More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Elizabeth Navenby
Artlessness loosened tongues as effectively as the colder forms of manipulation,
“All right?” Violet said. “Very all right. Exceedingly all right.
“Thank you. I should have looked into this debauchery business years ago.”
“Don’t flatter yourself with undue influence,” said Hawthorn, apparently even worse at comforting than Violet.
Maud didn’t want to waste good strategy time watching men snipe at each other.
Flora Sutton, and Beth Navenby,
the Forsythia Club
Violet remembered Maud saying, I’m not naturally good. Saying, I know how to unravel someone.
“Maud Blyth. You are a terror and you should not be allowed to run loose in the world.”
“He stole some things of Mrs. Navenby’s,” said Maud, wielding her lethal honesty.
Maud, who was frequently terrified but never defeated,
Violet might wear her sparkling recklessness well, but beneath it she was careful, careful, careful. Maud was not; but she would learn to be. She would choose to be, as she chose every day to be generous and kind and all the other things that defied the coiled snake of her inherited nature.
if I have to create myself every day, with every choice I make, then I want to make the choices I won’t regret when I look back on my life at its end.”
“I wouldn’t come to you if I were on fire. I’ll go to her.” Ross nodded at Maud. “Knock me up if you need someone to go snooping for a fee, Miss B. Ask for me at the Morning Post.”
“You won’t be stubborn enough not to come to me for help. In fact, I am resigned to the inevitability that you’ll come banging on the door in the middle of the night, Maud, requesting the loan of my valet and two hundred pounds.”
Maud, who clutched her fear and did things anyway, took a firm step forward to stand beside her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wrote this book during the latter half of 2020, which didn’t look anything like we thought it would. All I wanted was to create something that would be fun. And, preferably, involve travel. Apologies and thanks to my editor, Ruoxi, for letting me follow an English manor house book about vulnerability and wallpaper with a bubbly Wodehousian romp.
Thanks go as ever to my agent, Diana Fox (even though she made me take out the ghost threesome), as well as Ari and Isabel from Fox Literary, for their hilarious support and keen editorial eyes.
