Meredith Duran Quotes

To be studious was to be the opposite of boring, she had believed; it was to be so interested, so madly curious, that one simply could not wait for the answers to arrive on their own: one had to go chase them in the only manner available.

Life will always give you a reason to look away from opportunities. But courage means grabbing them, no matter the circumstances.

Better to say - we'll find you a man of discerning tastes, who knows brilliance when he sees it, and knows to treasure it, too." She hesitated. "Gentlemen don't want a lady who knows more than them." "Your mother told you that?" When she nodded, he pulled a face. "Well, that isn't quite true. Some men reckon it a very fine thing, to have a wife with a brain.

And really, was there anything so demoralizing as meeting a former lover? Never did a woman have more cause to doubt her judgment than when confronted with the pathetic evidence of what she had once somehow found appealing.

Yours if you want it.
- Julian to Emma.

It was needlepoint, Mr. Burke. Tapestries are woven, you see, and I find it far more satisfying to stab than to weave.

After a long moment, the Countess sat back down. "So," she said. "You ... do love her. I must say, you look peculiarly resigned to it."
He shrugged. "It is not fresh news for me."
"And for Emma?"
"Neither welcomed nor openly acknowledged."
"But acknowledged all the same, you believe."
"Perhaps," he said. "I cannot know. Not anymore."
-Delphinia, Lady Chad and Julian

A small mole marked the corner of her right eye, as if the devil had pressed a dark kiss to the tender skin there, giving her his mark before unleashing her on humanity.

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.

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.

Wisdom told him that one did not share secrets until one was willing to hear them broadcasted.

There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.

He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen.

The faint freckle on her throat sent another thrill through him. He wanted to touch it, to whisper against it, I've found you. For that matter, the slope of her neck begged to be brushed with a hand. His hand, before he cupped her nape and guided her gently backward onto a bed .

Nothing he had done to her last night had eroded that uncanny self-possession that she had no right to possess. A bastard, a servant, a girl who changed names as easily as a hat. He could not come to terms with her. Even now, as the train groaned to a stop, she sat glaring a challenge at him. How did she do it?

He understood the source of his own assurance: his power was his armor. But she, who had nothing, walked through the world with her chin held as high as his, and nothing seemed to shame her. How was it possible?

I will not endure a wife who tells me to go back to a mistress. I will not have a wife who refuses to demand explanations.

When he entered after her, she saw that he meant to come straight to her, and she raised a hand. "No," she said. "Wait."
His footsteps halted. He had always listened to her, hadn't he? Had always heard her."
-Emma and Julian

So you hate me now,' she said quietly. 'How convenient for you. As though everything I did for you no longer counts, because I deceived you.

His smile faded a little, growing softer, more intimate, like the look he'd showed her in bed this morning. 'You haven't learned yet when to lie.' Slowly, as if the words were being dragged from him, he added: 'I confess, Nell, I hope you never learn.' She found herself staring at him. Unsteadying thought: there was something hot in his eyes that wasn't purely want. It was too tender, too ... affectionate.

Some people were like that; they could not escape criticism, because they never quite managed to convince themselves of the role everyone believed they should fill.

He reached out to cup her elbow. Best to move slowly, to communicate that she could refuse him. The choice was hers. Her luminous eyes remained fixed on his. Her lips parted as he trailed his hand from the point of her elbow to her wrist. God. Her bare skin, that small, vulnerable patch exposed between cuff and glove, was indescribably soft. His thumb rubbed her pulse once, twice. A small noise came from her, the loosening of her breath, a sound as meaningful as the shushing of silk as a dress fell to the floor. This was how it began: how a woman came undone.

Canada is lovely," she breathed against his lips. "And you are lovely."
His laughter ghosted into her mouth. "That's my line, Lyd. You are supposed to think me handsome

Olivia began the search feeling calm, numb even. She did not wish to break the chest unless she had to, and the quantity of papers had multiplied in her absence, appearing on the nightstand, taking up a new shelf on the bookcase. But as she searched, heedless of what she knocked over, or pages she ripped in her haste, her actions began to summon a different mood. She tore through the papers as though she were in the grip of some silent, unfolding hysteria.

And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him - facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jelaous besides; diwowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?

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

The sunny scene looked impossibly vivid, as though painted in primary colors by an artist who hadn't yet learned how to shade; it should trouble him, it really should, that he felt so goddamned alive. Was he never going to learn subtler pleasures?
Miss Masters seemed to feel it, too. She wrested free of his hold,skipping ahead a little, then spinning back to face him. Her eyes were as blue as the sky behind her, her hair as bright as the sun; she was not a subtle pleasure herself.

- that if she touched him right now, their flesh would recognize each other. The wildest thought: these scars, his and hers, would speak to each other, communicating intimacies that could not be unshared.

You came for me," she whispered.
His hand wound through her hair, cradling her. "I will always come for you," he said.

No, thank you. I prefer my liquor cold.'
'Right. Or in a pipe, I suppose.'
Phin's brow lifted. 'What a clumsy way to drink liquor. Are you sure you're not concussed?

But of course a man like Burke could not imagine what that was like. To live, day after day, as a shadow - to speak and be ignored, as though one's words made no sound. To protest and be patted on the head, as though one's concerns were a child's. Her uncle had not burned the embroidery in an outrage, Jane thought suddenly, but in the righteous grip of moral duty. His niece's role was to be used, not to think or speak or feel. And so, in the very act of communicating an opinion, she had committed the egregious offense of insisting on her humanity.

I'm so sorry. I read of it only yesterday. Otherwise, I would have come sooner.' And what good that reassurance was, he had no idea. I would not have come if her were alive, but I would have come at the very moment of his death, had I known of it. Yes, that must be very comforting to her.

Why did she think she had the right to speak to him in this manner? Why did he constantly invite it?

He might have mocked himself if he hadn't been tired of always mocking at what others took seriously. It was easier to mock, of course, but other people refrained, and not always because they lacked the imagination or sense of humor required to mock. Sometimes they refrained because they dared to long for something that was not easily grasped, something that might slip away if one did not pay it the proper respect - prayerful respect, the sort that moved one to remove one's hat by the side of a grave, or to bow one's head to soldiers marching off to war, even while damning the fat MPs that sent them to die. Life was not all for mockery. Nor was laughter. But it was harder to spot the prayerful moments when they called for laughter instead of tears. Tears spelled an end. Laughter could spell a beginning.

She had wanted wings, and now she was drifting, held together only by the pulsing perimeters of her skin. Even the floor that dug into her shoulder blades seemed welcome to her, a hard, pleasurable contrast to her laxity, to the melting in her limbs; it mistranslated in her mind as another dimension of his touch.

And now I should kiss you again, I think. Isn't that how it's done?" Startled, she put her hand to her lips. But their rough, cracked surfaces made the very prospect seem ludicrous. "Yes, I suppose - in a gothic romance. But if you kissed me now, no doubt my lip would split open, and I'd bleed on you." His shout of laughter was quickly restrained. "Well, all right. Since you put it so romantically. Someplace else. Shall I be adventurous?

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.

He heard the swishing of her skirts as she approached. God above! Could she not leave well enough alone? 'There is another thing I wished to ask you,' she said as she sat across from him - sat down in his presence without so much as a by-your-leave. Now, *this* deserved a sharp word. He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it, leaning across the chiffonier to whisper, 'By any chance, did you consume five pounds of truffles last week?'
What in God's name? 'No.'
'I thought not.' She plucked off her eyeglasses, revealing eyes a startling shade of light blue. He abruptly forgot what he'd been about to say. She was polishing the lenses with her sleeve as she continued to speak. The words might as well have been gibberish.
Her eyes were the precise shade of the sky over his garden this past summer ...
She replaced the spectacles on her nose, the glare of her lenses masking the miracles behind them.

Force persuades a person to speak, but it cannot guarantee his honesty. Quite the reverse: it will extract confessions from innocents and lies from simple sinners ...

You're the lucky one. Otherwise you'd know there's a pleasure to be had from boredom. The best kind of pleasure: it means you've got nothing to worry about.

With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience - character - knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant.

Words are not the only way we communicate, you and I. They never were.

"I love you," she whispered.
How horrifying, and how thrilling. It felt like a secret, a confession, a taunt: a dare to fate.
But he did not seem to think it remarkable or daring. "I know," he said, and his thumbs stroked her wrists, once. "We love each other. And look, darling: the world continues to turn."

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Modesty, if you consider it, is the most unforgivable sort of falsehood: it's a lie that does damage to no one but yourself.

You are thirty years old. It is time you overcame your objections to marriage." Michael could no longer follow even the smallest bit of this conversation. "What objections? I have no objections. I've simply never met a woman to inspire the thought.

This was banter, all right - pointed and spiky, the kind he'd expect from a bloke. A blunt tongue in an angel's body: it was the devil's own recipe to enamor him.

And the smile that lingered on his mouth now! Slow to spread, it assumed a mocking edge that - to her amazement - made her breath catch.

While the darkness of the interior concealed her body, the streetlight behind them illuminated the pale oval of her face, gilding her cheeks in shades of amber and ghostly blue. The effect was . . . arresting. Vermeer had used natural light to paint women in this way, faces emerging from the shadows, forcing the viewer's eye to focus on what was most important: the look of grace. The mouth firmed in determination. The eyes poised to behold a revelation.

She had told the truth: she did not like to dance. Men assumed that a spinster wanted for excitement. Dried-up. They made a point of spinning her wildly across the floor. Once she had fallen, and thereafter she'd declined all invitations.

She had that kind of power, though thank God she didn't know it. She had no idea that she could light up a room like a lamp at midnight. He

Her spine wasn't really made of steel, after all. That was a silly saying, made up by someone who had never felt what it meant to be broken.

He smiled at her: he simply couldn't help himself. He was so glad she'd wandered into his house to kill him.

And I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights."
"No", she said. "Not particularly."
"Only missteps."
She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer."
"So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.

I'll draw up a list. [ ... ] You can give me a general idea, if you like: hair color, eye color-"
"None!"
"None? Bit of a tall order, there, Gwen. Aristocracy lacks for albinos.

He thought back to the first moment in Hong Kong when he had wanted her and recoiled. That, perhaps, was when his poles had shifted. Missing the small signs, focused on other aims, he had reviled himself for wayward urges, mistaking them as signs of his own weakness. Had he realized then that she was well worth wanting, he might have found the courage to do what came to her so naturally: to look around a locked room, and see opportunities worth breaking windows for.

His slow smile might haved lured angels from heaven, flocking noisily, arms outstretched,happy to burn for him.

If Gerry were dying of thirst and spotted Alex two feet from a well, he still would not think he required his younger brother's help. It simply would never occur to him that Alex might be able to provide it.

He was nature's cruel trick on the fairer sex, the perfect picture of dark, charming, masculine wickedness. Shining black hair, high cheekbones, lips as full as a woman's . . . That was surely a flaw. But then, he had that brutal jaw and chin to make up for it . . . and the slight bump to his high-bridged nose, suggestive of some violent fracture in his past. "Mr.

He might have taken her inscrutability to mean there was no depth to her, but even their short acquaintance proved otherwise. Conversely, she might be opaque because her depths were so foreign, so purely lower class, that he simply had no hope for getting a grip on them without prolonged exposure.
Well. It seemed he'd turned into a snob, which made this next bit all the more ironic.
'You'll do it very simply,' he said. 'Marry me.

Well. I suppose . . . there are two shrews in this household, then." Had she just made a . . . joke? At her own expense? "Termagant," Lilah said tentatively, "is the term I prefer." The barest smile touched Miss Everleigh's mouth. "Why not harpy? Or vixen? There's a very long list to choose from, when one speaks of sharp-tongued women. All of them invented by men, I

Speak plainly, sir.'
'*Sir*? I say, Lyd. Are you always so formal with men you've made love with?'
The whip of her head caused the bird [on her hat] to saw wildly, like a famished woodpecker in range of a tree.

Mr. O'Shea," his wife said coolly. "Such language - " "One day you'll call me Nick." "One day I might call you Beelzebub. What of it?

Surely this is what death would be like: nothingness, oblivion, as the world continued to turn, heedless of her absence.

Perfection was not always beautiful: sometimes, it was terrifying.

Kindness never cost me a penny," he said. "I see no need to hoard it." She

She had found the Tears of Idihet.
As she stared, they began to blur. Distantly she marveled at this: the wisdom of her body, which already understood the consequences of this discovery - the conclusions which her mind revolved and revolved around, but refused to grasp.

Well. You must admit, you do need a haircut." A faint smile ghosted over his mouth. His fingers loosened; they slipped over hers as they withdrew. "Is there anyone in this house whom I could trust to wield the scissors? I have given them all cause to aim for my throat." Was that a joke? Miracle of miracles! "Come now," she said hoarsely. "Be sensible. Dead men pay no salaries.

It is not proper, you being closeted up here with him
"
"Delphinia, don't be absurd. I am so firmly on the shelf that the maids are tempted to dust me.

I'd reckon it's none of your business who I'm sweet on." Nick slouched into the pew, his attention trained on the priest, who had finally finished his pipe and come inside to start the Mass. "You can do better than her, surely!" "I can do just about anyone I please, Sally darling." Sally made a choked noise. "We are in the Lord's house." "It's my house," he said calmly. "The Lord only has it on lease." Sally

A woman must guard her mysteries." "Perhaps true," he said, "if her mysteries are few in number. But I feel certain that a man could study you at his leisure and never find himself short on the most . . . pleasant brands of speculation.

His fingers settled on her hair. The purest, softest shade of black. The shade one saw when one closed one's eyes, in a warm, comfortable place, to rest.

His arms banded about her so tightly that she felt nothing could break his hold. It calmed something in her that had been trembling since - since she knew not when.

Spoken often enough, words become [became] nonsense.

I think it a moral duty," she said. "If one inherits the privilege of wealth, or of education or good family, one must use that privilege wisely. Men speak of progress like a machine, an engine that rolls forward without human direction, pulling everyone with it. But that isn't true. If you read the newspapers" - the critical, adventurous, daring newspapers, not the conservative rags that her uncle favored - "it's easy to see that many get left behind. Many, in fact, get crushed.

Good heavens, ogling was addictive.

She did not feel anything so boring as beautiful. She felt fierce.

If something frightens you," he said, "that means it's the best place to start.

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

Only the tips of her stockings showed, quick flashes of white lace. She wore lace stockings to bed. Now, why should that be the best news he'd had all day? Should

English was so heavy, so desiccated and hardened by meaning, by pain and anger and even the jests and the petty quibbles, everything under the sun that obscured the basic truth. But the sound of his voice as he spoke to her now, she heard the wind in it, the stillness of the night. Stars above. The things that had kept her going. Always in her memory they had been there.

Is that what you want?" he asked very quietly. "Protection?" "Oh, who knows?" This man had shown her that she knew herself far less well than she'd imagined. "I thought what I wanted was simple - to be a lady." Her laughter felt false. "It was my sister's plan, actually. We would remake ourselves. Our accents, our deportment. For gentlemen never tell a lady - a proper lady, like Miss Everleigh - to take it on the chin. It's their duty to shelter her from harshness. And that seems quite pleasant, never to be expected to endure. To be free to pursue better things, like . . . beauty and honesty and honor. So we - I - set out to become that kind of woman. A woman whom men seek to protect." What

You interest me,' he said, and his tone suggested this fact itself surprised him, meant something more to him than perhaps it should: a man surprised by being interested was living a piss-poor facsimile of life, in her view.

I've heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness

Elizabeth is stumbling about the Stromonds' ballroom with all the grace of a baby elephant. Granted, she doesn't weigh much, but it may prove fatal to the Stromonds' porcelain.

Was it her imagination, or did the townhouse loom? All the other mansions on this street looked polite and elegant, neatly confining themselves within rows of trimmed hedges. This house, on the other hand, sprawled. She spied a gargoyle lurking above one cornice, glowering at her. Of course the Duke of Marwick would have a gargoyle carved into his house!

A warm breeze scudded through the crowd, perfumed with celebration: burnt sugar, the sourness of beer, the warm, golden scent of hay. Here was life in all its sweetness, surprising her when she least expected it, twisting forethought into revelation, reminding her that plans sometimes proved unnecessary, that occasionally everything came together spontaneously, as though the universe were an ever-resolving pattern that wanted to please her in the end.

She was not light, but she was not as heavy as she should be. Her bones should be made of iron, for what else was fit to support her bravado? It would shame generals. Emperors. Professional pirates.

What a terrible thing it was to wish to be known, to be seen, when one's life depended on remaining unnoticed.

Boneless with relief, she let him pull her forward, into the open air, into his lap. And in this wild darkness, in the middle of an empty earth, she grieved for both of them - indeed, for every human in this wretched world, who must face the trials life offered, negotiate the changes wrought by time. There was so little joy to cling to, so few certainties. Yet humans continued to endure. Continued to hope. The undeniable compulsion to survive powered them onward, like Sisyphus on his mountain.

Might be a task as politically perilous to the former as the latter.

She had a girlish fullness to her face, which made a provocative contrast to the self-possession of her bearing as she opened her eyes and smiled at him. She'd known he was looking at her. She'd let the moment draw out, for some private feminine reason. The knowledge brushed over him like fingertips - stealing away his breath.

You said we must coexist peaceably,' he continued. 'I agree. Instruct me how.'
'That was a lie,' she said, her voice choked. 'I meant to trick you to my table. You know this!'
'Truths sometimes appear in unbidden forms.

You do not strike me as a Lothario. You're far too serious for the part.'
'Oh? I did give it a small try, if you recall. And your mouth tasted quite sweet. But perhaps I was too subtle?'
From an airy exchange of quips, he had suddenly moved onto solid ground ... 'You're a skillful flirt,' she managed. 'I will give you that.'
'And you're no flirt at all. Come, give it a try. Tell me how a rogue charms a woman, if not through sober, industrious application.'
Her lips twitched. 'That sounds like the factory brand of roguery. But all you need do is attend to a woman's vanity, I suppose.'
'Ah, yes. Of course. It comes back to me now; I've been going about it all wrong. THe first thing I should have said is that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'
She laughed despite herself. 'That's a clever sort of compliment, seeing as it reserves you the right to change your mind with the next woman you meet.

Everybody knew that he spent an hour each morning hopping about and kicking things like a maddened rabbit

After a moment, he murmured, "Emmaline. I am sorry. I am...overwrought." His laughter was unsteady. "And there's a phrase I've never used before. At least not in reference to myself." An unwilling smile curved her mouth. "I hope you won't swoon. I don't carry smelling salts." "No," he said. "I wouldn't have imagined you did.

We simply can't drop everything and run away, can we?'
A warm wind kicked up, ruffling through his thick, dark hair. Very softly, he said, 'I see. Is this where you preach to me of how English civilization will save the savages?'
She hated this, *hated* the way he was suddenly looking at her - as though she were some unfamiliar specimen whose novelty was rapidly losing interest. 'Be fair, sir! All I meant was that we've created a society here. Laws, a justice system, a - postal service ... ' The argument sounded weak even to her own ears. 'I simply mean that to leave those things behind would hardly be simple.

She had always loved him, after all. And perhaps he knew it. Perhaps he saw more than she had suspected. And despite it, he did not look away.

But here there were houses full of *stuff*, fancy sheets woven with silk floss as soft as a baby's bum; fancy washstands carved of dark wood that glowed like cherries where the light hit it; curtains the shade of the summer sky, heavy and glossy and smooth to the touch. The velvet-flocked wallpaper was so soft beneath her fingertips that had her eyes been closed, she might have thought she was brushing the belly of a rabbit.
And the stool in the corner! One wouldn't imagine you'd get too fancy with such a piece, but this stool was covered with embroidery so fine that her knuckles ached just looking at the stitches. Unbelievable. The rich even spoiled their arses!

Nobody belongs to that world ... Nobody feels as if they belong, at any rate. They're all watching each other
fearful of the laughter coming from across the room, wondering to themselves, are they the target? Are they the joke?

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