How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

I do not giggle without purpose. Lady Linette says you should never misapply a giggle.

The Gamma paused. “You have a crazed werewolf in your wine cellar?” “You can think of a better place to stash him?” “What about the wine?

It was a constant source of amazement to Alexia that the only thing she had ever done in her entire life that pleased her mama was marry a werewolf.

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.)

I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone.

She sifted, sighed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but Lord Maccoon, her current predicament, or Lord Akeldama's safety. Which meant she could do nothing but reflect on the complex plight of her mama's more recent embroidery project. Thins, in itself, was a worse torture than any her captors could devise.