonded together, determined to escape.”

“Thirteen years of friendship had bonded us together more thoroughly than if we had been born of the same mother. Even at this late stage, I was unwilling to let him go.”

“He should have known someone like Lucien de Malheur would offer no loyalty, no male solidarity.”

“We had slipped into each others lives seamlessly, as though we had known each other for years.”

“Even if we had gone away together when I wanted us to, we would've been together for a year, maybe two. But sooner or later, other people would've found a way to wedge us apart.”

“He lived in chambers that had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.”