The Perils of Pleasure Quotes

“He had one of those chins what…” One of the innkeeper’s hands went up to squeeze his chin into two little folds. “…a chin what looks like an arse.”
“A chin dimple? A cleft?”
“Not cleft so much as dented, Mr. Eversea. And blue eyes. Went nicely with his costume.”
Dumbstruck silence followed this observation.
The innkeeper sighed. “It’s me wife. If ye gets yerself a wife one day, Mr. Eversea, ye’ll come ou’ wi’ things like that, too, mark my words, mark my words. ‘This matches wi’ that or with this,’ and so on. They talk like that, women do. She makes me look a’ things and give opinions. She’ll turn me into a girl yet.”
This seemed unlikely, but all Colin said was, “Blue eyes and an arse chin. Thank you, that’s very helpful, Mr. Croker.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Maybe we’re born with a full set of qualities, some fine, some not so fine, and none of us knows what will bring out everything that lives within us. And sometimes it’s the fine qualities that cause us trouble, and the not so fine that save us.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“He wasn’t at all what she expected. No: this wasn’t true. He was everything she’d expected from everything she’d read about him—he was irritating, frivolous, arrogant, disconcertingly charming. It was just that she would not have suspected his intelligence had depth, that his wit was in part defense, that his charm was a result of, in part, startlingly acute perception and even…grace.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Sometimes being heroic means showing uncommon grace in the face of untenable circumstances.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Does she make you laugh?” He thought about this. “She laughs a good deal when I’m about,” he allowed. Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she’d ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Colin could not recall a single woman ever regarding him with anything so neutral as detachment. It suddenly seemed important to ascertain whether she was pretty, in the same way it was necessary to know whether a man was armed.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Lavender? He went still. Perhaps he had died, and heaven—some might argue that heaven wouldn’t have been his destination, but he rather trusted the Creator to sort it all out fairly—smelled of lavender. He hoped not. His idea of heaven smelled of horses and brandy and the sea air exhaling rhythmically over the Sussex Downs and the back of Louisa Porter’s neck. He breathed in again, and it was still there: a single note of lavender, soft and faintly astringent amidst all the darker smells, as incongruous as a petal atop charred ruins. And unless a hothouse bouquet had been sent to wherever he was in honor of his arrival… There was a woman in the room with him. Seconds later, like a conjurer concluding a trick, she whipped the sack from his head.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“There had been counts in his life before. Counts before dueling pistols were fired. Counts before footraces and horse races. Counts in his head to postpone his release while some beautiful woman lay beneath him.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure

“Time took on a peculiarly viscous quality.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure