A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell, #1)

by Deanna Raybourn

I have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try.”

We are, as a gender, undereducated and infantilized to the point of idiocy. But those of us who have been given the benefit of learning and useful occupation, well, we are proof that the traditional notions of feminine delicacy and helplessness are the purest poppycock.”

“What a lovely wife you make.” “How revolting. I didn’t do any of this for you, you impossible man. I did it for myself. I

“Good girl. Now, pull back your hair,”

in my experience, it is far better to tell a man what he wants to hear and then do as you please than attempt to reason with him.

One may be elegant or enthusiastic, but seldom both.

“Her eyes are peculiar. I have never seen eyes that color. What color is that?” “It is the precise color of the wing frills on a White-browed purpletuft, Iodopleura isabellae, from South America,” he replied with such unthinking swiftness

I turned on Stoker with scorn. “O, the perfidy of men.” “What have I done?” he protested. “Nothing at present, but you are the only representative of your sex I have at hand to abuse. Take your lumps for your brothers.”

It occurred to me then that Stoker’s raffish appearance—the pierced lobe, the unruly locks, the glowering expressions—were not merely expressions of his own tastes and values; they might well be a sort of protective coloration, taken on to shield himself from the predation of voracious ladies. Of course, they would also serve to attract an entirely different sort of woman, the kind not easily put off by a little handsome savagery. For those of us who liked our men well roughened, his appearance was the fulfillment of a lifetime’s dreaming of pirates and ne’er-do- well rogues. I might have enlightened him on the devastating effect of going about looking like a highwayman, but the risk he might scrub himself up to look like a parson was too horrifying to contemplate.

She is kind and patient and endlessly selfless. But while I admire her virtues, I cannot help that they leave me cold. Give me a flawed woman with warm blood in her veins instead of ice water any day.”

But it is a difficult thing to heft one’s burden alone when there is someone willing to share it.

“I could sooner influence the sun to set in the east, Sir Hugo. She is entirely her own woman.”

‘I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.’”