An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell, #6)

by Deanna Raybourn

Stoker was never happier than when imparting information, whether one asked for it or not. This, I had observed frequently upon my travels, is common in the male of the species.

There will always be men who rally to the cause of another man in his moment of disgrace simply because they fear their own so deeply.”

“You are not among the good that has happened to me. You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me to you.”

so if you are expecting an apology, I’m afraid you will be sitting in the anteroom of hell before you hear one out of me.”

I belonged to no one, was beholden to no one. Whether I starved or whether I throve, the outcome lay firmly in my own hands. And that freedom was worth all the diamonds in the world, I decided.

I wrote to the princess and told her that one must befriend grief. It is a companion that never leaves.” I thought of the losses I had known, my aunts, my friend the baron. And others. For some, grief was a devil, to be shut out upon the doorstep and ignored. But the notion of accepting that it would be a constant visitor in one guise or another seemed to me the beginning of wisdom.

Death is part of life, child. It is not the end. It is not even the middle. It is merely a doorway. Alice is no further away from me than if she had stepped into the next room.”