A Notorious Countess Confesses Quotes

“Love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn’t like Corinthians. The “suffereth long” and “is kind” nonsense. It’s like the Song of Solomon. It’s jealousy and fire and floods. It’s everything that consumes.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“No one moved. No one spoke. They seemed be riveted by whatever it was they saw in his eyes.
“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.”
A few gasps erupted.
His voice rang out, bold, clear.
“It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.”
It was safe to say everyone was awake now. He’d startled most of his parishioners and aroused the rest of them.
“Evie Duggan …”
And all the heads official swiveled to follow the beam of the reverend’s gaze. Then swiveled back to him.
Then back to Eve.
Whose heart was in her eyes.
“ … You are the seal upon my heart. You are the fire and flame that warms me, heals me, burns me. You are the river that cools me and carries me. I love you. And love may be as strong as death, but you … I know now you are my life.”
A pin would have echoed like a dropped kettle in the church then.
Eve was absolutely riveted. Frozen, her eyes burning into his.
“And though I wish I could have protected you and kept you safe from some of the storms of your life, I find cannot regret any part of your past. For it has made you who you are. Loyal, passionate, brave, kind, remarkable. You need repent nothing.”
The last word fell like a gavel.
Not a single person moved or breathed.
“There are those who think good is a pastime, to engage in like embroidery or target shooting. There are those who think beauty is a thing of surface, and forget that it’s really of the soul. But good is something you are, not something you do. And by that definition, I stand before you today and declare that Evie Duggan is one of the best people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Vicars, he often thought, are essentially God’s lawyers on the earth. Interpreters of the law, the finders of nuance, sifters through rationalizations to get at the truth or the need of the moment.
Guessers, in other words.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Sometimes, the only way out of the fire is through the fire, m’boy.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Have you ever been in love?”
“Colin. For the love of God.”
“I have,” he said bluntly. “And when you lose love, it tears a hole out of you. The pain can be gruesome. I thought I lost Madeline once, and I swear for a few days I thought I might never be whole again.”
“Perhaps you should write a poem about it. Add another verse to your song.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“i can only think god is responsible for passion,for god gives us bodies with which to express it and heart in which to hold it”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a woman, I put away childish things.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Charm is an essence, not a façade.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Now, here’s a philosophical dilemma for a vicar … is it a lie if you don’t know you’re lying? Is it a lie if you’re lying to yourself?”
“Is it a sin if I tell my cousin to bugger off?”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“For if light had a sound, it was that laugh.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Two is my number as well, Lady Balmain.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“His voice surprised her: a baritone with the depth of a bell and deliciously frayed at the edges, it was like stumbling into a patch of sunlight on a relentlessly gray day.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“She suspected she looked upon greatness for the first time in the form of a dusty, weary, rueful vicar, who did things like hold the hand of an old woman as she breathed her last breath and throw his fist into the jaw of a man who slurred her questionable honor and came in the dead of night to sit by the bed of her maid.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Sometimes the only choices we have, even the ones made out of love, isolate us.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Just a vicar. And with those words she'd tried to reduce him to something manageable, maneuverable, understandable. She'd given no thought as to what the word truly meant. Or why his control was so necessary. It was in proportion to how much he felt and how much he needed to give day after day.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Reveries made one soft. he never should have forgotten that the world was on the side of the planners, not the dreamers.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Love.' What a wilderness of pain, of yearning, of loss could be contained in that word. Patient and kind nonsense, is how Lady Fennimore had put it. Love wasn't for cowards; he wondered if it was for the wise. He supposed love itself made you stupid at first, or no one, no one would ever fall in love at all.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Only two. Practically an innocent. So unlike all the men she'd known, and he must have known it. And yet the thoughts swelled and crashed and swelled again, a torrent of unprecedented jealousy, raw and unfamiliar: Who? Who knows how it feels to be covered by your body? Who knows the taste of your mouth, the feel of you inside her? Who has tangled her bare legs with yours, seen your eyelashes against your cheek while you sleep, your hair smashed across the pillow, knows the scrape of your morning beard against her cheek?
What are you like when you lose control, Reverend Sylvaine?”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“Ah, and that . . . that had been a mistake. If not for that, she might have been able to anticipate what happened next. Reveries made one soft. She never should have forgotten that the world was on the side of the planners, not the dreamers.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses