Loretta Chase Quotes

The bourgeoisie is so tediously self-righteous.

His conscience smote him. As smitings go, it wasn't much, his conscience being in poor fighting condition.

Let me explain something to you, he said. If you want to get something out of a man, dashing out his brains against a lamppost isn't the way to do it.

I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in."
Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac. "This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry shark."
"Then use a harpoon.

While you were leaping headlong into an ambush you should have foreseen, she might have been attacked. She might have been killed or worse.'
Rupert came to a halt. 'What could be worse than her being killed, do you think?'
'I thought I had communicated to you Mr. Salt's opinions and wishes in the matter of Mr. Archdale's disappearance,' Beechey said. 'I thought I used easily comprehended terms.'
'You did,' Rupert said. 'I told Mrs. Pembroke about it in much the same way.'
'You told -' After a pause, Beechey went on, his voice strained, 'You cannot have revealed our suspicions about the - ahem - places of dubious repute. This is one of your jokes, I daresay. Ha ha.'
'She said her brother was not in a brothel or opium den and I was on no account to go to such places looking for him,' Rupert said. 'I obeyed, as I was obliged to do. You did tell me I wasn't to upset her, did you not?'
There followed the kind of furious silence with which Rupert was more than familiar.

And so I beat him and beat him until he kissed me. And then I kept on beating him until he did it properly.

What have you done to my dairy?" he said. "What happened to the Black Hole of Calcutta I was saving for the setting of the Gothic horror play I was going to write one of these days? Where are all my beautiful spiders? Where are my gloomy corners, where ghoulies might lurk? What have you done with the six inches of dirt on the floor? That was good dirt. I was saving it.

I should like to see you try.

Did you know you could kill a person with a hatpin?" she said.
"I did not," he said. "Do you speak from experience? Have you murdered anybody? Not that I'd dream of criticizing.

Silk and Shadows is something else. Like brilliant. It got under my skin as very, very few books have. It's still under my skin. Mikhal was haunting.

Don't you remember telling me that you're the brain and I'm the brawn? Naturally I expect you to do all the talking. And naturally I shall knockheads and toss people out of windows as required. Or did I misunderstand? Did you want me to think, too?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And the better the world liked seeing them fall.

I'm no good at being good.

And so, as the stars came out, Miles took up his basket and made his way in the moonlight to the river, to the place where he'd hidden the little boat.
It was gone.
No great surprise, really. The region was notorious. Why shouldn't someone steal his boat? He'd return the favor and steal someone else's. Tomorrow.
Tonight, though, he wanted a proper dinner.
He set about fashioning a fishing line.

If she had been a normal female, she would have swooned. But she was not normal, never had been.
"Good grief, you are impossibly handsome," she said breathlessly. "I vow, I have never experienced the like. For an instant, my brain stopped altogether. I must say, my lord, you do clean up well. But next time, I wish you would call out a warning before you come into view, and give me a chance to brace myself for the onslaught."
Something dark flickered in his eyes. Then a corner of his hard mouth quirked up. "Miss Adams, you have an interesting - a unique - way with a compliment."
The trace of a smile disoriented her further. "It is a unique experience," she said. "I never knew my brain to shut off before, not while I was full awake. I wonder if the phenomenon has been scientifically documented and what physiological explanation has been proposed.

I must be besotted," he said evenly. "I have the imbecilic idea that you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Except for your coiffure," he added, with a disgusted glance at the coils and plumes and pearls. "That is ghastly."
She scowled. "Your romantic effusions leave me breathless.

I deserve passion," she said. "I deserve to be loved- in every way. I deserve a man who'll give his whole heart, not the part he isn't using at the moment..

And I think I am about to mistake you for a volume of Ptolemy." He drew her face closer to his. "Make that Ovid," he said. His lips brushed lightly against hers. "Make that Ars Amatoria.

At that moment she heard from the room beyond the terrifying noises by means of which primitive man once warned away the creatures skulking near his cave at night. She crept closer to the door and listened. It was true. Mr. Demowery was snoring.

Beaumont wanted Esmond very badly. Esmond wanted Beaumont's wife. And she didn't want anybody.

« You kissed first," he said.
"On the cheek!"
"On the cheek, on the lips. All the same to me. Female, kiss. Male, excited. Do I have to explain simple facts of life to you? »

I can do one or the other. Lovemaking or thinking. But not both at the same time.

Stifle it,' Longmore told the boy. He needed a clear head to find his way through Sophy's rabbit warren of a mind. He couldn't do that and translate the boy's deranged version of English at the same time.

Women do not lie, my lord Dain," came a faintly accented voice from the door. "It merely seems so because they exist in another reality.

Her eyes widened. "You undid my frock!"
"No, I didn't," he said.
"Who else do you think could have done it?" she said, backing away into the shadows again. "It was fastened when I came in here. Do you think one of the horses did it?

Why ain't you using your influence to get her out where she can do some good? If she's as quick and noticing and clever as you say - "
„It is dangerous."
„Then look out for her."
He stared at her. „I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me. You're good at not getting killed, ain't you? At not being dead when any normal person would be. According to Jason, you been poisoned, bashed in the head, shot at, drowned, stabbed, and Lord only knows what else. Watching out for a mere female should be child's play.

In the month and a half since the Earl of Hargate's fourth son had arrived in Egypt, he had broken twenty-three separate laws and been jailed nine times. For what Mr. Carsington had cost the (England) consulate in fines and bribes, Mr. Salt (His Majesty's consul general) might have dismantled and shipped to England one of the smaller temples on the island of Philae.
He now knew exactly why Lord Hargate had sent his twenty-nine-year-old offspring to Egypt. It was not, as his lordship had written, "to assist the consul general in his services on behalf of the nation."
It was to saddle someone else with the responsibility and expense.

In all the excitement, I seem to have put my foot under yours," he said. "I do beg your pardon.

Jessica frowned at her. "It was very difficult to keep a straight face - but that wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was - " She let out a sigh. "Oh, Genevieve. He was so adorable. I wanted to kiss him. Right on his big, beautiful nose. And then everywhere else. It was so frustrating. I had made up my mind not to lose my temper, but I did. And so I beat him and beat him until he kissed me. And then I kept on beating him until he did it properly. And I had better tell you, mortifying as it is to admit, that if we had not been struck by lightning - or very nearly - I should be utterly ruined. Against a lamppost. On the Rue de Provence. And the horrible part is" - she groaned - "I wish I had been.

The episode," he said. "You mean when I put my tongue down your throat and lifted your skirts and put my hand on your pudenda in that hardly-worth-mentioning way."
"It would be good of you not to mention it," she said.

Men don't know what they want. Women must show them.

Hypocrisy seemed to be the fashionable equivalent of propriety, discretion indistinguishable from morality, and the

It was then Jessica realized he wasn't using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn't be except for a minor bullet wound. She'd aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.
He looked her way then, and caught her staring. Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you'd like a better look. Regrettably, there's nothing to see. There's nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn't work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn't aim a ways lower. I'm merely disarmed, not dismanned. But I have no doubt that Herriard here will see to the emasculation.

She swallowed it. So bitter.
"Vile," she said. "Vile."
"I know, but it helps. Trust me. I know."
"Trust you," she said. "Hah."
"Clearly you are not dying."
"No. Devil won't take me."
The low chuckle again. "Then we're all safe.

Get off," she said. "Get off now."
Before its too late, and I decide to celebrate a narrow escape from death in the traditional manner of our species.

I asked you to come because I need your help." ...
"Those last may be the most difficult four words I've ever uttered in my life," he said. "I thought I would choke saying them."
"I thought I'd faint, hearing them," she said. "In my experience, men would rather have a limb amputated than admit they need help. And to seek it from a woman is completely unheard of."
He smiled. "The pain is nearly unbearable.

Jessica: "You great drunken jackass!"
Dain: "I did not give you leave to use my Christian name.

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Bertie's gaze fell there and his blue eyes widened. "Deuce take you, Jess," he said crossly. "Can't a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?"

Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.

Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. "Don't pay it any mind, Dain. She does that to all the chaps. I don't know why she does it, when she don't want 'em. Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa's. Go to all the bother of catching a mouse, and then the confounded things won't eat 'em. Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up."

Miss Trent's lips quivered.

I beg your pardon for questioning your judgement," she said. "It is nothing to me, after all, if it proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of Atherton's heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most shocking persons. I am not the one who-"
"I wish you were the one who had heard of the rule Silence is Golden," he said.

I love these pet names," she said, gazing soulfully up into his eyes, "Nitwit. Sap skull. Termagant. How they make my heart flutter!

Lydia: What the devil do you mean by creeping up on me? You're suppose to be in a brothel.
Vere: I lied. I can't believe you fell for the old going-to-a-brothel ruse. You didn't even look out the window to make sure I'd gone away.

I mean to court you, yes," he went on. "But in these
coming days I am determined as well to find a way to ease your heart."
It took her a moment to answer, because the heart he spoke of was so full. "You're a shockingly
good man," she said at last. She mustered a smile. "Perhaps I'd better say yes and have done with it. I'
ve never had any trouble resisting men's lures - at least not since that first time - but so much kindness is
beyond me."
"No, I want a hearty yes," he said. "No questions, no doubts. I am determined to make you
believe your life will be a desert - utterly unlivable without me.

What would you have done?" Esme demanded. "Screamed for help, of course. But it would never occur to you to call for help. You don't just think you're a warrior. You think you're a whole army.

He started to draw away but she wasn't ready. She held on, and after a heartbeat he slid his hands to her waist and pulled her closer. His kiss grew more fiercely determined, as though he would wipe every recollection of anything remotely resembling kisses from her mind and imprint his, permanently, upon it. And upon her body, where the alien feelings simmered into excitement and happiness and a yearning for more. Strange

Just like a damned man, he thought exasperatedly. She got what she wanted, then curled up and went to sleep.
That was what he was supposed to do, blast and confound her bloody impudence.

The Vizier is a genius, truly, if he can keep peace among three hundred women. I can't do so with only one.

Masculine pride is an exceedingly precious and fragile thing

Charm of the most insidious kind: humorous, self-deprecating, and disarmingly frank and confiding.

You refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time-usully the wrong one.

You needn't consult me about redecorating. I know no female can live two days in a house and leave anything as it was. I shall be much astonished if I can find my way about when I return.

I am not in love with you," she said. "It is an infatuation. I have heard of such derangements happening to elderly spinsters.

He'd forget all that, just as he would forget this night.
The memories would linger for a time, but they'd grow dull. The ache he felt now, the frustation and anger and sorrow - all those would fade too.
She'd given him a night to remember, but of course he'd forget.

I want you," she said.
"I told you so," he said.

A dress is a weapon. It must dazzle his eye, raise his temperature ... and empty his purse.

Why must women stay quietly? Why must we be little moons, each of us stuck in our little orbit, revolving around a planet that is some man? Why can't we be other planets? Why must we be moons?

Women don't have a sense of humor," Bertie said. "They don't need one. The Almighty made them as a permanent joke on men. From which one may logically deduce that the Almighty is a female.

Bung upwards, she means, Your Grace, a tart called out.

The Challenge is to pry Bertie loose from Dain and his circle of oafish dengenerates," Jessica said severely.
"It would be far more profitable to pry Dain loose for yourself," said her grandmother. "He is very wealthy, his lineage is excellent, he is young, strong, and healthy, and you feel a powerful attraction."
"He isn't husband material."
"What I have described is perfect husband material." said her grandmother.
"I don't want a husband."
"Jessica, no woman does who can regard men objectively. And you have always been magnificently objective.

And, while Jessica had faith enough in Providence, she preferred to seek help from more accessible sources. Her assistant was Phelps, the coachman.

If this is how it's going to be -you getting all broody and distracted every time you fall in lust with somebody -well, I haven't the stomach for it. I won't put up with it, not for a dukedom. Not for three dukedoms. I deserve better than the role of a quietly accepting wife. I'm an interesting woman. I read. I have opinions. I appreciate poetry. I have a sense of humor."
"I know all that. I've always known."
"I deserve to be loved, truly loved -mind, body and soul. And in case you haven't noticed, there's a line of men ready to give me all that. Why on earth should I settle for a man who can't give me anything but friendship. Why should I settle for you?

It's about time you saw how fortunate you are. You have ... the most virile man in the world." He grinned, and in his eyes, black as sin, she saw the devil inside him laughing. But he was her devil, and she loved him madly.
"The most conceited, you mean," she said.
He bent his head until his great Usignuolo nose loomed as inch from hers, "The most virile, " he repeated firmly. "You are pathetically slow if you haven't learned that by now. Fortunately for you, I am the most patient of tutors. I shall prove it to you."
"You patience?" she asked.
"My virility. Both. Repeatedly." His black eyes glinted. "I will teach you a lesson you'll never forget. "
She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers. "My wicked darling," she whispered. "I should like to see you try.

Surely she'd heard voices like his, so low-pitched as to make every commonplace utterance seem of the deepest intimacy, every cliche a delicious secret.

But you are a charming and beautiful dunces, madame. And," he continued in French, "a charming and beautiful woman
can get away with murder. Can you imagine that any man here would prosecute you for assassinating our language?

He broke through the wall of men surrounding Olivia - dim-witted fowl clustered about a dozing crocodile, as he saw it - and offered to take her home.

The witless destroy what they don't understand.

She's never met an adjective or adverb she didn't like.

Parents must be treated with respect, whether one wants to strangle them or not.

Good God!" she cried. She rolled off him, tugging down her clothing. "Are you mad?"
He blinked and dragged in air. "Well, yes," He said thickly. "Lust does that to a man."
"You thought we would
you would
do ... that in public?"
"I wasn't thinking about where we were." He said.
Her eyes widened.
"I'm a man," he said with what he was sure must be, in the circumstances, saintly patience. "I can do one or the other. Lovemaking or thinking. But not both at the same time."
She stared at him for a moment. Then she drew up her knees and folded her arms upon them and buried her face in her folded arms.
She did not pick up the rifle and knock him on the head with it.
Perhaps all was not lost.
"Somewhere else then?" He said hopefully.

Women don't have a sense of humor. They don't need one. The Almighty made them as a permanent joke on men. From which one may logically deduce tha the Almighty is a female.

He knew there were no forevers and there was always a way out, yet he lost his way, lost his balance.

Any idea what she said, Dain?"
„Yes."
„What was it?"
„Men are ignorant brutes."
„You sure?"
„Quite.

I have dealt with the poor, Bathsheba. They need a great deal, but I do not believe they feel any great want for aristocratic females dressed in the latest stare of fashion telling them they are proud, vain, and licentious.

Life had a way of wrecking her careful plans, again and again. Roulette was more predictable than life. Small wonder she was so lucky at it.
Life was not a wheel going round and round. It never, ever returned to the same place. It didn't stick to simple red and black and a certain array of numbers. It laughed at logic.
Beneath its pretty overdress of man-imposed order, life was anarchy.

If you want respect, you must take your medicine like a brave aristocrat," he said. "Think of the French nobles who walked to the guillotine, double chins aloft.

But I liked you from the moment I first heard your voice," he said, "when I had no idea what you looked like. I thought it delicious, the way you bargained for me, as though I were an old rug. Then I loved the way you looked at me. Then I loved the way you ordered me about. I loved your patient and impatient ways of explaining things to me. I love the sound of your voice and the way you move. I love your courage and your kindness and your generosity and your obstinacy and your passion." He paused. "You're the genius. What do you think that means?

She broke off, glaring at him - no doubt because he must be grinning like an idiot. "What?" she said. "What?"
"On your head," he said. "My drawers."
She looked up.
"You have my drawers on your head," he said. A pause.
Then, "Oh, that," she said. "Yes. I do that sometimes. Wear drawers on my head. It's one of those interesting habits one gets to know about the other person as one gets to know the other person."
"I should not wear them outside if I were you," he said.
"Oh, very well." She sighed.

I love you madly," she said. "I shall make you happy if I have to kill somebody to do it. But that ought not to be necessary.

I have a plan," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Let's get married," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Let's conquer the world," he said.
"Yes," she said. No one in her family had ever been accused of dreaming small.
"Let's bring the beau monde to its knees."
"Yes."
"Let's make them beg for your creations."
"Yes," she said. "Yes, yes, yes."
"Is tomorrow too soon?" he said.
"No." she said. "We've a great deal to do, you and I, conquering the world. We must start at once. We've not a minute to lose."
"I love hearing you say that," he said.
He kissed her. It lasted a long time.
And they would last, she was sure, a lifetime. On that she'd wager anything.

Venice she is like the beautiful cortigiana - the courtesan - who has" - Zeggio frowned, searching for the phrase he wanted - "dropped on the hours of trouble."
"Fallen on hard times," James said.
"Fallen on hard times," Zeggio repeated. He murmured the phrase to himself a few times. "I see. The same but not the same.

He cleared his throat, "Zoe, i think you said you love me."
"I did say it. I do love you with all my heart."
"I see." There was a long pause, then he said, "For how long has this been going on?"
"I don't know," she said, "Sometimes i think it started a long, long time ago."
"You might have mentioned it."
"I didn't want to encourage it," she said, "I thought it was a bad idea.

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.

Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties.

I could not bear to leave you coldly or hurt you in any way, even if it were the smallest hurt."
„A small hurt," he said. "That is like saying the guillotine blade nicks a bit.

Then he recalled whose daughter she was, and wondered why he wondered.
Then he recalled who it was who had a child.
A child, Noirot had a child!

Everybody knew gentlemen could be obtuse, especially when it came to matters of the heart. Everybody knew, as well, that gentlemen needed to believe they were in charge. Therefore, ladies had to learn ways of communicating the obvious without being obvious about it.

Men are the inferior sex. Adam was made first, and the first effort is always the simpler and cruder one, non? With the second, one refines.

You shouldn't have married an elderly man."
„Virgil was four and fifty when we wed," she [Daphne] said. „That is not exactly Methuselah."
„How old were you?"
„Nineteen and a half," she said.
„"You'd have done better with two husbands of seven and twenty," he said.

HOrrible. The most horrible sound on earth. The sound of death and torture and the agonies of a burning hell," Lisle said. "Damn them. It's bagpipes.

I'm sure the gentlemen have had quite enough of decorations and flower arrangements and whose feelings will be hurt by what."
"Gladly, Stepmama," said Lady Charlotte. "Mr. Carsington, perhaps you would help me choose something to soothe the gentlemen's delicate nerves.

In my dictionary, romance is not maudlin, treacly sentiment. It is a curry, spiced with excitement, and humour, and a healthy dollop of cynicism.

You'll want all your strength for the wedding night."

I cannot think why I should need strength," she said, ignoring a host of spine-tingling images rising in her mind's eye. "All I have to do is lie there."

"Naked," he said grimly.

"Truly?" She shot him a glance from under her lashes. "Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you'd told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee."

"The what?"

"It was ghastly expensive," she said, "but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination."

Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers.

"But if it were left to Aunt Louisa," she went on,"I should be covered from my chin to my toes in thick cotton ruffled with monstrosities with little bows and rosebuds. Which is absurd, when an evening gown reveals far more, not to mention--"

"What color?" he asked. His low voice had roughened.

"Wine red," she said, "With narrow black ribbons threaded through the neckline. Here." She traced a plunging U over her bosom. "And there's the loveliest openwork over my...well, here." She drew her finger over the curve of her breast a bare inch above the nipple. "And openwor

They didn't tell Miles what their destination was. He only knew they traveled south, and he'd as soon have done so on a mode of transportation other than the camel.
The creatures bore heavy inanimate burdens calmly enough. But his showed a marked aversion to being ridden. The camel made insulting noises as Miles circled it, looking for a place to get on. The animal complained loudly and cursed him bitterly in camel language when he was finally seated. It snarled and growled and turned around to give him venomous looks. Then, as you'd expect, it flatly refused to obey him. When Miles tried to turn its head, it tried to bite his feet. When he snapped at the animal to behave, it promptly lay down. When at last the humor seized it to get up, it made sure to throw Miles back and forth violently in the process.

He pulled away the glove, and at the first glimpse of her fragile, white hand, all thoughts of negotiation fled. "I don't see how matters could become worse," he muttered. "I am already besotted with a needle-tongued, conceited, provoking ape leader of a lady."
Her head jerked up. "Besotted? You're nothing like it. Vengeful is more like it. Spiteful.

The ton will be all atwitter about last night

A man ought to look up to a woman, literally or figuratively, because that is the proper mode of worship, and worship is the very least he can do.

Dain wasn't certain what exactly was wrong with her, but he had no doubt that something was. He was Lord Beelzebub, wasn't he? She was supposed to faint, or recoil in horrified revulsion at the very least. Yet she had gazed at him as bold as brass, and it had seemed for a moment as though the creature were actually flirting with him.

I don't ravish women, if that's what you're thinking," he said.
"Oh, no," she said. "I had supposed that women stood in line waiting for you to relieve them of their virtue.

I expected a good deal more from you," Marcelline said, "You bungled it."
"Yes," he said. "What else could I do? I was asking the wrong woman to marry me.

An adult should not be forced into marriage as a child is forced to eat his peas. Peas are only part of a meal. Marriage is a life's work.

They believe Miles can read it," she said. "Good grief. They must be completely illiterate
or desperately gullible
or
"
"French," said Mr Carsington.

It was unsettling. For a moment he believed she could see straight through his brain. Not that there was much to see. Still, he doubted she'd feel more amiably toward him if, for instance, she could discern how vast an amount of mental space his fantasies of seduction occupied, compared to the cramped corner devoted to the problem of murdered guides and corrupt police.