“Do you gamble, Captain MacNeill?”“Never, sir.”“No?” the marquis looked surprised. “Thought you soldiers were all inveterate gamblers.”“Only with our lives, sir. Never had anything else I could afford to lose.”

“I’ve thought of a reason,” Kit MacNeill said”

“She'd stood by that creed. No softness, because the world wasn't soft; lots of laughter, because if you were in on the joke, the joke couldn't be on you; And no wanting what you couldn't take, because the world never gave.Or so she'd thought.”

“Foolish Lily," he said. "Don't you know why I haven't touched you? Didn't you guess that once you were in my arms I would never let you go?”

“I am no good without you, Ginesse,” he said. “I spent a lifetime alone, but I never understood loneliness until I was away from you. I never understood happiness until I saw you again.”

“The knowledge that she was needed by something living, that she could benefit another creature, produce happiness, or contentment, or just a feeling of security--somehow it filled a part of her as nothing else had.”

“Where will you go? What will you do?" he demanded."That need be no concern of yours--""The hell it isn't!" he shouted. "Everything about you is my concern."She opened her mouth to deny this but the look of him stopped her. For a long tense moment he studied her and when he spoke his voice was low and furious and yearning."I don't give a bloody damn if I never share your bed, your name, or your house -- you are still my concern. You can leave, take yourself from my ken, disappear for the rest of my life but you cannot untangle yourself from my -- my concern. That I have of you, Miss Bede, for that, at least, I do not need your permission."His words shocked her. She looked decades hence and she saw a specter of what might have been haunting her every moment, her every act, for the rest of her life."Your concern is misplaced.""It's mine to misplace," he said steadily.”