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Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of _94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.
Hilary Mantel A Place of Greater Safety
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Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of _94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.
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Hilary Mantel

A Place of Greater Safety

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You come to this place, mid-life. You don__ know how you got here, but suddenly you__e staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn__. When the midwife says, __t__ a boy,_ where does the girl go? When you think you__e pregnant, and you__e not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines.

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Hilary Mantel

Giving Up the Ghost

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Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn__ follow what they__ done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight__ proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa__, Mila__, and Neel__. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.__ake hold of yourselves,_ she snapped. __t__ a disguise, remember? This isn__ going to work if the people meant to help me can__ keep their heads.___t will work, Lady Granddaughter._ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. __ou__l get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.