“If her hunch was right, the earl’s explorations were connected in some way to ley travel: that peculiar phenomenon that had plucked her from the twenty-first century and dropped her so rudely into the seventeenth.”

“So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight.”

“Her name was called Lady Helena Herring and her age was 25 and she mated well with the earl.”

“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.”

“Her shoulders sagging, her back hunched, her eyelids tired, Rose-Anna sewed for the feast, not daring even to sing for fear of frightening off her joy.”

“she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”

“I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.”

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”

“She had opened a door… and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge… Pain had made a sadist of her.”

“So I was on the ship, with 800 lesbians. We can't get off. So much drama. "Were you looking at her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her? WELL, WERE YOU?!" We all got on the same cycle.”