Alexia,” she hissed to her friend, “there are knees positively everywhere. What do I do?

I had a recent delivery of new fashion plates from Paris, and you hardly glanced at the hairstyles. My husband tells me you are still having difficulty controlling the change. And your cravat has been tied very simply of late, even for evening events.

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?

His lordship can eat my fat—

[She] lost her patience, a thing she was all too prone to misplacing.

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.)

But we were talking about me and my problems." Sophronia looked Monique up and down gravely. "I don't think we're going to solve those in the space of one carriage ride.