Really, if people weren’t so intent on keeping young women completely ignorant of the realities of marriage, scenes like this could be avoided.

“Any man, you’ll soon learn, has an insurmountable need to blame someone else when he is made to look a fool.”

Violet was such a mother—Daphne had forgotten that she was a woman as well.

No one ever gave her flowers, she realized. At least

“men are always more interested in a woman if they think other men are interested.”

because he didn’t constantly run off at the mouth, as did so many of the ton, people were even more obsessed with what he had to say.

Men, she thought with disgust, were interested only in those women who terrified them.