Everyone knew that Sophie Beckett was a bastard.
-- Narrator (“Prologue”)

Importance: Quinn opens her novel with this shocking disclosure that Sophie’s parents were not married. At the point when this novel was set, a child born illegitimately was referred to as a “bastard” (1). These children were often born to the mistresses of a titled man.

You listen to me,’ she said in a menacing voice. ‘You might live here at Penwood Park, and you might share lessons with my daughters, but you are nothing but a bastard, and that is all you will ever be. Don’t you ever, ever make the mistake of thinking you are as good as the rest of us.
-- Araminta (“Prologue”)

Importance: Araminta demonstrates the depths of her cruelty when she tells Sophie, who is only a 10-year-old child, that she is inferior to Araminta and her daughters. Sophie later learns that Araminta had asked the earl to send Sophie...