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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Well, Alf presented herself as a boy in any case and, as far as Val knew, most people seemed to be bamboozled by her trifling ruse. He, naturally, had taken only a minute—if that—to realize her true sex. One had but to look at the slenderness of her neck, the lack of an Adam’s apple, the angle where her jaw met her neck, et cetera, et cetera. Amazing how few people truly examined the world about them.
Yikes.
The cook, who was putting the finishing touches on her roast, gave him a skeptical side-eye. Mrs. Bram had been none too pleased to discover, early in the tour, that the boy didn’t eat pork of any kind—not ham or sausage or even bacon. Bridget had hastily led the boy away, leaving Mrs. Bram muttering about “heathenish” ways. She’d hoped that the cook would’ve forgiven the boy’s dietary oddities in their absence, but such was obviously not the case.
Been there :(
“Have you ever thought about taking off that incredibly ugly mobcap?” he asked as she drew near.
Hes so rude!
Perhaps he should call for Cal instead and have a veiled sparring match over which of them his mother had treated worse all those years ago.
Oh no. Mommy issues are me.
“Fuck the rules, Mrs. Crumb.”
YESSSSS
Is God dead? Or does he play celestial billiards with the planets?”
He is absolutely high
“That’s what you were talking about, weren’t you? Mr. Galileo’s theory that the Earth moves about the sun, and the disgraceful way he was imprisoned by the pope, and Mr. Newton’s discovery of gravity, and then you asked why the Earth didn’t fall into the sun and I answered that it was because of the momentum the Earth has as it orbits the sun. At least,” she faltered, “I believe that is what Mr. Kepler wrote.”
LOL she told him
“Have you looked at my books? Glanced at my titles? Fondled my spines?”
This man knows what he is doing
Val smiled and inhaled, breathing potential, breathing power. Oh, this was lovely.
Lol this fucking guy
“Blues,” he said simply, because perhaps her brain was so befogged she couldn’t take in more complex words. “We look good in shades of blue.”
This man is ridiculous
She was a housekeeper and housekeepers didn’t matter in the grand schemes of kings and dukes and little girls who wished upon rabbit moons.
Gawd hes such an ass
Few, however, actively loathed the person who gave them roof, sustenance, and wage.
Eat the rich
“This is who I am, Séraphine. Naked, with blade and blood. I am vengeance. I am hate. I am sin personified. Never mistake me for the hero of this tale, for I am not and shall never be. I am the villain.”
Sir you are a pompus ass
“And yet here I am, weary and famished, and on the doorstep on a cold and dreary night. Oh, will you let me in, kind sir?”
Always so dramatic
Bridget rose, shivering in her chemise. This disturbed Pip, who, despite his wiry fur, had been forced to seek warmth beneath the covers. He bumbled about, searching for a way out of the covers, until he found the edge and emerged, looking like some medieval cowled monk.
I love Pip
“I, Séraphine. I am the government. Dukes and marquesses, earls and viscounts. Men who have land and money and power and have had it for generations and generations, amen. We decide what is right and what is not. Who shall hang for the theft of a handkerchief and who shall be let go for the rape of a maidservant. We decide how many windows on a house shall be taxed and how many men shall die in a war. We are the ruling class.” He smiled at her as sweetly as he knew how. “Now tell me, do you really think one such as I should be making these rules of right and wrong?”
Hes not wrong but he is still an asshole.
Val, because you can be a better man than this.”
I disagree wholly
She left. And took all the warmth from the room.
Good!
It hadn’t been hard to find a few people to either look the other way or help outright with the aid of bribery. Something a master of plots and schemes should’ve thought about before haring off to his gloomy old castle. Oh, but that was right—he didn’t pay attention to his hired help. Swine.
EAT THE RICH
“But since we’re making general complaints,” he continued over her mutter, “why weren’t you a virgin?”
*eyeroll
And if that price was a child? Oh, that wouldn’t be so very bad, either. She was a bastard herself. If she had a child by him, she’d keep her babe and no matter how hard it might be to make her way in the future at least she’d never be alone again.
Wtf
Val contemplated this as he made his way to his dining room. He’d always vaguely imagined the servants having at it at all hours behind the kitchen doors. Well, when he thought about it. Which wasn’t often because they were servants. But it was one of those old canards the pamphleteers were always going on about—that the lower classes were too sexed and too fertile—and yet here was his housekeeper refusing him her favors, bizarrely because it was the middle of the day.
The classism, the eugenitcs
“It’s a very good thing I know how to take a blow, otherwise Caire might’ve broken my jaw.”
Omg the expert in everything
Were all men idiots?
“There are many, many things that I regret doing in my life, but nothing that I regret more than what I did to you, Bridget.”
Good
He bent, closing his azure eyes, and licked her breast almost reverently. She shuddered. “It’s the middle of the day,” she whispered. His eyes opened, wicked and amused. “I know. Your favorite.”
this was sweet, even I admit that.
