Courtney Milan

“Her lips found his and a stab of exquisite desire shot through him. This is what he's been waiting for all this time. Not a stolen embrace. A gift, freely given. One that he would keep forever in some small part of his soul.”

“You could make me say it again," he whispered. "Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.”

“Over the years, everyone stumbles. That's why I'll be here for you — and you'll be there for me. I don't expect perfection. I want you, and you're a thousand times better.”

“When someone else's safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second.”

“I’d tell you to fetch a match, but you have always had your own spark.”

“This is why people are so hard to understand. I cannot even estimate their gravitational pull.”

“Jenny: But surely Lord Blakely could not abandon his estates for so long.Gareth: No. Lord Blakely could not. Not unless he had someone he could trust to run his estates in his absence. And Lord Blakely...Well, Lord Blakely did not trust anyone.Jenny: Lord Blakely is talking about himself in the third person, past tense. Its disturbing.”

“I think that's when I understood that you only ruined my life because my life needed ruining. Because the life you rejected demanded that I spend all my time telling my daughter to be less and my son to be more.”

“I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say.”

“If a man ever lets you know that he sees marriage as a trap, and women as nothing but scheming connivers, you are by no means to marry him. Any man that sees your entire sex in so harsh a light has nothing to offer you.”

“I’ll be your friend in daylight. I’ll treat you as a comrade in every gas-lit ballroom. But alone, under moonlight, I’ll not pretend that I want you for anything but mine.”

“She wagged a finger at him. “You’re mispronouncing that word.” “Your pardon?” He groped, trying to remember what he’d said. “Suffragette? How does one pronounce it, then?” “Suffragette,” she said, “is pronounced with an exclamation point at the end. Like this: ‘Huzzah! Suffragettes!”

“What would one do if one were forced to choose between saving an innocent child’s life or engaging in unchaste behavior? This is, after all, the choice that some unfortunate women are put to—sell their bodies, or see their children starve.”

“One mustn’t justify day-to-day morality with extraordinary circumstances. Otherwise, we would all feel free to rape and murder at the drop of a cat.”

“He wasn't good with this sort of thing - with the back-and-forth dance between man and woman. He wasn't even sure if they were dancing, or if she was merely being polite.”

“Friendship was a concept men bandied about to save face when they were rejected.”

“Jenny: You didn't leave?Gareth: Of course I left. I was hungry, and I couldn't find anything to eat. I bought a loaf and some cheese. And oranges. Wait. You mean you thought I had left. Without saying a word to you. Would I do that?(Jenny nodded)Gareth: Damn it. You know better than most I'm no good at these things but even I am not that bad. Really, Jenny. Why would you believe such a thing of me?Jenny: I don't know, Maybe because you once told me all you wanted from me was a good shag?Gareth: I said that? (he looked surprised, then contemplative. Then apparently, he remembered and winced) God. I said that? Why did you even touch me?”

“His past followed him around as faithfully as his shadow.”

“She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.”

“A man must claim responsibility for his own temptation, and not pin it on the woman who arouses him. It’s a gown, Sir Mark. Not even one of my more daring ones.”