Meredith Duran

“Miss Masters was not content with threatening to hire away his staff, oh no. First, she had to perfume it.”

“You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.”

“What modern art required was an imagination drawn to possibilities, rather than braced by smug presumptions.”

“Manners come down to a single principle, talk of nothing that might actually prove interesting.”

“He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.”

“I deserve better —such a dangerous, mad thought for a woman to entertain.”

“For a woman's words to wound would require a man to listen first!”

“Or perhaps, despite your brave words to my parents, you've forgotten what love and loyalty look like. They aren't sacraments, Jane, for only God is perfect, only Go deserves our love without judgement. Men--women--we make mistakes. We judge those we love. But we keep loving them anyway, because we know that mistakes can be repaired, and that tomorrow, our love will be deserved again. It only takes faith--or loyalty, as you called it. Those ARE what tie a family together, through tick and thin. And they tie a husband and wife together, too. There is no happy ending, you're right--not in the singular. but in a marriage, there might be countless happy endings and even more sweet beginnings, if loyalty and love are what guide you.”

“I admit, that the brain does not govern the body as well as one might wish- else all men would be saints and hell would be empty of lechers.”

“I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.”

“Lord John: 'The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.' Lady Nora: 'I am sorry to hear that, I suppose it takes some wit to produce one's own entertainment. Are you often bored?”

“He smiled. "How kind of you to confirm what I already know. Perhaps next you will introduce me to myself. I hear I am quite popular.”