I would like to thank the following people: Maureen Waller for her fascinating and colorful book, 1700: Scenes from London Life, from which I learned about marriage houses, "a fair mark," and countless other fascinating details of eighteenth-century life; the Duelling Association, for showing me a historical world full of wit, wickedness, and panache; Colin Shaw of Roving Romania, who showed us around the wild countryside of that bruised and beautiful country, with its tiny shrines, name-day celebrations, and "weddings of the dead"; and the denizens of Zehazel for all their support over the years.
To my inspirational grandfather,
the author H. Mills West,
and to Rhiannon, Mosca's godmother