"There is often a merciful shock that keeps dying men from feeling the pain of their wounds."
"It was a sight against which the sensibilities of Colonel Lord Aidan Bedwyn never became totally hardened."
"An officer’s duty to watch the backs of his comrades, particularly those of his superior officers."
"Don’t let her mourn. She has had too much of that. Tell her she must not wear black. My dying wish."
"If you had a penny to sell and a sorry enough tale to tell, she would give you a guinea for it as sure as I am sitting here."
"Women are too soft about the heart to have the running of a grand place like Ringwood."
"He asked me to bring you the news myself. And he asked me to beg her not to wear mourning for him."
"It is in honor of that plea that she wears gray today."
"What a comfort it must have been to poor Percival to have an officer of such illustrious lineage with him at his death."
"You are being obtuse, Miss Morris. It will be entirely a marriage of convenience. It would seem that you have no wish to marry. You are no young girl, and you must have had numerous chances to attach the affections of a man of your own choosing if you had so desired. Obviously you have not done so. Neither do I wish to marry. I have a long-term career in the cavalry. It is a life hardly conducive to marriage and family. Neither of us will be greatly inconvenienced, then, by a marriage to each other. I will return to my regiment after spending the rest of my leave at Lindsey Hall. You will remain at Ringwood. We need never see each other again after I have escorted you home from London in three days’ time."
"They are not lame ducks. They are people to whom life has been cruel. They are precious persons of no less value in the sacred scheme of things than you or I. And there is Muffin too, my dog, who was brutally abused by his former owner. Lives of infinite value, all of them. What am I supposed to do when I see suffering and have it in my power to alleviate it? Turn my back?"
"You might as well enjoy issuing such an order now. It will not be in your power to do so for much longer, will it?"
"What would you call it, then? It is a ceremony that will bind you to Colonel Bedwyn for the rest of your life. It is a wedding, all right. If I knew you were doing it just for me, I would argue like the fury against it even now. But it’s not just for me, so what can I say?"
"I suppose I did not like to admit that possibility. I suppose I chose to deny reality. He was my only brother. He was all I had left. As for marrying, it seemed calculating and distasteful to me to wed only in order to secure my inheritance. I always imagined that I would marry for love."
"I never do anything I am not sure about, Miss Morris. And you are quite sure too, are you not? Remember the lame ducks."
"For an unguarded moment Aidan pictured the sort of wedding Bewcastle would have insisted upon for him under different circumstances, the first of them to marry. It would have been a grand, glittering affair, full of pomp and splendor with half the ton in attendance."
"It was all over before Aidan had quite composed his mind to pay full attention."
"But the earth had moved during those few minutes. Something momentous, irrevocable, irreversible had happened."
"The sun beamed its warm mockery down through a break in the clouds."
""You are probably both ready for a meal," he said curtly."
""What a handsome couple you make," she said."
""That would be delightful if it would be no trouble to you," his bride said, sounding genuinely pleased."
""I must say I am quite worn out with all the excitement," Mrs. Pritchard said."
""After all," her aunt said, smiling placidly, "you no longer need me as a chaperone, my love, do you? You will be with your husband.""
""I have never felt more exhilarated in my life," she said and realized that she spoke the simple truth."
""Really quite uneventful," she admitted ruefully."
""Men are very fortunate. They have far more freedom than we do.""
""Do we?" He looked long and hard at her before turning his head without comment to stare outward again."
""This was a day she would always, always remember," she knew."
""Until tomorrow morning, then," her husband said. And with a curt bow he was gone."
""Wonderful, Colonel," Mrs. Pritchard said, getting laboriously to her feet."
""But Atlas-like, she felt as if an enormous load had been lifted off her shoulders."
""For a minute," he said, "I was not sure you were going to survive.""
""Hold my hand. I’ll not let you fall. Word of honor." He held out his left hand and raised his right."
""Can you believe," she asked, "that every monarch since William the Conqueror has been crowned here?""
""I suppose," she said, "you are an accomplished whip," she said."
""I cannot believe I am actually seeing such a famous building with my own eyes," she said."
""It is possible to climb up to the highest gallery to inspect the dome from close to, both inside and out. But I must warn you that if memory serves me right there are five hundred and thirty-four steps, only the first two hundred and fifty or so of which are easy to climb.""
""Oh, goodness me!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "We must be able to see for miles.""
""It was hardly surprising, of course. He was a cavalry officer."
""Everything is new to me," she said. "I am in your hands."
""Lavender suits you," he surprised her by saying."
""This tall, powerful man beside her was her husband of a few hours. This was their wedding day."
""Has your life been so very quiet, then?" he asked."
""I have always dreamed of coming to London, of seeing other faraway places, other people.""
"My wife and I both wish to thank you all for your generous kindness in organizing this assembly in our honor at such short notice."
"It was a distinct honor to be able to rescue her from some difficulty by marrying her."
"I must leave tomorrow. I have business to attend to before returning to my battalion. I leave my bride with reluctance, but I leave her in the care of the aunt and the friends and neighbors who love her."
"Thank you. You have done a great deal for my sake. I will never forget that."
"I believe I always knew, especially after Joshua, that I would never marry unless I truly loved."
"It depends upon your definition of the term. I do not believe in romantic love. It is a mere euphemism for sexual appetite with men and the desire for home and security with women."
"I have read somewhere that we often spend a lifetime searching for what we already have."
"This is the end then. I am honored to have been of some service to you, ma'am."
"Why does one feel the need to weep when one does not even know for which of three men one mourns?"
"It is safe to assume, I suppose, that she never has been? She must make a formal appearance at a queen's drawing room."
"If you neglect to put in an appearance, you will embarrass my family."
"Does Wulf know you are in England? It would be just like him to neglect to inform the rest of us."
"You will be ready to leave when I return in the morning, Lady Aidan."
"I do not have the power to interfere in the inner workings of the marriage even of my own brother."
"If I were any cooler, I would turn into an iceberg."
"I am neither deaf nor dumb," she said quietly, getting to her feet. "Neither am I feebleminded. I do not appreciate being spoken of in the third person as if I were all three. And I have a strong aversion to being insulted."
"It is said that every woman is in love with a uniform," he said. "At present I believe everyone in England, man and woman alike, loves a uniform, provided it is British or Prussian or Russian. Everyone loves killers."
"But you have been fighting tyranny," she said. "You have been fighting to free countries and the countless people who inhabit them from the clutches of a ruthless tyrant. There has to be something noble and right about that, even if you do have to kill some enemy soldiers in the process."
"There is such a thing as duty, ma’am," he told her. "Besides, you have misunderstood. I did not say I do not enjoy killing. I merely said that my life as a killer has prevented me from being a man who smiles at every empty frivolity."
"I am not going anywhere," she said, looking steadily into his eyes.
"You are not my wife?" He ignored everything else she had said. "There is a certain register in a certain church that would give you the lie on that, ma’am. You wear my wedding ring on your finger. You engaged in conjugal relations with me yesterday afternoon. Today our son or our daughter may be growing in your womb. Is it your claim that that child would be a bastard?"
"Though anyone who knows anything of our history would know too that it has always been a matter of honor with Bedwyn men to treat their wives with respect and courtesy."
"I believe we must dispense with this awkward ma'am and colonel business. I am Aidan."
"We will both have enough years in which to be celibate."
"For this occasion—and only for this occasion—I honor my brother's memory by wearing black."
"I respect anyone who can stand up against us."
"Word of what happened this morning will have spread. There is no doubt of that."
"Did I love you, when I insisted upon purchasing your commission when you were eighteen though you begged me not to?"
"I believe the waltz is the dance the angels perform—on the clouds."
"I had no idea it was you who had married Bewcastle’s brother."
"I have been busy," he told her. "There has been scarcely a moment to spare."
"Percy died," she said. "He was killed at the Battle of Toulouse."
"I had one week in which to comply with the terms of Papa’s will," she said.
"Kindness is good enough for you, Eve, when you have known so much more?"
"I do not deal in kindness, ma’am. I have never been accused of being a kind man."
"That private encounter will not be repeated," she said.
"We will say no more on this matter, then," he said.
"I mopped up the blood myself before the children were brought down," the housekeeper said, not waiting to be addressed before speaking up. "But I would as soon have broke all their noses, my lamb, and their heads too. The cowardly curs—five burly men to take away two little babies."
"Well, that wouldn’t have been anything new, mum," the housekeeper said, unabashed.
"Why am I sitting here, sipping tea and warming myself by the fire?" she cried. "I have to go to them. I have to bring them home. They must be so frightened."
"I will see this thing through to the end," he said. "When I leave you, I will leave you safe and secure and happy."
"How wonderful it was sometimes to have the burdens of life lifted from one’s shoulders."
"If you expect the worst, Eve, the worst is what you usually get."
"I did not leave them alone!" she exclaimed. "I—"
"I want my children back," Eve said, hearing in dismay that her voice was thin and shaking. "You let Cecil Morris take them from me. But they are mine. They belong at Ringwood. They are happy there. I want them back."
"And as you can see, my lord," he said, making a dramatic gesture toward the bulbous-nosed, purple-eyed constable’s assistant, "my fears were not ill-founded."
"Will you at least listen to my wife’s side of the story?" Aidan asked, sounding infuriatingly calm, almost bored. "These children are important to her. She has cared for them for the better part of a year and thinks of them as her own."
"It is my understanding that they are orphans," the earl said, "and that they were sent to live with their relative, Mr. Cecil Morris. He explained to me that you kindly opened your home to them during an indisposition of Mrs. Morris, his mother, and that during that time you left them alone while you went to town to enjoy the pleasures of the Season with your new husband."
"I am not going to all the faradiddle of calling a formal hearing, Bedwyn, with clever counsel arguing the case around and around in ever more dizzying circles. But I will allow an informal hearing if I must."
"All things must end, as you have just said. But what if some things do not, Eve? What if the universe does not? It is an idea the human mind cannot grasp."
"We would have proved the existence of the divine, would we not?"
"And to have someone with whom to share one’s exuberance?"
"Agony by slow inches is far worse than agony by a swift yard."
"There is happiness. Happiness is a living, dynamic thing, Eve, and has to be worked on every moment for the rest of our lives. It is a far more exciting prospect than that silly static idea of a happily ever after. Would you not agree?"
"When we are young and foolish, we do not realize how essential a component of love kindness is. It is perhaps the most important quality."