More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I tell you, if he had a quizzing glass he would have examined me under it. He seemed so dreadfully bored and put upon, I nearly felt bad for him. But then I remembered all his money and got quite over it.”
That was his greatest asset as a marquess—simply existing, like a loaded and cocked pistol.
Shame was a luxury of the rich, as far as Charity could tell. Everybody else had to worry about getting food in a way that didn’t land them in a noose, but marquesses had time and pride to spare.
Charity had always known that she wasn’t one of those blessed few who had the luxury of keeping their hands clean.
“What does one wear to one of Mrs. Allenby’s salons? Is evening attire acceptable, or must I fashion a pair of sans-culottes?” Gilbert made a derisive noise, but Alistair could see the beginnings of a smile cutting through the gloom, so he kept on going. “Does one bring one’s own opium, or is there some sort of communal . . . I don’t know, tureen?”
His mouth quirked into approximately one-sixteenth of a smile—you would need a protractor to be sure it had really happened—and his left eyebrow shot up as if to say, What in God’s name am I doing in this place?
Imagine if people carried their hearts around like fragile birds’ eggs, carefully preventing the smallest crack or injury. Everybody would keep a polite distance, safe and protected and utterly alone.
“You mean for Robert Selby to die.” It was no more or less than what she already knew had to happen, but hearing Alistair suggest it in his commanding, lordly manner made it so much worse. She felt that he was suggesting an act of violence, an actual murder or suicide, or as if he were asking her to cut off her own leg.
For Louisa, she would have killed off Robert Selby and suffered the cost of that sacrifice. But not under any circumstance would she live as a woman.
She didn’t think she could explain the utter impossibility of her living as a woman. She could hardly articulate it to herself.
Hugh Furnival, who had known Robin since Cambridge, seemed only minorly discomfited. “Well, I knew you weren’t quite in the ordinary way of things,” he said after a mere moment of stunned silence. “I wondered if you might be French.”
And think of how inconvenient it must be to have one’s happiness hinge on orgies. I think I pity your ancestors. Consider the logistics.”
