An Impossible Impostor (Veronica Speedwell, #7)

by Deanna Raybourn

There are few things I despise more than people who constantly quote platitudes. It demonstrates a painful lack of originality.

The voice came from the shadows under the stairs, and I began to wonder if the Hathaways kept that particular doorway dark solely to accommodate dramatic entrances.

Look at you! More ravishing than you were then and entirely mistress of your own destiny. You have employment that suits you, a companion who clearly worships your very hem. You have health and beauty and a wit so sharp a man might cut himself and think the bleeding a privilege.”

We did not require one another, for neither of us was deficient. But we enhanced one another, we bettered one another.

I understood her better then. She had the merchant class’s view of aristocracy—awed to the point of idiocy. Aristocrats, as I had excellent reason to know, put their trousers on exactly the same as everyone else, and sometimes with far less skill or assistance.

“It takes courage to live a good life, Harry, but it also takes courage to live like a blackguard. Both require difficult choices. Both require hardship and endurance and patience. There is, in the end, little difference between the good and the bad. Only one of these lives requires you to look over your shoulder all the while and the other one makes it a little easier to sleep at night.”