" Don’t you ever wish you could go back?” Ellis murmurs, gaze turned up toward the chandeliers; their light glitters off of the lenses of her glasses. My gaze snaps away from the kettle, back to her.
“To some other time,” she says, “when things were a little wilder. When the rules were a little less clear.”
It’s the opposite of the usual line. A simpler time. A time when a lady was a lady.
“Maybe. I hadn’t really thought about it.” I rub the edge of a tablecloth between my thumb and forefinger but feel only the friction of my age-softened gloves. “I suppose it depends on where I was too. I wouldn’t want to get burned at the stake as a witch.”
“Oh, but can you blame them? You are a witch. I don’t doubt you would have poisoned the village crops, salted their fields, and led their daughters into temptation.”
“Just their daughters?”
Ellis glances back. She’s taken off the pince-nez; the frames dangle from an idle hand. “It takes one to know one. "

― Victoria Lee , A Lesson in Vengeance