Courtney Milan Quotes

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.

Here's my most important rule: Never have intercourse when one of the parties is in love with the other. It won't end well."
She gasped. Her whole world turned grey. "You arrogant cad! I'm not in love with you."
"I know." He didn't look away from her. "Isn't that what I said? Only one of us is in love and it isn't you.

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.

I adhere to the law of chastity because I don't believe in pushing women. That's what it means to be a man. I don't hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don't indulge in either. We don't need to.

My nerves are neither over- nor underwrought. They are wrought to the precise degree demanded by this situation.

Let them say what they wish behind your back. You need only be strong enough that they don't say it to your face.

One could push a pack of truths together to make one despicable falsehood.

The Bible got it wrong when it intimated that the valley contained the shadow of death. Death dwells in the high places.

His voice dropped to a low murmur, and he leaned down so that he was almost whispering in her ear. "You see, there's this woman."
She wasn't going to look at him. She wasn't.
"Normally, one might say that there was a beautiful woman - but I don't think she qualifies as a classical beauty. Still, I find that when she's around, I'd rather look at her than anyone else."
He set two fingers against her cheek, and Minnie sucked in a breath. She was not going to look at him. He'd see the longing in her eyes, and then ...
"There's something about her that draws my eye. Something that defies words. Maybe it's her hair, but I tried to tell her that, and she told me I was being ridiculous. I suppose I was. Maybe it's her lips. Maybe it's her eyes, although she so rarely looks at me.

I hate your future wife," she said simply.
"At the moment, I'm not much in charity with her myself.

Three quarters of respectable England hates you."
"Half," Sebastian replied with a smile. "It's really only half. Judging by my correspondence, it may be as little as forty-eight percent. And of those, only a small number want to cause me bodily harm. The rest just wish to have me gagged or thrown in prison.

Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?'
His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.

It reminded him of the cacophony of an orchestra as it tuned its instruments: dissonance, suddenly resolving into harmony. It was the rumble, not of thunder, but its low, rolling precursor, trembling on the horizon.

I am constantly amazed by you," he said. "To say that you view the world through rose-colored glasses would be the greatest of understatements. You don't just see things tinted in pink; you see a world that is pink all the way through.

Lady Cosgrove gasped louder but recovered quickly. "Mr. Turner," she said, reaching out for Ash's cuff. "Do listen to me. I know that you may believe that Lady Margaret has your best interests at heart, as she is some kind of a relation, if only a distant one. But if you intend to be a duke, you must not let yourself be guided so easily, not by one such as her. Take my warning to heart: she's using you to punish me, because I kept my distance from her these past months. You know that any woman of good sense and decency would have done the same."

No, Margaret had never been like Lady Cosgrove. For one thing, she had never been so stupid. Ash's smile grew darker, and he looked at the woman. "I knew the instant Margaret spoke that she intended to use me as a weapon. What you fail to understand is this: I am her weapon to use."

Margaret's lungs burned. So much for not occasioning gossip. But she couldn't fault him. She couldn't reprimand him. She couldn't even stop her own smile from spilling out, stupidly, over her face, the truth writ large for anyone to see.

He held her for a minute, then two, then three, simply holding her and committing to memory what he could not have in life.

He'd been lying to himself all these months.
He WAS in love with her. And he had no idea what to do about it.

She felt as if she'd opened a door on what she believed was a towering monster, only to find it five inches tall.

Don't feel embarrassed," she said. "It's acceptable to lose the flow of conversation. Not everyone is clever enough to think of something to say immediately." Bradenton's lips thinned. "And you're a marquess," she added. "Maybe there are deficiencies in your understanding, but nobody will ever notice them so long as you make absolutely certain to introduce yourself as a marquess first.

Ned: I figured it was time for a picnic by the menagerie.
Jenny: And you brought me? Why not take the woman you're marrying?
Ned: She's grown up with the Duke of Ware. Lions seem less ferocious.

The only thing worse than an unlovable woman was an unlovable woman who whined about not being loved.

There was nothing common about him, first impressions be damned. Behind those spectacles lurked something feral and untamable. He hadn't moved from his chair, and yet she felt a little tickle in her palms. A catch in her breath. His eyes were too sharp, his expression far too even.

Ned waved him off and studied the map in front of him. That sense of unease remained even after Harcroft had taken himself off. In the dim light, the pencil marks seemed child's sketches, failing to capture some basic truth of reality. The numbers still didn't cast up into a proper sum in his head. Two and two came together, but they only managed to whisper dark intimations amongst themselves, hinting at the possibility of a distant four.

Will I see you at all?
He shook his head. But he couldn't yet make himself move away. He was unwilling to relinquish his hold on her, unwilling to say that final good-bye. He held her for a minute, then two, then three, simply holding her and committing to memory what he could not have in life. There was a sweet, comforting scent to her.
His memory was very, very good, but she was better.
He only loosened his grip when he feared he might not be able to let go of her at all.

The dog looked up in entreaty. Liquid brown eyes begged: Take me with you. I'll be good. Oh, the lies that dogs told.

THERE WERE THREE SKILLS that Miss Emily Fairfield had found necessary in her current position in life: lying, smuggling, and - most important of all - scaling walls. It was the last she'd put to use at the moment.

You always put things at risk. If you fell out of a tree as a child, I'd clean you up and bandage your knees, and next I looked you'd be out climbing again. You never learned your lesson.
Oh, she'd learned her lesson. Climb harder.

If people want you to stop talking, or to stop dressing the way you do, or to change who you are, it's because you hurt their eyes. We've all been trained not to stare into the sun.' - Oliver

I wish my genius ran to making automatons," he said. "I would invent one that would follow you around with a tray. It would wait patiently for you to look up from whatever you were doing, and as soon as you did, it would say, 'Lady Cambury, you must have something to eat.'"

She swallowed her bite of apple. "That would be extremely annoying."

"I do not consider that a detriment."

"I consider it a waste of a good automaton. I would modify your invention," she said, reaching for some cheese. "I'd dress my version up in my best silk and send it out to pay morning calls. Oh, how I hate making morning calls. It wouldn't need much of a vocabulary. 'Yes,' my automaton would say, 'this weather is dreadful, isn't it?' In fact, I think that's how I would do it. Whatever the other person says, it would answer, 'Yes, it most certainly is, isn't it?' My automaton would have perfect manners.

See?" Jenny said. "That was good. A comforting gesture, and completely unprompted on my part. You're a
quick study. Even you will have to admit that, despite your appeal to logic, touch works. All the cold in me flows to you."
"Cold can't flow," he said, pulling her closer. "Only heat.
Thermodynamically speaking - "
"Gareth?"
He looked down.
"Don't ruin this."
He didn't.

It was like coming home to a place that he held dear and finding that the wood had burnt to the ground and the house was in ruins.

When he's like this, Miss Lowell," Mark offered from his seat on the sofa, "I usually take it upon myself to stamp out in a rage."

"Must I stamp? Or can I sweet out gracefully?" "By all means, sweep.

You dictated it to your father," the Duke continued. "And you said: Dear Oliver, please come home. What are you going to bring me? Love, your Free.' And I remember thinking ... "
Frederica felt herself blush." How mercenary."
"I remember thinking," he said, as if she hasn't spoken, "that I would give everything I had for a little sister.

There was no point in feeling hurt simply because a man she refused to want didn't want her back.

I'm not stubborn," Ash said. "I'm right. There's a difference.

But to call it looking was like calling an eighteen-course feast a snack.

Miss Marshall looked up at that moment and made his decision for him. She looked at him and then her whole face lit up. He almost staggered back under the force of her smile. It made him feel ... reckless. A man couldn't disappoint a smile like that.

Edward had the odd notion that after years of drab motionlessness, his entire world had suddenly begun to spin about him. He'd had that feeling ever since he'd been pulled into her orbit on the bank of the Thames.
She gave him the most astonishing vertigo. He should have hated it.
But he didn't - not one bit.

It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but ... defiance.
'I want you to choose me,' he said, 'well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you.

Do Chinese dragons even eat people?" "She lives in the Bay Area," I say severely. "She eats a Westernized diet.

One of these days, you're going to realize that your sister doesn't need a man who follows the rules. There are too many rules and only one of her. Keep your brotherhood of left-handed do-gooders, Marshall. Your sister needs a man who is actually sinister.

Sir Mark Turner," he said. "I speak with the tongues of a thousand angels. Butterflies follow me wherever I go. Birds sing when I take a breath.

We're friends...And what that means is this: I won't let anyone hurt you. Not if I can stop it.

I have no tolerance for maudlin affection, and less for women who want to fix me."
"Fix you?" Miranda said. "Why would anyone want to fix you? You're not broken.

Truths designed to mislead are just as bad as lies.

I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.
It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.

Even the illusion of love was preferable to the utter lack of it.

I'm feeling generous. I shall answer one question for every month you spent in my company as a child." He looked over at her. Her lips thinned. Her fingers tapped an angry rhythm against her saucer. Robert stood up. "As you are no doubt aware," he said, "that leaves you with no questions at all. This interview is done.

Men touch their horses to calm them," she said distantly. "They caress their falcons to remind them that they are bound. Touch smacks of ownership, and I am weary of being a possession.

If you're going to throw the girl to the wolves, it's only appropriate to outfit her with a red cloak.

In fact, if the conversation had been animate, the merciful thing to do would have been to take it out behind the barn and shoot it.

If he were another person entirely, he might burst into flowery speech. If he did, she'd probably laugh at him. Besides, he didn't believe in pretending to be anyone other than who he was. Even if she swooned at whatever poetic nonsense he managed to spout, she would only be disappointed once they grew comfortable with each other and he went back to making jokes about death and gonorrhea.

Maybe he was cold, but sometimes ice burned.

Smite," she asked softly, "do you have any idea what to say to me in a situation like this?"
"Of course I do," he retorted. "I have plenty of ideas." He met her gaze ruefully. "Of course, they're all wrong, and so I'm totally at sea."
She patted the cushion next to her. He crossed the room and lowered himself down. And then, because he didn't seem inclined to do it himself, she picked up his hand and slid it around her shoulders.

This feeling, this tentative flutter in her belly - this was hers. This was sunlight on her face. It was the warmth she'd dreamed of. It was a curl of honest attraction, the first she'd experienced in years.

You're trying to charm me with mathematics," she said.

"It's it working?"

She looked up at him. Yes, said her dark eyes, shining up at him. Yes, said the past of her lips, the fingers that drew up to brush her hair. Yes, said the tilt of her body in his direction.

"No," she told him with a firm shake of her head. "It isn't.

The Countess of Cambury is like a deep, dark hole - secrets go in, but none of them ever come out." "Sebastian," Violet replied, calmly looping the yarn about one of her needles, "it is neither proper nor respectful to let a woman know that you think of her as nothing more than a hole.

Now come," he said. "Does your Alex love you back, or is he a hopeless idiot?"
"He loves me," she said quietly. "But I'm afraid he'll stop after we marry. He'll change his mind. He'll - "
"He'll love you more. Trust me."
"Really?" She was far too somber.
"Really." He had no words to make her smile, and so Gareth tweaked her nose.
And she giggled.
It had been a long time since he'd laughed. But despite all those years, he still remembered how. What he'd
forgotten was the lightness of his soul when he did so. The moment was perfect.

An untutored observer would focus on the Duke of Clermont, apparently in full command, resplendent in a waistcoat so shot with gold thread that it almost hurt the eyes. This observer would dismiss Hugo Marshall, arrayed as he was in clothing spanning the spectrum from brown to browner. The comparison wouldn't stop at clothing. The duke was respectably bulky without running to fat; his patrician features were sharp and aristocratic. He had mobile, ice-blue eyes that seemed to take in everything. Compared with Hugo's own unprepossessing expression and sandy brown hair, the untutored observer would have concluded that the duke was in charge.
The untutored observer, Hugo thought, was an idiot.

Why would I take a conventional wife, when I could have an extraordinary one?

Work your way on to number twelve," she snapped. "Number eleven wants nothing more to do with you.

I am small," she said, "but mighty.

I do believe you would have cut the rope.

Don't say my name like that. Please, Your Grace. If you have any care for me at all - pretend to flirt. But don't actually do it.

You've tugged on your bonnet strings five times in this conversation already. Why wear one, if it's so uncomfortable? Have you any reason for it, other than that it is what everyone else does?"
"I brown terribly in the sunlight. I'll develop freckles."
"Oh no,. That sounds awful." He spoke with exaggerated solicitude, but he leaned down from his horse until his nose was a bare foot from hers. "Freckles. And what do those dastardly spots portend? Are freckled people thrown in prison? Pilloried? Covered in tar and sprinkled with tiny little down feathers?

I lie, I forge I blackmail." Edward shrugged. "But cheating at cards? I'd never stoop so low."

"Good to know you have some principles.

She looked at him, looked up into those eyes like a winter storm. She looked up into a face that should have been ordinary, and Jane felt her whole body come to a standstill. Her heart ceased to beat. Her lungs seized up in her chest. Even her hair felt like a heavy burden. There was nothing but him and his foolish not-even-compliments.

You see, I'm not really left-handed."

"No!" Robert and Oliver spike together in joint outrage.

Sebastian's eyes widened. "An infidel! Stone him!" He looked wildly around, found a scrap of paper on the floor, and hurled it ineffectually at him. "Die, fiend, die!

His fingers went to the buttons of his jacket, and her mouth dried. His buttons were simple cloth and metal affairs, scarcely worth a second thought. And yet as he undid them, she had second thoughts and third thoughts, none of them proper. His gloved fingers were long and graceful, and every button he undid revealed another inch of creamy linen, one that hinted at broad shoulders and strong muscles.
He'd not shown her the slightest bit of skin, but the act of unbuttoning his coat sparked indecent thoughts - memories of his arm coming around her, his mouth on hers ...
He stopped undoing buttons, and she realized he'd only wanted to reach the inside pocket. She sat back in disappointment.

But there they were. Edward Clark, liar and blackmailer extraordinaire, had a better shot at Frederica Marshall than Viscount Claridge. It was the worst of his damned luck that they happened to be the same person.

Edward didn't know what he was thinking, asking her about marriage. He wasn't a damned viscount. He refused to be one. And whatever odd flutterings he may have felt in her presence, whatever odd imaginings he had harbored, he wasn't going to marry her.
And yet ... It was tempting, too. While he hadn't been paying attention, his mind had constructed a might-have-been, a world where he'd never been cast out, where he'd never had to make his heart as black and hard as coal. If he'd been Edward Delacey, he might have courted her in his own right. Edward Delacey, dead fool that he was, could have had the one thing that Edward Clark never would.

She walked away from him with swift, sure strides, as if she knew her destination. As if it had nothing to do with him.

You're a duke's brother. A knight. And I'm a whore."
He grabbed her wrist. "Don't call yourself that. I wouldn't let anyone else talk about you that way - why should I let you?"
"Very well. Call me a fallen woman, then."
"Do you think that matters to me? My mother used to say that there was no such thing as a fallen woman. You just had to look for the man who pushed her down.

If you were a shadowy, anonymous figure, it made sense to pretend everything had gone according to some diabolical plan. Never mind if it hadn't.

Miss Fairfield had a gift for taking a beautiful concept and then marring it beyond all recognition.

Love is never safe," Tina repeats. "It's weird. It's magical. It's the moment when you break through the dark shell that protects your heart and say, this, this person. I'm going to let this person in, let him come so close that he can hurt me more than I can possibly imagine. I'm going to let him hurt me." She inhales. "Love is never safe." "And yet," I say, "we do it anyway." "We do it anyway." Her voice is a quiet echo of mine, but her hands close on mine.

Ned knew what it was like to feel useless. He had been the expendable grandchild, the non-heir. He'd been the fool, the idiot, the one who could be counted on to muck up anything worth doing. His grandfather had expected nothing of Ned, and Ned, young idiot that he had been, had delivered spectacularly.

There was only a language of families, a tongue woven from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and curt sentences, incomprehensible to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn't difficult to translate at all.

He was 'susceptible' to her. If he wasn't careful, he might end up nursing a full-blown interest.

Then I'll have to succeed three times as hard as they want me to fail. You, of all people, should understand that.

Sometimes Jane wished she were good at diplomatic speeches. She wished she'd mastered coquettish looks and innocent smiles. But she hadn't. She was singularly bad at those forms of persuasion. She was good at handing out money and opinions.

Fairfield," she said in cutting tones, 'if you had been a hunter on the plains of old, the lions would have killed you while you were wandering around the savannah saying, 'Where is everyone, and what have they done with my spears?

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

Ash." Margaret knew her voice was trembling. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I adore you. Because you looked so stricken when I saw you and I couldn't bear not to comfort you." His voice was warm breath against her skin. "Did you know, when you left that room, you took all the light with you?

He wasn't sure what he was saying, either, but he felt as if he were slipping into some dangerous world - one where answers ceased to be easy.

Don't imagine it would be the usual kind of marriage." He seemed to withdraw even more. "It needn't even be consummated. Any woman I liked we'll enough to marry doesn't deserve to be saddled to me. If we marry, it will be a quiet wedding by special license in a back room. At the end, we'll go our separate ways
you, to your farm, and me ... " He looked around the small room at the messy piles of paper. "I'm not offering to make a life with you. I'm merely giving you the chance to make your child legitimate. Nothing more."
He watched her, his eyes hooded and wary. And deep inside ... She had no notion as to what to say.
She let out a long breath. "Oh, you are romantic.

I've a goodly share of faults. I rush in, where I should tread carefully. I speak, where I should listen. But when I hear them sing, I don't just hear a hymn. They're singing to God because they haven't found anyone else who will listen.

This was disapproval with a bite.

The truth is simply this: you can find a better man than I. God knows you wouldn't have to look very hard. But I don't believe you can find one who loves you more.

He'd fallen a little bit in love with her the moment she'd said his name as if it had value.

I'm sure your prick is as massive as your head is thick.

You see so many surprising things and you think they're obvious.

But none of that matters. When I see you, I remember that you made me want to drown rather than be myself.

I thought I had to prove myself with money and accomplishments. But those will always ring hollow. They will never be enough. I want to be somebody. Let me be your husband. Let me be the father of your child -of all your children.

Ash Turner seduced her with the promise of her own self.

I think she'll fit quite well. As wives go, Miss Pursling will be just like these books. When I wish to take her down and read her, she'll be there. When I don't, she'll wait patiently, precisely where she was left. She'll make me a comfortable wife, Ames. Besides, my mother likes her.

He came in. "Yes, Miss Marshall?"
He looked ... so innocent. Stephen was good at looking innocent; a necessary skill for a man who had a dreadfully mischievous sense of humor.

I was worried that my brilliant good looks and easy manners would make me impossible to hate, thus ruining our fragile alliance. But this will be simple. Just tell me all the subjects you are an expert in, and I shall endeavor to explain them to you.

She wanted him to be right. She needed him to be wrong. And while that sounded as if she were confused, confusion implied uncertainty. And Margaret was dead certain that he was both the last man on earth that she should kiss, and the only one she dreamed of holding.

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.