The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings, #2)

by Mackenzi Lee

You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men.

“Every point I made is irrefutable. Their exclusionary policies rest entirely on the fragility of their own masculinity, but it doesn’t matter because they’re men and I’m a woman so it’s not even going to be a fight and it was never going to be a fight. It was always going to be them walking all over me, and I was stupid to think it could ever be anything more than that, and don’t you dare try to hug me.”

“You’re so determined to become a lady doctor then,” he says. “No, sir,” I reply, “I’m determined to become a doctor. The matter of my sex I would prefer to be incidental rather than an amendment.”

Softness can be an armor, even if it isn’t my armor.

“That’s the lie of it all. You have to be better to prove yourself worthy of being equal.”

“Mythology is all shite anyway,” she says. “It never has stories about people like us. I’d rather write my own legends. Or be the story someone else looks to someday. Build a strong foundation for those who follow us.”

It isn’t what I wanted. But I don’t care. It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in. It’s a new heading. A fresh start.