That's what brings in the customers: the combination of gossip and the intricate detail about the dresses, all related as drama. It has the same effect on women, I'm told, as looking at naked women has on men.

We're of one mind, Grenville and I, and the mind is hers, on account of my being a man and not having one.

She longed to throw something at him. A chair. Herself.

I deserve passion," she said. "I deserve to be loved- in every way. I deserve a man who'll give his whole heart, not the part he isn't using at the moment.

I am not in love with you," she said. "It is an infatuation. I have heard of such derangements happening to elderly spinsters.

Let me explain something to you, he said. If you want to get something out of a man, dashing out his brains against a lamppost isn't the way to do it.

And so I beat him and beat him until he kissed me. And then I kept on beating him until he did it properly.