Lady Wesley

“Finally, Elizabeth understood that she had been orphaned not once but twice when her mother passed away. She lost her father as surely as her mother on the day of her birth. All those years, she idealized the earl’s devotion to her mother’s memory and ignored the price she herself paid. She grew up a lonely child, envying a beloved spectral being and wishing someday for an undying, perfect love of her own in compensation.   Her next thought stunned her: she would never wish that childhood on any child of hers.”
― Miranda Davis, The Baron's Betrothal

“Your average genre novel is like a high speed car chase ending in a massive crash, with death, destruction, and balls of flame, from which the main characters (usually) emerge mostly unscathed. Everything builds up to the crash, and it’s the anticipation that keeps us turning pages.

Anthony Trollope, by contrast, is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside in an open carriage behind a pair of matched horses. There’s conflict, sure; a herd of sheep blocks the road, two countrymen come to blows outside the pub, the cows in this field are looking daggers at the cows in that field. But the point of the drive is the drive itself, not the destination, because of course you’re just going to end up at home anyway.”
― willduquette

“His parenting never involved indulgence, just benign neglect. And having let me do as I wish for two decades, it seems a mean trick to impose discipline by marrying me off to some relic from another age.”
“Perhaps.”
“Who knows if the old baron is even up to the task of managing me! You say I’ll give him fatal spasms.” “Only if the drink doesn’t kill him first,” Clun quipped.
“He’s a… a tippler?” She asked.
“More than tipples, if memory serves. A bottomless cask. Mouth like a funnel on one end and a wee spigot at the other,” he concluded with a wink.”
― Miranda Davis, The Baron's Betrothal

“By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. When it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.”
“I will not marry without love, my lord.”
“Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply.
“I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”  
“My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”  
“I cannot promise you perfection.”  
“It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life, why can’t I?”
“Perhaps because you are not an aggressive water fowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”  
“ I will not settle for less.”
“By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun said and rudely stood up to leave.
“Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing waterfowl for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis of marriage, as if you knew better than I.”
― miranda davis, The Baron's Betrothal