A Treacherous Curse (Veronica Speedwell, #3)

by Deanna Raybourn

I had long since discovered upon my travels that men are largely the same no matter where one encounters them. And if one is prepared to let them discourse on their pet topics of conversation, one can generally get on with things quite handily without any interference.

“He is changeable as the sea but solid as the earth.”

I have never been religious. But if you had asked me in that moment if seraphim existed, I would have pointed you to her and you would have believed.”

“Boys!” I said sharply. “There will be no brawling with your shirts on. Kindly remove your upper garments and give them into my keeping.”

There is nothing more you can do to hurt me now. You have already broken the man you knew, crucified every part of my humanity and left me with nothing except the ruins of what I once was. Why do you look away? Have you developed a conscience? What a burden it must be to you.”

You are a savage miracle, Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, knit together by the hands of Nature herself.

“Most people are incapable of understanding a woman like you,” he said simply. “You defy comprehension.”

I thought at some point in my life, I would have a great love like that, a woman fashioned by the gods just for me, as I had been made just for her, that we would find each other. I always believed she was waiting for me. But I did not wait for her. I married a base metal when the gods had promised me gold.”

there is no power on earth that could make me abandon our friendship. There is no deed you could confess so dark that it would make me forsake you. You said of us once that we were quicksilver and the rest of the world mud. We are alike, shaped by Nature in the same mold, and whatever that signifies, it means that to spurn each other would be to spit in the face of whatever deity has seen fit to bring us together. We are the same, and to leave you would be to leave myself.