" He and Marcus sipped and a companionable silence fell. Marcus nodded at the pile of news sheets and asked if anything truly important had occurred; Thomas’s reply—that while according to the pundits, the skies were close to falling, as they always were in the pundits’ eyes, nothing had changed that might even remotely impact the lives of those in their small corner of the world—made Marcus grin. "

― Stephanie Laurens , The Tempting of Thomas Carrick (Cynster, #22; Cynsters Next Generation, #2)