The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3 Quotes

“Women were mysterious continents at the best of the times, but she was like a distant planet for which there was no hope of a guiding chart.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“I believe in considering fate from the safe distance of hindsight, Mr Carswell. Perhaps everything in the past looks like fate,”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“his father had insisted on a game of chess. This had been an interminable misery, to the extent he had invented a headache and gone to bed early himself, only to lie tossing and turning on the rack of physical longing and pierced through with a thousand swords of anguished love.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“They exchanged a long, bitter-sweet, tear-drowned kiss.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“well, you know as well as I do that all the questions we ask in life do not have simple answers.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“It is a pity I cannot question a dead man.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“my parents are well lodged – though my father does not like to be comfortable if he can help it.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“This demanding, railway-powered, nineteenth-century world”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“the hamlet of Byrescough, which was not really worth the name of hamlet. It consisted of a few dirty-looking cottages, a scrappy area of common which no local landowner had considered worth enclosing, and The Three Horseshoes, which squatted toad-like in the corner of the crossroads, its ancient walls bulging and sagging under a badly tiled roof.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“She raised her hand and nervously adjusted her bonnet ribbon, which did not need adjusting.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“How are you different from other ordinary young men? You paint yourself too white and Miss Jones too black. Get up!”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“She turned and pressed herself against him, letting him put his arms about her. He felt her relax in his arms. He felt ashamed then of all his own moments of weakness: of his betrayals, mental and real. She had not been unfaithful as he had. He wished he might confess it all to her, but that would be for his benefit, not hers. She had suffered enough without having to know of his cruelty.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“Her husband never left her side and he seemed to suffer in his way as greatly as she did, and his tender diligence was so at odds with the man he had seen swaggering about The Unicorn in his silver-laced coat and high hat. It was a revelation, and Felix wondered again at the business and meaning of marriage; of husband and wives and how they were linked by something profounder that the mere vagaries of sentimental love and hot-blooded lust. This connection, so strange and deep between them, was something he did not understand. He wondered if he would ever manage to make such a contract. He did not think he could bear to stand by and see someone he loved suffer as this woman was suffering.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“we must live always in the expectation of a good outcome. And see off all our enemies with defiant good humour.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“Hope,” he heard her say, “that is a strange thing. We wear it like armour and yet it does so little to protect us.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“It was also too hot, and he wanted to throw off his coat and sit in his shirt sleeves. But even when he was being obscure, Lord Rothborough would have taken great offence at that. This dinner was going to be an uncomfortable sweat of an affair.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“wisdom comes from knowledge and common sense, I think, and experience.” “That is the harshest tutor of all,”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“Please, Mr Carswell, do not be afraid. I am not my mother. I am not looking for a husband. Just for a little interesting talk – talk that does not involve the Christianisation of the savages or the impudence of Dissenters”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“The world existed balanced on a knife edge. One could fall either way – into happiness and prosperity or into unimaginable tragedy.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“Admire women, yes, kiss them, take them, get the best of them, but do not give them your heart. You must remain the captain of your own soul, Felix – that is the best advice I can give you.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“sentimentality in the matter of marriage is the last thing that people like us can afford. Marriage is too important a business to be clouded by it.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“the row of hall chairs that skulked against the wall.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“I confess I did not want to be here at first, but it turns out I have been fortunate in my misfortune.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“It is a palace, and how can any man be comfortable in a palace?”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“You may think to hide behind the armour of your principles, Vernon, but you have your feet in the mud like the rest of us.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“As he rode out, the day that had promised well turned foul, like a pretty woman losing her temper.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3

“I believe in considering fate from the safe distance of hindsight, Mr Carswell. Perhaps everything in the past looks like fate, simply because we can imagine no other version of events.”
― Harriet Smart, The Northminster Mysteries Books 1-3