Alexia, did you know there is an entire regiment decamping on your front lawn? Laddy Maccon sighed. "Really, Ivy, I would never have noticed.

I believe there is a considerable range in the bang of most guns.

These feelings you engender in me, my lord, are most indelicate. You should stop causing them immediately.

I kissed her," he explained, aggrieved. "Mmm, yes, I had the dubious pleasure of witnessing that, ah-hem, overly public occurrence." Lyall sharpened his pen nib, using a small copper blade that ejected from the end of his glassicals. "Well! Why hasn't she done anything about it?" the Alpha wanted to know. "You mean like whack you upside the noggin with that deadly parasol of hers? I would be cautious in that area if I were you.

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

Lyall understood a broken heart, but it could not be allowed to rumple perfectly good shirtwaists.

Lyall had spent centuries nibbling about the great layered cake that was polite society while Lord Akeldama acted the part of the frosting on its top.