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

by Evie Dunmore

How many decisions have I made because I was afraid of some dreadful thing that in the end would have never come to pass? How often have I said yes or no to something just to avoid a certain type of pain? I don’t think I’m a coward; sometimes I even think I’m brave. But now I look at myself and I think, who would I be, today,

had I never been so needlessly afraid? I’m . . . pathetically sensitive.”

“Do you know how a tree changes shape to grow around an obstruction?” she asked, her voice hollow. “How it develops an unnatural bent, or ugly bulges?” “I have seen these trees, yes.” “I’m wondering how misshapen I am,” she whispered. “I wonder how bent out of shape I am from these attempts to exist around some fear, instead of just growing, straight and up, as I should have.” Elias was silent for a moment. He put down the kni...

“I think we have our own will; we can decide how to respond to others, but respond we must. When you live, you can’t stay pristine. You can’t remain a child. We come into the world through other people, so from the beginning, you are not a separate entity.”

Against true passion, reason was like a drop against an ocean; it stood no chance.

The cruel irony that the displaced turned to the shores of the displacer was not lost on him, but the truth was that a home without a future felt like a graveyard to the young.

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.

“I’m many things now. I’m a son of the coast and the mountain. A man of business and a traveler. I read books in three languages, and I had a home in France and studied in Britain. Every book, every country, every new friend, teaches me something, so the old ways, well, you can question them. The trouble is when these different parts jostle against one another, that’s when I think, who am I? Can I still call myself Zghartawi when my own people there call me Ajnabi? Am I still from the coast when I have no family left there? Can I be one thing while I’m also another, am I halves of something or am I whole as I am? I could live in

France well enough, but I would miss the old country, and the French look at my face and call me a stranger, again.”

two versions of my homeland will begin to exist, one that is built on the myths of my memories, and the real place, which keeps moving forward without me.