“She would be a sparkling accent on his arm. She speaks flawless French and Italian, and has a limitless supply of charm when she wishes to dispense it. And'd she'll use him. She'll take, take more. If it was necessary, or if she simply had the whim, she'd toss him to the wolves to see who'd win."He finished the whiskey. "You, Lieutenant, are often crude, you are certainly rude, and have very little sense of how to be the wife--in public--of a man in Roarke's position. And you would do anything, no matter what the personal risk, to keep him from harm. She will never love him. You will never do anything but.”

“She has her helmet, shield and sword. Does she finish him or take pity on the gutless thing before her?Does she set fire and smoke him out, forcing him to fight, or does she let him live with himself and take satisfaction from knowing that he has never been in a real fight in his life and that one day he will have to face his demons in person, along with the consequences, and that both can be far more painful than anything she could ever do to him.”

“She looked at him then, but his image blurred behind tears that swelled into her eyes. She must leave. She must leave this room, because she wanted to hit him, as she had sworn she never would do. She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart that she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth. "You lied to me," she said.She turned and ran from the room.”

“Sarah wondered what they—the ‘they’ who had taken her child; the ‘they’ or the ‘him’ or the ‘her’—were feeding him.Sometimes a fear dug at her until she acknowledged it: maybe they weren’t feeding him at all.Who would do that? Who would willingly starve a child? Who would hurt her baby? Who would take her baby? Who was this person and why were they allowed to exist?And what would I do to that person if I got the chance?There were days when she lay on the bed and concocted scenarios in her head. She would see herself finding Lockie. She was never really sure of the place. It would be a dark room in a dark house but the location wasn’t important. She would see herself rescuing her child, folding him in her arms and saying his name. Then she would see the person who had taken him.There was never a face, just a body with a blank head, but Sarah would see herself grow until she towered over the person and then she would hit and hit and hit until there was nothing left and all the time she would be screaming, ‘How dare you take my child? How dare you take him?’She had to find him. The desperate need to find him swirled around her body with everything she did. It ate into her soul and sometimes she had to hold on to the kitchen counter to stop herself running out into the road and screaming his name. She wanted to be looking for him all the time. She wanted to leave Sammy and Doug and just keep going until she got to the city and then she wanted to knock on every door across the whole of Sydney until she found her son. But maybe he wasn’t even in Sydney anymore. Maybe he wasn’t even in Australia. Where are you, Lockie? Where are you, where are you, where are you?”

“She would give him everything. She would do anything to take away his pain, including offering up herself.”

“He'll never do it again,' she swears, but he will because she'll let him. Now me? I've got no use for imitation love that packs a punch.”