Why was love so easy for some people and so hard for others?

She had always maintained a cynical facade, using it as a defence against embarrassment, fear, loneliness… but at the moment she felt unusually vulnerable.

I was a new person in the same world, which was a lot more difficult than being the same person in a new world.

You know," I told him on our wedding night, "I'm just as much me when I'm with you, as I am without you." And because Hardy understood what I meant, he pulled me into his arms, against his heart.

The London season is like one of those Drury Lane melodramas in which marriage is always the ending. And no one ever seems to give any thought as to what happens after. But marriage isn’t the end of the story it’s the beginning. And it demands the efforts of both partners to make a success of it.

It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.

If you married me,it would be scandalous and innapropriate, and doors would be closed to you." "Good God, woman, I let two of my sisters marry Gypsies. Those doors have already been closed, bolted, and nailed shut.