“She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.''The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake.”

“Her name was a joke, she said, like Karen Cutter's family nick-naming her Cookie, or poor Marie Antoinette Jones, whose parents had liked the sound of the name but who were a tad weak in French history.”

“Dariya and I used to play French Revolution when we were little. We'd take turns being Marie Antoinette. Our grandmamma caught us once and had us whipped for revolutionary sentiments. We were six years old at the time and had no idea even what revolutionary sentiments were.”

“Tillie studied her mother’s face. The face which had seen thirty-seven years of life. Twenty-one years of marriage. The birth of ten babies. The death of one.”

“Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement.”

“The places that once knew [Marie Antoinette] now know her forever.”