I'm not running away from my fears," I told Dane. "I'm running away from my relatives.

The London season is like one of those Drury Lane melodramas in which marriage is always the ending. And no one ever seems to give any thought as to what happens after. But marriage isn’t the end of the story it’s the beginning. And it demands the efforts of both partners to make a success of it.

Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish?

I've always considered myself a feminist, which is such a tough word for people. Some people immediately assume that you're angry or you hate men, which is obviously not true.

He looked like a fallen angel, replete with all the dangerous male beauty that Lucifer could devise.

He liked cheap women, fast cars, late nights, and hard liquor, especially all together. In Jack's view, you are obliged to sin on Saturday night so you'd have something to atone for Sunday morning. Otherwise, you'd be putting the preacher out of business.

Because one day of something wonderful is better than a forever of nothing special.