“One child out of wedlock is an error. Two suggests carelessness. Three—and six—is simply wrong. Wrong.”

“He's male. I've noticed that sometimes the brains simply get left out of the package.”

“She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.”

“I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly. She visibly paled. :My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear.”

“I would like, just once, for a woman to see me as other than a person with a coronet. Simply as a man, no different than other men.”

“Life should not be measured by time. The only thing that counts is how one uses the time one has.”

“The only thing I regret about age are the wrinkles. But I have high hopesfor this new almond cream! Do you know, that Italian apothecary promises the cream will make one'sskin as soft as a baby's cheek? Once your child arrives, we'll have a viable comparison. Not having seena baby in years, how would I know what its skin looks like?""I'm glad my condition will prove to be of use," Esme said rather tartly.”