“They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female”

“Very well,” she said after a moment. “Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn’t it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal.”“It also implies integrity. And honor. And—”“Steadfastness,” she completed, with only a hint of irony.“So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?”“How can they be otherwise?”

“Jules was frozen with incredulity. In truth, he could not speak. He was touched by the display of honor in two country squires, and by the humbling - in truth hilarious - definitive evidence that some things were beyond his control. And life knew what was best for him better than he did, and had brought it to him, not with graceful precision, but with magnificent, ridiculous poetry.”

“He had one of those chins what…” One of the innkeeper’s hands went up to squeeze his chin into two little folds. “…a chin what looks like an arse.” “A chin dimple? A cleft?”“Not cleft so much as dented, Mr. Eversea. And blue eyes. Went nicely with his costume.” Dumbstruck silence followed this observation. The innkeeper sighed. “It’s me wife. If ye gets yerself a wife one day, Mr. Eversea, ye’ll come ou’ wi’ things like that, too, mark my words, mark my words. ‘This matches wi’ that or with this,’ and so on. They talk like that, women do. She makes me look a’ things and give opinions. She’ll turn me into a girl yet.” This seemed unlikely, but all Colin said was, “Blue eyes and an arse chin. Thank you, that’s very helpful, Mr. Croker.”

“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.”

“Don’t be tedious, Lavay. If it’s so necessary for you to know,” he said ungraciously. “She won a contest.”There was a short stunned silence.“You…played a game?” Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. “And you lost to a…girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?”Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. “I challenged her to aim a dart…let’s just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,”he finished curtly. “She was lucky.”“You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?”