Kate Quinn

e lingered inside our fragile bubble of happiness, the kind of happiness that sits on top of melancholy as easily as icing on a cake.

Blond men simply aren’t to be trusted.”

He kissed her again, long and leisurely, still holding her off the step. He tasted like a blue, sun-warmed sea, and at some point Osla dropped her boots into the puddle.

It was the dawn of 1940, and she had danced in the New Year in a boiler suit and satin sandals with a prince.

Not everybody looked at a rose and got entranced not by the scent but by the pattern of it, the way the petals overlapped like stairs winding inward . . . inward . . .

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?

“‘The greatest tyrants over women are women,’”

There’s always an after

It’s not a game.” Beth had never contradicted a superior in her life, but in this cozy library overlooking a tangled garden, none of the ordinary rules seemed to apply. “It’s war.”

Marry for friendship, not love,” Osla had heard her mother quip. “Friends listen better than lovers!”