Quotes from Emma Drummond

Light-heartedness vanished as swiftly as it had come out there beneath the stars, and yet again he wished females to the devil.

Why could she not emulate his sisters: marry and concentrate on babies? He gloomily suspected that she had that plan lined up for him.

They welcomed him as a hero, but he now knew that heroes were soon created by those needing reflected glory.

To meet so briefly, then to lose you to the desert!' Rising swiftly, she walked to the doors opening to a veranda where she stood gazing at something beyond his vision. 'I hate it. I fear it. It is like the ocean. It takes men and devours them, then flows onward as if they had never been.

he had discovered some astonishing things. It was possible for Vere Ashleigh to find friendship with the type of man he had formerly disliked; it was possible to earn the respect and camaraderie of such men by being himself. An imposter they would not tolerate; a producer of life-like pen-portraits they had taken to their hearts.

that coin purse rather than sell it. With a heavy heart, Vere accepted that his brother had been a military hero, but a man of little honour.

The sheet was warm and moving. Vere held it in a continuation of the nightmare, until he saw a small red face amidst the folds. The tiny mouth was open to let forth surprisingly strident shrieks.

Men tend to devote themselves to those things which fascinate them to the point of obsession,' she observed, as they reached the overgrown brambles through which there was only a narrow twisting track. 'They are excessively selfish creatures, in the main.

Val prayed the remaining two weeks would fly past. The dangers of being picked off on patrol, or being overrun and killed by Boers in British uniforms, was infinitely preferable to the grimness of social availability in Pretoria

The carriage was frequently halted by the mass of vehicles which made London's streets increasingly noisy and dangerous. Drivers cursed and cracked their whips, horses snorted and whinnied until they surged forward again with a rattle of wheels and a tattoo of hooves, only to meet with an immobile line of traffic at the next junction.

He left her on the tow-path and began the long walk back to barracks. As he trudged along in the fast-gathering dusk his mood grew bleaker. Females created nothing but trouble.