“His parenting never involved indulgence, just benign neglect. And having let me do as I wish for two decades, it seems a mean trick to impose discipline by marrying me off to some relic from another age.” “Perhaps.” “Who knows if the old baron is even up to the task of managing me! You say I’ll give him fatal spasms.” “Only if the drink doesn’t kill him first,” Clun quipped. “He’s a… a tippler?” She asked. “More than tipples, if memory serves. A bottomless cask. Mouth like a funnel on one end and a wee spigot at the other,” he concluded with a wink.”

“By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. When it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.” “I will not marry without love, my lord.”“Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply. “I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”   “My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”   “I cannot promise you perfection.”   “It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life, why can’t I?” “Perhaps because you are not an aggressive water fowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”  “ I will not settle for less.” “By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun said and rudely stood up to leave. “Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing waterfowl for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis of marriage, as if you knew better than I.”

“Finally, Elizabeth understood that she had been orphaned not once but twice when her mother passed away. She lost her father as surely as her mother on the day of her birth. All those years, she idealized the earl’s devotion to her mother’s memory and ignored the price she herself paid. She grew up a lonely child, envying a beloved spectral being and wishing someday for an undying, perfect love of her own in compensation.   Her next thought stunned her: she would never wish that childhood on any child of hers.”

“Rather than fall completely under his spell, she huffed, “I should like to see you submissively fond of your wife. Given your professed opinions, I cannot expect much fondness from you as a husband, can I?”   “Fondness, yes. Ridiculous, romantic, calf-eyed love, no, you may not,” he confirmed. “But when I am fond, Bess, I am very fond.”

“He's fast asleep, curled up at the other end of my bed, looking peaceful. The expression on his face says he's not really sad, and he's not overcompensating for his sadness by acting all crazy or silly, he's just...content. And that makes me glad, because more than anything else, I want him to be happy.”

“I didn’t mean to go after him, but no one was doing anything, and I’m probably the only one here who’s actually been in the woods for real.” “Besides—he’s British. What do they know about camping and wilderness survival and all that?”...There too busy drinking tea and playing cricket. He would have been lost without me”

“You love Robert, not me. You don’t love Lord Stuffy, so I tried to be like Robert.”The sweet idiot! She felt like weeping again. She began to protest, but he cut her off.“I don’t drink and I don’t gamble and I don’t have a mistress. I’m dull. You told me so, the first time we met. So I tried to change.” He frowned. “Not the mistress. I’ll never do that.”“Good,” she whispered.“I’m trying to be like Robert, but I’m no good at it. I drank wine. And brandy, lots of it. I didn’t like it and it made me sick. I played hazard and I lost.” He looked momentarily cheerful and her heart sank. “But I didn’t like that either. If I was a real man like Mr. Fox, or Robert, I’d have lost thousands.”The sadder he looked, the more her heart ached, a happy ache.“I failed you, Caro. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll always be Lord Stuffy,” he said, and closed his tortured, bloodshot eyes.”