A Lady's Code of Misconduct Quotes

“She handed it to him. His hand closed over hers. He drew her wrist to his mouth and pressed his lips against it. A squeak came from her. She had made that noise. His lips felt hot. He spoke against her skin. “Your hair,” he said, “is a glory. Promise me you will never pin it up again.” The brush of his mouth sent static sparks along her skin. She felt flushed, shivering, light-headed. “I don’t . . . It would be a scandal.” He turned her wrist ever so slightly, finding her pulse with his tongue. Her breath caught. She heard him breathe in deeply. “Then unpin it just for me,” he whispered.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“I will not endure a wife who tells me to go back to a mistress. I will not have a wife who refuses to demand explanations.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“It’s a strange kind of torture,” he said quietly. “To be caged by the lowest expectations. A humiliation of the soul.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“It was needlepoint, Mr. Burke. Tapestries are woven, you see, and I find it far more satisfying to stab than to weave.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Beauty had a horrible power. It did not conceal faults so much as it persuaded the viewer to ignore them, and to disregard the instinct that screamed danger.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“His mouth found hers in the dark. “Let me be your villain,” he whispered”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“A body, he thought, was like a complex and complicated clock. Each one unique in its parts. Through study, one might discover the tricks of its mechanisms. Through trial and error, one might calibrate one’s touches on the gears and learn to make the clock tick. He drew his knuckles down her nape, along her spine. She shuddered”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Here was a new lesson for her, then: it was possible to behave like an utter goose in front of a man, and then to take his arm again and stroll companionably onward, without feeling any awkwardness.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“History remembered the villains even better than the saints.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Anyway,” she went on, “you must think the whole thing laughable. I am cared for, am I not? Provided with every luxury my heart can desire, all the ink and paper and silk floss I could ask for. But you’ve never been powerless, Mr. Burke. Or discounted in every regard that makes one human. So you must trust me when I say that comfort can be a prison.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“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

“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

“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

“Let me be your villain”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Who would guess that this woman beside him had routed the Commons? What a secret to keep. A man might live his entire life in greedy contentment, knowing such a secret. Crispin had grown up aware of such possibilities, of marriages in which great men drew their strength and brilliance from the women at their side. But he had thought it a distant myth for himself.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“A women’s college is a fine idea, and I hope it continues to flourish. Even if most of its students go on to dedicate themselves to hearth and home, their children will benefit for their mothers’ educations.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Fear cripples our minds and breeds delusions”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“There was skill and fluency in the way he kissed her, for this was a language, too. Her body was learning it”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“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

“If we turn our backs on everything that came before, on the people we were, then they will haunt us, Jane. Honesty is the way forward”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Fear cripples our minds and breeds delusions.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“The foundation of reason is fact, and fact alone.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Crispin cherished her for the same reasons that his other self would have scorned her.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“He wanted her to own herself, brazenly and unabashedly. She had shown him only one part of herself in these last few weeks—an extraordinary part, tentative and earnest and kind despite her better judgment, clear thinking and funny, compassionate and full of wit. But she had closed away all the rougher, sharper angles. The grit, the steel mettle at her core, the defiant anger that had kept her safe for so many years. And he wished to see those as well. To show her, to prove to her, that those parts of her could be admired and loved, too.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct

“Not ladylike. Ha! She’d never been a lady. Never allowed to go into society. She would follow her own code.”
― Meredith Duran, A Lady's Code of Misconduct