A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight – any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking.
That only by forgiveness could she forget – and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.
Don’t cry, Sassenach,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him.
Oh. It’s Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.
Is it usual, what it is between us when I touch you?
If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.
And what’s wrong wi’ the way ye smell?′ he said heatedly. ‘At least ye smelt like a woman, not a damn flower garden. What d’ye think I am, a man or a bumblebee? Would ye wash yourself, Sassenach, so I can get within less than ten feet of ye?
Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind – for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it’s a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper.
There were some chains you wore because you wanted to.
Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting?
It was possible to leave things behind – places, people, memories – at least for a time. But places held tight to the things that had happened in them, and to come again to a place you had once lived was to be brought face-to-face with what you had done there and who you had been.
We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.
I’ve heard it said that a man’s reach must exceed his grasp – or what’s a heaven for?
It’s only when ye ken ye can say no that it takes courage.
You’re the world I have,” she murmured, and then her breathing changed, and she took him down with her into safety.
My Da says you’re never drunk, so long as ye can hold on to the floor.
They do say that God protects fools – but I think even the Almighty will lose patience now and then.
The body is amazingly plastic. The spirit, even more so. But there are some things you don’t come back from. Say ye so, a nighean? True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.
James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser,” I said, spacing the words, formally, the way Jamie had spoken them to me when he first told me his full name on the day of our wedding.
Faith is as powerful a force as science – but far more dangerous.