Don’t be afraid,” he whispered into my hair. “There’s the two of us now.
What is it about ye, Sassenach, I wonder?” he said conversationally, eyes still fixed on Myers. “What is what about me?” He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye. “What it is that makes every man ye meet want to take off his breeks within five minutes of meetin’ ye.
The night was cold, and very quiet, as though we were the only two souls in the world.
The truth is always of use, madonna,” he answered, eyes fixed on the slender stream. “It has the value of rarity, you know.
Because, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly indeed, “when ye’re a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children – your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it’s clear to everyone who’s in charge.
You’re real,” he whispered. I had thought him pale already. Now all vestiges of color drained from his face.
Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like,” he said, “but God made hope.
Never,” he said, more softly. “For you are mine. My wife, my heart, my soul.
Men are made in God’s image, or so I am told. Likewise that we differ from the animals in having reason. Reason, therefore, must plainly be a characteristic of the Almighty, quod erat demonstrandum. Is it reasonable, then, to create men whose very nature – clearly constructed and defined by yourself – is inimical to your own laws and must lead inevitably to destruction? Whatever would be the point of that? Does it not strike you as a most capricious notion – to say nothing of being wasteful?
He hadn’t worn the kilt since Culloden, but his body had not forgotten the way of it.
When you kissed me like that well maybe you weren’t so sorry to be marrying me after all.
No, my Sassenach”, he said softly. “Open your eyes. Look at me. For that is your punishment, as it is mine. See what you have done to me, as I have done to you. Look at me.
The woman crosses the room, and it is only when she is directly in front of us that I am certain about who she is. She is dressed in a pelisse fashionable among women half her age, and the feather in her hat is an extraordinary shade of blue. Outside, a young man is waiting at her coach. Passersby will suspect that he is her son, but anyone who has ever been acquainted with her will know better.
My grandsire,′ Jamie observed evenly, ’has by all reports got a character that would enable him to hide conveniently behind a spiral staircase.
A man’s life had to have more purpose than only to feed himself each day.
My God, he thought, I’m going to die before I’ve been born.
For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. Duine uasal was what he looked, a man of worth. But the bold face above the lace was the same, older now, but wiser with it – yet the tilt of his shining head and the set of the wide, firm mouth, the slanted clear cat-eyes that looked into my own, were just the same. Here was a man who had always known his worth.
I was dead, my Sassenach – and yet all that time, I loved you.
Egg-sucking son of a porcupine!
A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.