The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

And what was marriage, and the inevitable family life, other than an entrapment in a small, crowded space with erratic noise patterns?

The chessboard had been a wedding gift to Elias’s mother. Your mother could play so well, her cousins refused to play with her . . . His parents had enjoyed playing together; his father had taken pleasure in his wife’s wit.

She held up her empty tumbler. “Scotch, I understand, is an acquired taste.” His voice deepened when he said: “Many of the best things are.”

It was as though a woman could have either a brain or a heart, and whichever way, she was allowed only half a life.

“Why me?” he asked. She spoke without thinking: “When I’m with you, I don’t feel wrong. I feel . . . I just feel.”

Sometimes, she suspected that her rejection of a romantic companion wasn’t her actual battle, but only the first line of defense, and that deep down, she wanted love rather too much, with a desperate, grasping passion that scared her witless.

“A wife is not a bird.” “Indeed,” he said. “So imagine how much more I would care for her happiness.”

a realization dawned on Catriona: that it was all about the body for a woman.

“Let me be clear: if you found a love like that, I would expect you to marry. I would expect it for your own good. But as long as our finances permit it, I could never ask you to yoke yourself to a pale imitation of what your mother and I had.