“Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "incoming!”

“[He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary.”

“For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't deny that you're beautiful. No mirror could tell you otherwise. But there are beautiful women for the buying in any brothel in London. Oh yes, and the ballrooms, too, if one has the proper price. It wasn't your appearance that caught me. It was the way you put me down in the gallery at Sibley Court." Vaughn's lips curved in a reminiscent smile. "And the way you tried to bargain with me after.""Successfully bargained," Mary corrected."That," replied Lord Vaughn, "is exactly what I mean. Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?"Mary couldn't in honesty say that anyone had.Vaughn's eyes were as hard and bright as silver coins. "Those are the reasons I want you. I want you for your cunning mind and your hard heart, for your indomitable spirit and your scheming soul, for they're more honest by far than any of the so-called virtues.""The truest poetry is the most feigning?" Mary quoted back his own words to him."And the most feigning is the most true.”

“Mr. Alsworthy!” exclaimed Letty’s mother. “How can you laugh at such a matter! Although, I must say, I would have thought if a pirate were to kidnap anyone, he would kidnap Mary. She looks quite as I did in my youth, and I’m sure a pirate would have wanted to kidnap me.”“Don’t taunt me with lost opportunities, my dear.”

“LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.”

“He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles -- his terms, that -- and making her own way in the world.He didn't realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown.”

“The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.”