WhiskeyintheJar Romance

“Good,” he said coolly. “And don’t bother with the people you see in the streets here, either. They don’t want your pity, and they don’t care that you won’t touch them. They don’t want your respect, either. What they want is what you’ve got. And that’s what scares you the most, ain’t it? Because you know you’ve got more than your fair share. You know it’s not right. The Bible tells you so.”

"I have earned my keep,” she said, very low.

He snorted. “Sure, you lot will say that, won’t you? Sit around your fine wood fires at night, come up with reasons for why you deserve what you have. And that, Catherine, is what burned me as a lad. I never wanted your respect. I never cared for your pity. But with God as my witness, I wanted you to know that the only thing separating us was luck. When I swept the road, I wasn’t scrambling to do it out of respect. I was only doing it for money. That was what I wanted the toffs to realize, just for a second.”