What do you want?" Sophronia was moved to exasperation. "Me? Stockings and breeches to come back in fashion. I do miss seeing a man's calves.

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

Why did you want to go and distract me like that? I was quite in my element and everything.' Conall laughed. 'Someone has to keep you off balance; otherwise you'll end up ruling the empire. Or at least ordering it into wretched submission.

Poetry can cause irreparable harm when misapplied

Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to the three least-appreciated and hardest-working proselytizers of the written word: independent bookstores, librarians, and teachers.

She would have colored gracefully with embarrassment had she not possessed the complexion of one of those “heathen Italians,” as her mother said, who never colored, gracefully or otherwise. (Convincing her mother that Christianity had, to all intents and purposes, originated with the Italians, thus making them the exact opposite of heathen, was a waste of time and breath.)

Biffy said, off the cuff, "Or we could find a replacement queen." "Volunteering for the position?" "Why, Professor, is that wittiness I detect?" "Only for you." "Charmer." Biffy tapped him on the arm playfully.