"Libby's London Merchant", "Origin"

It's nice to find a Carla Kelly that I hadn't read. The male lead (ok, at least one of them) is remarkably angst-free for a Kelly hero.

• “Then I will hide myself in the dumbwaiter until she is gone,” said the Duke of Knaresborough, who had held off a whole company of Imperial Guards with only ten survivors of his brigade at Waterloo. “This is no time for heroics.
• He knew that grandmothers and maiden aunts were wont to pop ’round to Royal Tunbridge Wells, that genteel watering hole for the elegantly senile. Beyond that, Kent was a crater on the moon.
• The horse lost its footing on a patch of gravel and spun the gig around. The last thing Nez remembered was a pop in his shoulder and a mouthful of Kent.
• she said, and then smiled. “But I will say this, Dr. Cook: you were a fierce competitor in the footrace.” He bowed. “I will depend upon you never to let the medical faculty at Edinburgh know that I had to run after a patient.”
• “Good steady rhythm,” he murmured at last as he got to his feet. “The man must have the heart of a Hercules.” “I don’t know why it is you must always sound so bereft when you discover people in good health,” she observed, but not unkindly.
• the doctor said. “I am discovering that there is no guarantee of eternal youth, after age thirty.”
• He shook his head. “Delivering babies for these farm women is rather like having someone behind you telling you how to steer your gig.” He closed the door behind him.
• “Luster, how important is it to oblige one’s relatives?” The butler clasped his hands behind his back and gazed upward. “Sir, I suspect that in consequence it falls somewhere between the burning of Moscow and the Congress of Vienna."

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The puzzle solving part seems thin for a Dan Brown book. The action on the "famously treacherous" spiral staircase of Sagrada Familia is nice to picture, and the book does make me wish we'd gotten inside Casa Mila.