" 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 (Pennyroyal Green, #1)