“I am illegitimate," she said distinctly, as if he were a foreigner trying to learn English. "You are a viscount. You can't marry a bastard.""What about the Duke of Clarence? He had ten bastard children by that actress...what was her name...""Mrs. Jordan.""Yes, that one, Their children were all illegitimate, but some of them married peers.""You're not the Duke of Clarence.""That's right. I'm not a blueblood any more than you are. I inherited the title purely by happenstance""That doesn't matter. If your married me, it would be scandalous and inappropriate, and doors would be closed to you.""Good God, woman, I let two of my sisters marry Gypsies. Those doors have already been closed, bolted, and nailed shut.”

“If you married me,it would be scandalous and innapropriate, and doors would be closed to you.""Good God, woman, I let two of my sisters marry Gypsies. Those doors have already been closed, bolted, and nailed shut.”

“I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly. She visibly paled. :My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear.”

“My guard will run you through if he catches you looking at my face," said Arianna."I don't think so. I think it might be treason to kill a duke," said Luciano."But you're not a duke," said Arianna."I will be if you marry me," said Luciano."Yes, you would be," said Arianna."Would?""If you are asking me.""I'm asking.""And if I accepted.""Do you?""I do. With all my heart.”

“Are you going to marry her?"I would know such a thing as that," Clarence says, "only well after the fact.”

“And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat...I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”