More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The truth was a flexible reed of a thing. One could weave it into all sorts of shapes, depending on what one needed it to be.
“Clarence, I know you can’t help being such a toad, but perhaps the next time the urge strikes you to open your mouth, you could shove some bread into it.”
The opera singer had a voice like running one’s hand first the wrong way and then the right across an expanse of velvet.
But Violet Debenham’s eyes had widened. “Oh, look. It’s dear Hawthorn.” Maud clenched a hand in her napkin. “Lord Hawthorn?”
“What my aunt and cousin are so desperate for me not to mention, Miss Cutler, is that before scandalously ruining myself by running off to become a concert-hall performer in New York, I first ruined myself in a much more conventional way.” A broad, leonine smile. “With Lord Hawthorn’s able and thorough assistance.”
LORDT ABOVE
Being in an enclosed space with the buoyant energy contained in the skin of Maud Blyth was like standing uncomfortably close to a fire.
He’d never grown out of childhood feeling himself get taller and taller as the life expected of him grew smaller and smaller, until he could barely breathe for the confines of it.
“Fuck you.” “The correct address would be: fuck you, my lord.”
Ross named a price. Maud winced. Hawthorn named a much lower one. Ross called Hawthorn an inbred skinflint arsehole,
“My reputation as a master of orgies would appear to be complete,” he said. “Miss Blyth. Give your unfortunate troops their marching orders for tomorrow. And then be so good as to march them out of my cabin.”
There was a high, firm wall beneath the constant performance that was Violet Debenham. She was the opposite to Edwin; his walls were all up front, the warmth there beneath them if you had the patience to wait to be granted entry. Violet’s warmth was on the outside. Sweets spread temptingly out on a blanket. Pause and let yourself accept the entertainment, the offering, and you might not notice the wall at all.
Maud was stuck on board a ship with these people. All right. They were stuck on board with her.
A pause, in which the table warily weighed the question of whether Lord Hawthorn was familiar with the concept of humour.
Fucking didn’t fix anything. It never had. But it could shut people up for a while—even Maud Blyth.
She hadn’t anticipated Maud Blyth. She didn’t know how anyone ever could.
“Mrs. Sinclair says you look at the world and decide you can live with it or decide you can’t. And if you can’t, you decide what you’re prepared to do about it.”
didn’t you want to share any of your accomplishments with the world?” “Perhaps we would have,” said Mrs. Navenby, dry, “if they’d cared at all to listen to a group of silly women.” “We’re listening now.” It was Hawthorn.
And I hope you’ve learned a lesson, Miss Cutler.” “Oh, many lessons,” said Maud. “I do think this has been the most educational week of my life.”
But if I have to create myself every day, with every choice I make, then I want to make the choices I won’t regret when I look back on my life at its end.”
