I always wake when you do, Sassenach; I sleep ill without ye by my side.
He kissed my forehead gently. “Loving you has put me through hell more than once, Sassenach; I’ll risk it again, if need be.” “Bah,” I said. “And you think loving you has been a bed of roses, do you?” This time he laughed out loud. “No,” he said, “but you’ll maybe keep doing it?” “Maybe I will, at that.” “You’re a verra stubborn woman,” he said, the smile clear in his voice.
There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resources, ignoring the cost until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; Men in Battle. Past a certain point, you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple at that point; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt...
It isn’t necessarily easier if you know what it is you’re meant to do – but at least you don’t waste time in questioning or doubting. If you’re honest – well, that isn’t necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you’re honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you’re less likely to feel that you’ve wasted your life, doing the wrong thing.
Damn you, Sassenach!” his voice said, from a very great distance. His voice was choked with passion. “Dam you! I swear if ye die on me, I’ll kill you!
He reached out a long arm and drew me in, holding me close against him. I put my arms around him and felt the quiver of his muscles, exhausted, and the sheer hard strength still in him, that would hold him up, no matter how tired he might be. We stood quite still for some time, my cheek against his chest and his face against my hair, drawing strength from each other for whatever might come next. Being married.
I wanted ye from the first I saw ye – but I loved ye when you wept in my arms and let me comfort you, that first time at Leoch.
What a mystery blood was – how did a tiny gesture, a tome of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the ehoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments. the shadow of a face looking back through the years – that vanished again into the face that was now.
I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi’ a woman, he said softly. And yet... I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you”-he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders-“and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi’ me hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service... and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.
Ye gave me a child, mo nighean donn,” he said softly, into the cloud of my hair. “We are together for always. She is safe; and we will live forever now, you and I.” He kissed me, very lightly, and laid his head upon the pillow next to me. “Brianna,” he whispered, in that odd Highland way that made the name his own.
You’re beautiful to me, Jamie,” I said softly, at last. “So beautiful, you break my heart.
You forget the life you had before, after awhile. Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string. Cut the knot and they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners never to be found again. So you move on, and eventually you forget what the pearls even looked like. At least, you try.
If ye were no longer there – or somewhere – ” he said very softly, “then the sun would no longer come up or go down.” He lifted my hand and kissed it, very gently. He laid it, closed around my ring, upon my chest, rose, and left.
I’ll thank ye,” said a cool, level voice, “to take your hands off my wife.
If,” I said through my teeth, “you ever raise a hand to me again, James Fraser, I’ll cut out your heart and fry it for breakfast!
Come to bed, a nighean. Nothing hurts when ye love me.” He was right; nothing did.
IN THE LIGHT OF eternity, time casts no shadow. Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. But what is it that the old women see? We see necessity, and we do the things that must be done. Young women don’t see – they are, and the spring of life runs through them. Ours is the guarding of the spring, ours the shielding of the light we have lit, the flame that we are. What have I seen? You are the vision of my youth, the constant dream of all my ages.
I am a warrior, that my son may be a merchant – and his son may be a poet.
The greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help.
I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach,” he said very quietly, holding my eyes with his own, bloodshot and lined with tiredness but very blue. “I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army – well, no,” he corrected himself, “it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.