“Now, here’s a philosophical dilemma for a vicar … is it a lie if you don’t know you’re lying? Is it a lie if you’re lying to yourself?”“Is it a sin if I tell my cousin to bugger off?”

“No, Kinkade,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I don’t think a woman can destroy you. You can’t be destroyed because…there’s nothing to destroy. I warrant that you just reflect whatever’s near you. Like a puddle of mud. You reflect honor if you’re near it. You reflect decay if you’re near it. Left to your own devices, you’ve no moral center at all, no concern except for your own pleasure. This is the result.”

“She wanted to buckle, lie on her side and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe.”

“I love you so much i can hardly tell my own heart from yours anymore, and I've never said it to another woman in my life as it's never until now been true.”

“Oh, my goodness, Lord Dryden. You should have seen your face when you said the word work. It’s not counted among the deadly sins, you know.”

“Furthermore—”“There’s a ‘furthermore’?” His voice was utterly inflectionless.“—I’m not a child. I’m a lady born of one of England’s finest and oldest families, and I daresay even you know how to behave in the presence of a lady. Regardless of the inconvenience I’ve caused you, I’ll thank you to remember whatever manners you’ve managed to feign to date, because the ones you’re exhibiting do you no credit and merely reinforce the prevailing opinion, Captain Flint, that you are a savage.” She delighted in giving the S a serpent-like sibilance. “The measure of a gentleman is how he behaves when he hasn’t an audience to witness the beauty of his manners. And I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, my lord, but centuries of fine breeding have ensured that I need not, as you say, exert myself if I choose not to. Only the likes of you equate the actual need to work with virtue. It is in fact due to the work of my ancestors that I no longer need to, and my family considers this a mark of honor.”

“Vicars, he often thought, are essentially God’s lawyers on the earth. Interpreters of the law, the finders of nuance, sifters through rationalizations to get at the truth or the need of the moment.Guessers, in other words.”