I said ‘Lord, if I’ve never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.
He was not afraid to die with her, by fire or any other way – only to live without her.
But even things that heal leave scars.
As yet too hungry and too clumsy for tenderness, still he made love with a sort of unflagging joy that made me think that male virginity might be a highly underrated commodity.
But what I do say is that there is nothing in this world or the next that can take ye from me – or me from you.
My marriage to Jamie had been for me like the turning of a great key, each small turn setting in the intricate fall of tumblers within me. Bree had been able to turn that key as well, edging closer to the unlocking of the door of myself. But the final turn of the lock was frozen – until I had walked into the print shop in Edinburgh, and the mechanism had sprung free with a final, decisive click.
Lord, he’d said. Let me be enough. That prayer had lodged in my heart like an arrow when I’d heard it and thought he asked for help in doing what had to be done. But that wasn’t what he’d meant at all – and the realization of what he had meant split my heart in two. I took his face between my hands, and wished so much that I had his own gift, the ability to say what lay in my heart, in such a way that he would know. But I hadn’t.
I loved Frank... I loved him alot. But by that time, Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body. I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t.
Fiercely to cherish, softly to guard.
You may have it,” he said. His voice was very low, but he met my eyes straight on. “All of it. Anything that was ever done to me. If ye wish it, if it helps ye, I will live it through again.
I didna say I wanted an apology, did I? If I recall aright, what I said was ‘Bite me again.
Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.” “That’s the first law of thermodynamics,” I said, wiping my nose. “No,” he said. “That’s faith.
He pressed me firmly to him, and I could feel that he was more than ready to get on with the business at hand. With some surprise, I realized that I was ready too. In fact, whether it was the result of the late hour, the wine, his own attractiveness, or simple deprivation, I wanted him quite badly.
It starts out the same, but then, after a moment,” he said, speaking softly, “suddenly it’s as though I’ve a living flame in my arms.” His touch grew firmer, outlining my lips and caressing the line of my jaw. “And I want only to throw myself into it and be consumed.
It wasn’t the risk,” I said, flicking my toes at a big black-and-white splotched carp. “Or not entirely. It was – well, it was partly fear, but mostly it was that I – I couldn’t leave Jamie.” I shrugged helplessly. “I – simply couldn’t.
I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help.” “Not in having no one for whom to care?” Fraser paused before answering; he might have been weighing the position of the pieces on the table. “That is emptiness,” he said at last, softly. “But no great burden.
Claire. The name knifed across his heart with a pain that was more racking than anything his body had ever been called on to withstand.
Do ye want me to be a horse, a bear, or a dog?” “A hedgehog.” “A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?” he demanded. No, I thought. I won’t. I will not. But I did. “Very carefully,” I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought.
For several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though the small, warm weight of broth in my stomach were an anchor that pulled me after it, down through the murky fathoms of sleep.
I think it’s as though everyone has a small place inside themselves, maybe, a private bit that they keep to themselves. It’s like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives – maybe it’s your soul, maybe just that bit makes you yourself and not anyone else. You don’t usually show that bit of yourself to anyone, usually, unless sometimes to someone that ye love greatly.