Slightly Wicked Quotes
"Moments before the stagecoach overturned, Judith Law was deeply immersed in a daydream that had effectively obliterated the unpleasant nature of the present reality."
"I am alive," she said. "And so are you. What is there not to be cheerful about?"
"It was warm and dry inside the inn, and for the first time in several hours Judith felt physically safe."
"She was an actress who claimed to prefer acting worthy parts to being ogled in a fashionable theater."
"How foolish, Mr. Bedard, when your dinner awaits you on the table and you are hungry."
"I wish I could see you onstage," Mr. Bedard said, "Such vivid beauty as yours would shine brightly on any stage."
"It is against his nature to turn tail and flee any challenge, human or otherwise."
"She had the ability to think her way into another person’s body and mind and know just what it felt like to be that person under those circumstances."
"I think," he said, "that it is time for bed."
"A thousand and one now," she said, still smiling. "And I suppose you have been told a thousand and one times how handsome you are."
"Attractive seemed ten times more appealing than handsome at this precise moment."
"It was surely the most delicious feeling in the world, having one’s hair brushed by someone else—by a man."
"It feels good?" he asked her after a while, his voice low and husky.
"She knew that finally her adventure, her stolen dream, was perfect."
"His right hand had moved down between her legs to the warm, secret place."
"She felt the shock then. Her virginity was gone. Just like that."
"He would soon have her wet and smelling of sex again."
"I wish the night were a month long so that you could try the whole of it on me."
"I do not want to do the rest of it alone," she said.
"He grasped her hips firmly and drove up into her once, twice, with powerful strokes."
"She wrapped her arms about him. He was hot and slick with sweat."
"Have you ever had sex in a carriage, Claire?" he asked.
"It was amazing how heavy a few dresses and shoes and nightgowns and brushes could be."
"Soon thirst became even more pressing than hunger."
"He wrapped his arms about her tiny waist, lifted her off her feet, and kissed her cheek with a loud smack before setting her back down."
"But she does not wear her heart on her sleeve."
"Though she declares she would rather die first."
"I’ll promise you the earth and the sun and moon too if you wish."
"It filled in a potentially dull few days while we waited for the rain to stop."
"Babies do result from such activity as we indulged in, Miss Law. Did you not know that?"
"You need not remain to keep me company," she said. "I will be quite happy alone in such surroundings."
"It is not over," he said. "I had your virginity. You are now, to put it crudely and bluntly, damaged goods, Miss Law, and you cannot be so innocent that you have not realized that fact."
"I am no one’s problem, Lord Rannulf," she said. "I will be a salve to no one’s guilty conscience."
"I am not so innocent or so ignorant that I do not know what men of your rank are like."
"I wanted you for experience, not for a husband, and I was satisfied with the experience, which I feel no desire to repeat."
"I am remarkably fond of her," she said, quite truthfully.
"Marriage was every woman’s ultimate goal, her dearest hope being that marriage would bring her security and children and a tolerable measure of comfort, perhaps even companionship."
"You cannot know how pleasant it is to have one of my sisters here. I miss you all, you know."
"I could make you very comfortable indeed at Harewood. And I could be induced to visit here far more often than I have been in the habit of doing."
"I am not," he said quietly though his voice carried clearly across the water, "going to run off with your clothes. Or force myself on you."
"What do you want?" she asked him. She was intensely embarrassed even though they had spent a day and two nights... But that seemed like more than a lifetime ago. It seemed like something that must have happened to someone else.
"No." Except that she had splashed around for several minutes, trying desperately to get herself clean.
"I would come and join you," he said. "But alas, my absence will appear ill-mannered if it is too lengthy. Why do you not come here and join me?"
"She was amazed—and alarmed—at how very tempting the suggestion was."
"Is it the fact that I will see you in your shift?" he asked when she did not immediately approach the bank. "I have seen you in less."
"If she told him to go away, would he go? She believed he probably would. Did she want him to go? She swam slowly toward him. No. If she was perfectly truthful with herself, the answer was no."
"Perhaps," she said without turning, "you would be good enough to hand me my dress, Lord Rannulf."
"You would only get that wet too," he said, "and be no better off than you are now. It would be wiser to leave it until you are ready to return to the house and then remove the shift first."
"No, I am not," he told her. "I did not come here to seduce you, Miss Law."
"She was aware of him getting to his feet and shrugging out of his coat. A moment later it landed, wonderfully heavy and warm, about her shoulders."
"Has he bothered you between three evenings ago and this afternoon?" he asked.
"No." She shook her head. "And I do not expect him to bother me again. I believe I made myself clear today."
"Did you?" She was aware that he was gazing at her profile even though she did not turn her head to look at him. "Why did you not make yourself clear to me?"
"That was different," she said lamely at last. But how was it different?
"I wanted the experience." But it was a dream she had wanted.
"You would have taken that experience with Effingham, then, if he had come riding along instead of me?" he asked.
"Your brother is a fashionable young gentleman," he said.
"Of course I love him," she said. "He is my brother, and it would be very hard to dislike Bran even if he were not."
"You do altogether too much lying, you know," he said.
"It is not your business, Lord Rannulf," she said. "Nothing to do with my life or my family is your business."
"No, it is not," he agreed. "By your choice, Miss Law. Have your sisters suffered a similar fate to your own?"
"They are all still at home," she said, feeling such a wave of homesickness suddenly that she had to dip her forehead against her knees again.
"But no one’s heart will be broken by your absence?" he asked.
"One of us needed to come," she said. "And they did all shed tears over me when I left."
"And yet," he said, "you would defend that extravagant young puppy of a brother to me?"
"I do not need to," she said, "or to censure him. Not to you."
"Where did you learn to act?" he asked. "Does your family engage in amateur theatricals at the vicarage or rectory or wherever it is you live?"
"Rectory," she said, lifting her head again. "Oh, dear, no. Papa would have an apoplexy. He is fanatically opposed to acting and the theater and declares that they are the work of the devil. But I have always, always loved acting."
"If you act a part as if you are that character, you see, then the words become your own, the only logical ones to speak under those particular circumstances. I have never consciously memorized a part. I have simply become various characters."
"Does it amuse you," she asked, "to toy with Julianne’s affections?"
"Not at all," he said. "Merely a realist. People of my class do not choose marriage partners for love. What would happen to the fabric of polite society if we started doing that? We marry for wealth and position."
"You are going to marry Julianne, then?" she asked. She had not fully believed it until this moment despite all Aunt Effingham and Julianne had said.
"Why not?" He shrugged. "She is young and pretty and charming. And well born and rich."
"And if you think my plight desperate," he said, "imagine that of Alleyne, my younger brother. Aidan busy begetting sons, me twenty-eight years old and in danger of taking a bride at any moment and doing some begetting of my own."
"That is better," he said, a gleam of something that might have been amusement in his eyes. "You need to smile and laugh more often."
"Bewcastle?" he said. "I very much doubt it. No woman is good enough for Wulf."
"And what do you do, Lord Rannulf?" she asked him. "While your brother occupies himself with his duties, what is left for you to do?"
"Yes, actually." He looked at her with a lazy smile. "Surprised?"
"I suppose," she said, hugging her knees, "the sons of dukes do not have to work for a living."
"Not the sons of the duke who sired me," he said. "We are all indecently wealthy in our own right, not to mention Bewcastle, who owns large chunks of England and part of Wales too. No, we do not need to work, though of course there are traditional expectations of younger sons."
"Can you picture me climbing the pulpit steps of a Sunday morning, holding my cassock above my ankles, and delivering an impassioned sermon on morality and propriety and hellfire?" he asked her.
"It is my life," he said. "Sometimes, though, one wonders if there is any shape, any meaning, any point to life. Do you demand such things of your life, Judith? What possible shape or meaning or point can you discern in what has happened recently to your family and to you as a result?"
"I do not ask such questions," she said. "I live my life one day at a time."
"Liar," he said softly. "What is ahead for you here? Nothing and nothing and nothing again down the years? And yet you do not ask yourself why? Or what the point of going on with life is? I believe you do, every hour of every day. I have seen the real Judith Law, remember?"
"I have been here too long," she said. "I will be missed and Aunt Louisa will be annoyed. Will you leave first? Or will you—will you turn your back while I dress?"
"If you wish, you may excuse yourself from dinner and the entertainment afterward by saying you are indisposed."
"I like that way you have of lifting your chin as if inviting the world to bring on its worst."
"It is at such moments that the real Judith Law steps onto the stage, I believe."
"But I have no particular accomplishment, my lord."
"I suppose so. But Lord Braithwaite has a comic genius."
"Poor lady. She is beautiful beyond belief and does not even know it."
"I would have to have some personal feelings for her before I could be ashamed."
"You will give me your arm while I go up to my rooms in a moment."
"I am not ashamed of her. Quite the contrary. I am—"
"I believe the correct expression may be in love."
"Let us go down and capture the hearts of every man at the ball."
"Perhaps it is even better manners to choose a different partner for every set."
"It was as if everyone else had been waiting only for that word to be spoken."
"I sent you up there and might have been sending you to your death. What if you had walked in on the thief? You might have been struck over the head."
"Well, I for one do not object to having my room searched. In fact, Father, I insist that it be the first to be searched."