I beg your pardon for questioning your judgement," she said. "It is nothing to me, after all, if it proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of Atherton's heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most shocking persons. I am not the one who-" "I wish you were the one who had heard of the rule Silence is Golden," he said.

Life is not an opera. Scenes belong on the stage.

You refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time-usully the wrong one.

Out of the darkness came Mr Carsington's deep voice, cool and calm. " Pray don't trouble yourselves, gentlemen. It is merely a villain come to cut our throats, rob our stores and ravish our women. No need for alarm. Mrs Pembroke has the matter in hand.

Prying into others' private affairs is the preferred occupation of small minds.

We're of one mind, Grenville and I, and the mind is hers, on account of my being a man and not having one.

I can do one or the other. Lovemaking or thinking. But not both at the same time.