1
" Or perhaps, despite your brave words to my parents, you've forgotten what love and loyalty look like. They aren't sacraments, Jane, for only God is perfect, only Go deserves our love without judgement. Men--women--we make mistakes. We judge those we love. But we keep loving them anyway, because we know that mistakes can be repaired, and that tomorrow, our love will be deserved again. It only takes faith--or loyalty, as you called it. Those ARE what tie a family together, through tick and thin. And they tie a husband and wife together, too. There is no happy ending, you're right--not in the singular. but in a marriage, there might be countless happy endings and even more sweet beginnings, if loyalty and love are what guide you. "
― Meredith Duran , A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Rules for the Reckless, #5)
7
" But of course a man like Burke could not imagine what that was like. To live, day after day, as a shadow—to speak and be ignored, as though one’s words made no sound. To protest and be patted on the head, as though one’s concerns were a child’s. Her uncle had not burned the embroidery in an outrage, Jane thought suddenly, but in the righteous grip of moral duty. His niece’s role was to be used, not to think or speak or feel. And so, in the very act of communicating an opinion, she had committed the egregious offense of insisting on her humanity. "
― Meredith Duran , A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Rules for the Reckless, #5)
9
" I think it a moral duty,” she said. “If one inherits the privilege of wealth, or of education or good family, one must use that privilege wisely. Men speak of progress like a machine, an engine that rolls forward without human direction, pulling everyone with it. But that isn’t true. If you read the newspapers”—the critical, adventurous, daring newspapers, not the conservative rags that her uncle favored—“it’s easy to see that many get left behind. Many, in fact, get crushed. "
― Meredith Duran , A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Rules for the Reckless, #5)
18
" His thumb stroked over the thin wool of her gown, making promises to what was concealed. She felt his other hand at her back, setting her free of all the small tokens of decency, which great factories in the north pressed into buttons, clasps and hooks that women fastened dutifully, knowing their place, knowing their role. Covered, bound, laced, wrapped, bundled away from the world like objects to be kept on a shelf. Put away from this kind of honesty and the revelations it might bring "
― Meredith Duran , A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Rules for the Reckless, #5)
