There is no more perfect stillness than the solitude in the heart of a snowstorm.
The vivid memory of the woods had blossomed into a visceral longing for the Ridge, so immediate that I felt the ghost of my vanished house rise around me, a cold mountain wind thrumming past its walls, and thought that, if I reached down, I could feel Adso’s soft gray fur under my fingers. I swallowed, hard.
It was not Monsieur Arouet, but a colleague of his – a lady novelist – who remarked to me once that writing novels was a cannibal’s art, in which one often mixed small portions of one’s friends and one’s enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction.
I mean to take my time about it, aye?
I didn’t know what it was about red hair, but many years’ experience with Jamie, Brianna, and Jemmy had taught me that while most people became irritable when hungry, a redheaded person with an empty stomach was a walking time bomb.
My father always said that was the difference between an American and an Englishman. An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; an American thinks a hundred years is a long time.
How was yer first time, Jamie? Did ye bleed?” shouted Rupert.
I believe you,” he said firmly. “I dinna understand it a bit – not yet – but I believe you. Claire, I believe you! Listen to me! There’s the truth between us, you and I, and whatever ye tell me, I shall believe it.” He gave me a gentle shake. “It doesna matter what it is. You’ve told me. That’s enough for now. Be still, mo duinne. Lay your head and rest. You’ll tell me the rest of it later. And I’ll believe you.
A conclusion is simply the point at which you give up thinking.
I, ah, I wasn’t expecting – ” I said idiotically. Brianna gave me a grin to match her father’s, eyes bright as stars and damp with happiness. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” “What?” said Jamie blankly.
My love,” he whispered. “Oh, my love. I do want ye so.
Is that you, Geordie?” he asked, not turning around. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, and had a small tool of some kind in his hand, with which he was doing something to the innards of the press. “Took ye long enough. Did ye get the – ” “It isn’t Geordie,” I said. My voice was higher than usual. “It’s me,” I said.
Feel my heart,” he said. His voice sounded thick to his own ears. “Tell me if it stops.
We come and go from mystery and, in between, we try to forget.
He went on loving her,” she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone else. “He didn’t forget her.” “Of course he didna forget her.” She opened her eyes to see Ian’s long face and kind brown eyes six inches away. A broad work-worn hand rested on hers, warm and hard, a hand even larger than her own. “Neither did we,” he said.
And a long time,” he said. “I am a jealous man, but not a vengeful one. I would take you from him, my Sassenach – but I wouldna take him from you.
Was a struggle to choose one’s own destiny less worthwhile than the necessity to stop a great evil?
It’s what happens when you live through things you shouldn’t have been able to live through and can’t reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.
It wasn’t the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, after all; it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge might be a poisoned gift – but it was still a gift, and few people would voluntarily give it back.
I glanced upward once, to see Brianna glowing, still smiling from ear to ear. Jamie was behind her, also smiling, his cheeks wet with tears. He said something to her in husky Gaelic, and brushing the hair away from her neck, leaned forward and kissed her gently, just behind the ear.