Word of advice, sister mine. If you want to keep your papers private, don’t write ‘Private’ on the cover. It set the mater right off. It was all I could do to stop her sniffing around like some great sniffing thing.

Patience,” she said in her best governess voice, “is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.

If Amy had been around for the creation of the world, Jane had no doubt that she would have chivvied the Lord into creating the earth in two days rather than seven.

It wasn’t the big decisions that set the course of one’s life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones.

His mother made a noise that in anyone of lower rank than a countess would have been given the unmannerly name of snort. As a cowed member of the ton had once commented, ‘Nobody harrumphs quite like the Marchioness of Uppington.

Her eyes were as hard and bright as stars. Not the pretty sort that poets mooned about, but the kind that made men’s destinies.

For the first time, Mary understood what drove animals to bite the hand that fed them – sheer irritation at being patronized.

It’s the exile’s dilemma. The home they yearn for is never the home to which they return. If they return.

I know historians aren’t supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie’s Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation’s organization look positively humdrum.

I should have known something was wrong when my advisor’s parting words were Good luck. To his credit, he had – very gently – suggested that I might want to consider a different sort of topic. But I didn’t want to consider another topic. I was madly in love with my topic: “Aristocratic Espionage during the Wars with France, 1789- 1815.” It had dash, it had swash, it had buckle.