The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?

Women”—Dilly leveled a finger at Beth—“are more flexible, less competitive, and more inclined to get on with the job in hand. They pay more attention to detail, probably because they’ve been squinting at their knitting and measuring things in kitchens all their lives. They listen.

“That’s because I want you coming to it fresh and inventive, not with every instinct and impulse trained out of you. Imagination, that’s the name of the game.”

“I could do this all day and be fresh at the end. It’s just the old mortal frame that gets in the way. Pity we

you could only laugh at the fear when the light was switched on.

Mab put her head back on the seat and blinked rapidly, wondering if she knew another man anywhere who would simply admit something like that in black and white. In her experience men either denied such things altogether or, if forced to acknowledge them, did so with crude jokes and rough shrugs.