Rue gave a little mental sigh. No one would ever describe her as deadly attractive. She brightened a bit. Perhaps she could aspire to just deadly?

That’s a very murky position, objected Felix.
“So’s the weather. But this is England, we must learn to live with uncertainty.”

How was I to know idiocy was only a temporary condition, especially in your case? It never has been before!

But I don’t want to be a vampire drone.’ Sophronia winced. ‘They’ll suck my blood and make me wear only the very latest fashions.

His eyes are peculiar. There is nothing in them, like an eclair without the cream filling. It’s wrong, lack of cream.

Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats.

Lady Maccon cogitated. She would like to encourage this new spirit of social-mindedness. If Felicity needed anything in her life, it was a cause. Then she might stop nitpicking everyone else.

And the three ladies, as is often the case when women of sense serve tea to men of passion, prevailed.

No one ever explained the octopuses.

He nuzzled in at her neck kissing and licking her softly just below her ear. “Just a moment ” he said. “I need a small reminder that you are here you are whole and you are mine.”

The Ottoman Empire was a glorious time for tassels.

I have died and gone to the land of bad novels.

Just because history says it isn’t possible doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions.

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.

Ah, Ivy, thought Alexia happily, spreading a verbal fog wherever she goes.

He wants to know why my marks aren’t better. Why I don’t speak fluent French. Why I can’t kill a fully grown man with a nutcracker.

As much as she was enjoying it, Dimity would always rather talk about reading than actually read.

He might have lost his mind, but never his fashion sense.

Consider the necessary, analyze the consequences, clean up the mess.

We’re a team like tea and milk, or cake and custard, or pork and apple.

We like the shadows. That’s where all the power is.

I was rather hoping we could live happily in sin for a very long time.

Stupid little boys should learn to use guns and not wave them around.

I hate missing everything. That’s why I want to marry well and be a grand lady. Then I can host all the parties, all the time, and see everything that is going on always. How can you stand not knowing?

There was no way she was staying trapped with tea at a time like this.

Falling out of the sky was one thing, but doing so for unknown reasons was quite unacceptable. Having

It didn’t feel sporting to shoot at a crazy person, even if that person was a vampire who’d agreed to the job.

Trust is a lot to ask of someone.

For you, it’s gossip. For me, it’s action.

Please don’t. When you think about things, Sophronia, they only get more complicated. This thing between us could be so very easy, if you let it.

They decided the mummy would be unwrapped, for the titillation of the ladies, just after dinner.

It had taken her a good deal of time before she believed that she was worth all that fierce affection he lavished upon her. To have it stolen away unjustly was that much more cruel.

How was I to know idiocy was only a temporary condition, especially in your case? It never has been before!

Some of the young ladies even ate the salmon without concern to vital humors – when everyone knew colored fish flesh could bring on an attack of hysteria.

Alec didn’t normally consider himself a violent man, but sometimes, arms simply needed to be removed.

It’s all very well to be an intellectual, but one shouldn’t let other see. That’s embarrassing.t

If there is gossip to be garnered, garner it. If there are new dress styles to be imitated, imitate them. If there are hearts to be broken, break them. That’s my girls.

Felix Mersey might be the cream of the aristocracy, but in the boiler room Soap was undisputed king – grimy empire though it might be

Many gentleman were unable to cope with abundant chatter, which is why they so often married it.

You have been fraternizing with warewolves overmuch! Military men can be terribly bad for one’s verbal concatenation!

These things, regrettably, are bound to occur when one is married and befriended.

And I find perfect beauty excessively boring, don’t you?

It seems to me that Halloween is the perfect time to get all over steampunk.

Laughter is healing and helpful and fun, and I see my role as an entertainer, and I want readers to leave my books smiling.

With a resigned shrug, she screamed and collapsed into a faint. She stayed resolutely fainted, despite the liberal application of smelling salts, which made her eyes water most tremendously, a cramp in the back of one knee, and the fact that her new ball gown was getting most awfully wrinkled.

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

Alexia had spent long hours wondering over that mustache. Werewolves did not grow hair, as they did not age. Where had it come from? Had he always had it? For how many centuries had his poor abused upper lip labored under the burden of such vegetation?

As if being a former vampire drone in a werewolf household were not shocking enough, the maid then opened her mouth and proved that she was also, quite reprehensibly, French.

After a moment’s consideration, she switched to the spot next to Pillover and attempted to read over his shoulder, ignoring his faint goaty smell. All boys smell of goat.

It looks like you managed to build your own pack, anyway, my dear. A parasol protectorate, perhaps one might say.

There are words to describe her, my dear, but one does not repeat them in polite company.

I suppose that saves us from having to determine what to do with a butler who goes around killing people. It certainly reflects badly upon our domestic staff. Still, I shall miss him. There was a man who knew how to brew a good cup of tea.

A woman, even a married woman, cannot float without proper escort. It is simply not done.

Fact. Of course, she always went and spoiled the appeal by opening her mouth. In his humble experience, the world had yet to produce a more vexingly verbose female.

The duke contents himself mainly with attempting to rule the world and other suchlike nonsense. When one is guiding the patterns of the social universe, a single spinster preternatural is unlikely to cause one undue distress.

Oh, dear me, no. Then I should be known as that vampire with all the cats.

Alexia gave in to his demanding touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic. It had nothing, whatsoever to do with her own quickening heartbeat.

She had to give her teachers credit: they were right to insist all pupils carry scissors, handkerchiefs, perfume and hair ribbons at all times. At some point she’d learn why they also required a red lace doily and a lemon

Great, Alexia thought, I have gone from soul sucker to electrical ground. The epithets just get sweeter and sweeter.

He has been mad for you these many months, ever since you prodded him in the nether regions with a hedgehog.

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

She poked him in the center of his chest with two fingers to punctuate her words. “You are an unfeeling”—poke —“traitorous”—poke—“mistrusting”—poke—“rude”—poke —“booby!” Every poke turned him mortal, but Lord Maccon didn’t seem to mind it in the least. Instead he grabbed the hand that poked him and brought it to his lips. “You put it very well, my love.

Poetry can cause irreparable harm when misapplied.

Which was why, some six hours later, Alexia Maccon’s daughter was born inside the head of an octomaton in the presence of her husband, a comatose werewolf dandy, and a French inventor.

Someone was trying to kill Lady Alexia Maccon. It was most inconvenient, as she was in a dreadful hurry. Given her previous familiarity with near-death experiences and their comparative frequency with regards to her good self, Alexia should probably have allowed extra time for such a predictable happenstance.

Scotsmen, she had occasion to observe, often did have nice knees. Perhaps that was why they insisted upon kilts.

What’s wrong with you? Are you ill? I forbid you to be ill, wife.

Past persons of Scottishness in contact with mastermind of supernatural persuasion in London, aka Agent Doom.’ Floote moved on to the third bit of paper. “ ‘Lady K says Agent Doom assisted depraved Plan of Action. May have all been his idea.’ Moving on to the last one, he read out, “Summer permits Scots to expose more knee than lady of refinement should have to withstand. Hairmuffs much admired. Yours etc., Puff Bonnet.

Who doesn’t want an exploding wicker chicken?

It was a constant source of amazement to Alexia that the only thing she had ever done in her entire life that pleased her mama was marry a werewolf.

I am rather fond of ladybugs. They are so delightfully hemispherical.

Spin the parasol three times and repeat after me: I shield in the name of fashion. I accessorize for one and all. Pursuit of truth is my passion. This I vow by the great parasol.

What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what’s the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.

She boasted the general battle-ax demeanor of an especially strict governess. This was the kind of woman who took her tea black, smoked cigars after midnight, played a mean game of cribbage, and kept a bevy of repulsive little dogs. Alexia liked her immediately.

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.

She was no closer to determining who might want her dead. There were just too many possibilities.

One should do what one is best at on as large a scale as possible.

Ivy waved her wet handkerchief, as much as to say ‘words cannot possibly articulate my profound distress’. Then, because Ivy never settled for meaningful gestures when verbal embellishments could compound the effect, she said, “Words cannot possibly articulate my profound distress.

He … boasted an unassuming mustache, which was perched atop his upper lip cautiously, as though it were slightly embarrassed to be there and would like to slide away and become a sideburn or something more fashionable.

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

Stop playing verbal games with me, madam, or I shall go out into that ballroom, find your mother, and bring her here.

I may be a werewolf and Scottish, but despite what you may have read about both, we are not cads!

You do realise modern social mores exist for a reason? I was hungry, allowances should be made.

Classic author moment, “Oh dear, did I kill that character or not?

Highland werewolves had a reputation for doing atrocious and highly unwarranted *things*, like wearing smoking jackets to the dinner table.

The ill-informed masses included her own family among their ranks, a family that specialized in being both inconvenient and asinine.

The vampire’s eyes were open, and he was staring at her intently. It was as though he were trying to speak to her with simply the power of a glare.
Alexia did not speak glare-ish.

Alexia figured, delightedly, that this meant he did, in fact, tend to traipse around his private apartments in the altogether. Marriage was becoming more and more of an attractive prospect.

She filed the image away as an excellent and insulting question to ask the earl at an utterly inappropriate future moment.

He is clearly bookish. I did not follow a single word of their conversation at dinner last night, not one jot of it. He must be bookish.

I have died and gone to the land of bad novels.

Lord Maccon was built like a brick outhouse, with opinions twice as unmoving and often equally full of crap.

Miss Tarabotti was not one of life’s milk-water misses–in fact, quite the opposite. Many a gentleman had likened his first meeting with her to downing a very strong cognac when one was expecting to imbibe fruit juice–that is to say, startling and apt to leave one with a distinct burning sensation.

You are about as covert as a sledgehammer.

Steampunk is…the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama

Cats were not, in her experience, an animal with much soul. Prosaic, practical little creatures as a general rule. It would suit her very well to be thought catlike.

It’s no good choosing your first husband from a school for evil geniuses. Much too difficult to kill.

I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone.

How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

Alphas simply did not grovel; arrogance was part of the job description.

She moved with such purpose it was as though she walked with exclamation marks.

Rail is such an undignified way to travel. All that rapid racing about. Floating has so much more gravitas.

A vampire, like a lady, never reveals his true age.

It’ll all end in tears and oil.