“No words for the passion. No words for the need. No words for the sheer epiphany of the moment. And so, on an otherwise unremarkable Friday afternoon, in the heart of Mayfair, in a quiet drawing room on Mount Street, Colin Bridgerton kissed Penelope Featherington. And it was glorious.”

“Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment.”

“Maybe it was I who needed to learn how to be quiet instead of cluttering the moment with too many words.”

“But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”

“To deal with the word of Jesus otherwise than by doing it is to give him the lie. It is to deny the Sermon on the Mount and to say No to his word...That is why as soon as the hurricane begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ's, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it.”

“And, she was able to tell herself with some satisfaction, the man in question - one Colin Bridgerton - felt precisely the same way........His earth shook, his heart leaped, and Penelope knew without a doubt that his breath was taken away as well. For a good ten seconds.Falling off a horse tended to do that to a man.”