“Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her extremely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage—forcing your soul, that was it—if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?”

“And however one might sentimentalise it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connection and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.”

“Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.”

“Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.”

“She had missed him so long now, that the feeling had become a part of her. As each day passed, the missing distanced itself from her heart. One day she woke, and realized the missing was there but the pain was gone. Missing without pain is tolerable. Pain linked to heartache is intolerable.”

“Lucas hated the word. It was so easy to say, but it could honestly cut someone in half if they thought for a second that they were. Lucas was a confident man, but with his dyslexia, he never felt like he was smart. Fallon had never made him feel like he was less of a man; she always treated him like he was the smartest man in the room, until now. Now she had called him it.”