“I took a fall,” he confirmed evenly. After a hesitation doubtless only Phoebe noticed.And Phoebe didn’t know whether it was the sort of fall Lucifer took, or the sort poets wrote about when love struck, or even if it was an innuendo at all, because she suspected everything was destined to sound like an innuendo from now on.”

“Magnanimous of you.'His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo.”

“Tell me—what wouldn’t you do for Violet, Captain Flint?”Flint didn’t yet know the answer to this. Though he was perhaps closer to knowing.“I haven’t yet been tested.”Lyon smiled slowly at this, and shook his head. “Ah. Clearly you haven’t a soul of a poet, then, sir. You cannot be lured into hyperbole: ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do! Nothing!’ And etcetera. I can. I like hyperbole. Don’t fear it, Flint! Believe me, there’s some truth to all the purple words that surround love, you know. When you love someone more than life—and it is indeed possible to love someone more than life, or otherwise poets wouldn’t have gone on and on about it over the centuries—and you know, you know, you were born for only one person…imagine you cannot have them without tearing everything else you know asunder. Without hurting and disappointing all the other people you love. What then would you do?”

“Love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn’t like Corinthians. The “suffereth long” and “is kind” nonsense. It’s like the Song of Solomon. It’s jealousy and fire and floods. It’s everything that consumes.”

“And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him.“I love you.”Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in London in such a small voice.And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn’t blink. But then she realized she’d somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment.His hands remained at his sides.Which is when she noticed they were trembling.God help her, that’s when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes.One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it.And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn’t a good deal louder than hers.“Then it’s just as well that I love you, Genevieve.”

“He stared in something like disbelief. He'd seen a man convulse after being struck by a bolt of lighting once. Watching the marionettes was just that pleasant.”

“She needed to know more. “But that means…”“It means I love you, Violet. I have never said that aloud to another human being.”He said it quickly and tonelessly. As if he was afraid of the words. Violet stood basking in those words the way she might a sunbeam after a long, gray day. She closed her eyes. And she knew she was lit from within.“Do not let me just stand here having said those words,” he said stiffly. “It’s undignified.”“I love you, too,” she said softly, hurriedly. Feeling abashed. Eyes still closed. Egads. So this was what it was like to be in love. Awkward and foolish, indeed.”