I felt deeply betrayed that the man I depended on as friend, protector, and lover intended to do such a thing to me. And my sense of self-preservation was quietly terrified at the thought of submitting myself to the mercies of someone who handled a fifteen-pound claymore as though it were a flywhisk.
You alone, hold all my heart, whole in your hands. And you know that.
Your husband should tan ye, woman,” said an austere voice from the blackness under a tree. “St. Paul says ‘Let a woman be silent, and – ’ ” “You can mind your own bloody business,” I snarled, sweat dripping behind my ears, “and so can St. Paul.
But when I lay wi’ Emily – from the first time. I knew. Kent who I was again.” He looked up at her then, eyes dark and shadowed by loss. “My soul didna wander while I slept – when I slept wi’ her.
I finished grating a root and dropped the stub into a jar on the desk. Bloodroot is aptly named; the scientific name is Sanguinaria, and the juice is red, acrid, and sticky. The bowl in my lap was full of oozy, moist shavings, and my hands looked as though I had been disemboweling small animals.
Often the best tool is the most dangerous. One doesn’t hesitate to use it on that account; one merely makes sure to take adequate precautions.
The dog would run a few steps toward the house, circle once or twice as though unable to decide what to do next, then run back into the wood, turn, and run again toward the house, all the while whining with agitation, tail low and wavering. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “Bloody Timmy’s in the well!” I.
He experienced that peculiar crawling of the flesh that attends any child’s sudden realization that a parent must not only have engaged at some comfortably primeval date in the theoretical carnal act that resulted in his own existence – but was capable of doing it again in the all-too-physical present.
Money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.
Not then, at least, because Claire had met her – would meet her? Earlier? Later? She hadn’t died, but was she dead? She must be now, mustn’t she, and yet – damn this twistiness! How could he even think about it coherently?
Och, I want them frightened of me, Sassenach. It’s the only way I’ll have a chance of bringing them out of it alive.
It doesna matter how many things ye do on a farm, there’s always more than ye can do. A wonder the place doesna rise up about my ears and swallow me, like Jonah and the whale.
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man.
It is for this reason that a scientist constructs hypotheses – suggestions for the cause of an observation. But a hypothesis must never be confused with an explanation – with proof.
All the sounds of the house, from the creak of the back stair under an early-rising maid’s foot, to the drumming rain on the roofslates, were sounds he had heard a thousand times before; heard so often, he didn’t hear them anymore. I did.
If he’s bound to risk his life, then it’s my job to see he gets the most return from his gambling.
I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.
The tooth had belonged to a gentleman named Murphy from Ellis Ward, the one we lived in. I say “had belonged” because I had the badly broken and infected bicuspid out of Mr. Murphy’s head before he could have said Jack Robinson, though he was in such pain that he could barely recall his own name, let alone Jack’s. Mr.
You know Mountgerald, the big house at the end of the High Street? There’s a ghost there, a workman on the house who was killed as a sacrifice for the foundation. In the eighteenth century sometime; that’s really fairly recent,” he added thoughtfully.
Someone, he thought rather crossly, ought to see him and tell him just what the sentence was, until he should have suffered enough to be purified, and at last to enter the Kingdom of God. Whether he was expecting a demon or an angel was uncertain. He had no idea of the staffing requirements of Purgatory; it wasn’t a matter the dominie had addressed in his schooldays.