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c81a4e8
|
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."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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ebdc5fd
|
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."
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jamie-fraser
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Diana Gabaldon |
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c638e87
|
He had crossed the room with no notion what he might say or do - he had no knowledge of the language of condolence, no skill at social small talk; his metier was business and politics. And yet, when his hostess had introduced them and left, he found himself still holding the hand he had kissed, looking into soft brown eyes that drowned his soul. And without further thought or hesitation had said, 'God help me, I am in love with you.
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trevelyan
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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9a46a2c
|
Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her--and you. ... And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing---as he knew of me--that he will protect you with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad.
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fathers
love
daughters
safety
protection
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Diana Gabaldon |
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25d72e8
|
You should know, Bree--I don't regret it. In spite of everything, I don't regret it. You'll know something now, of how lonely I was for so long, without Jamie. It doesn't matter. If the price of that separation was your life, neither Jamie nor I can regret it. Bree, you are worth everything--and more. I've done a great many things in my life, so far, but the most important of them all was to love your father and you.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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179019e
|
I want to take ye to bed. In my bed. And I mean to spend the rest of the day thinking what to do wit ye once I got ye there. So wee Archie can just go and play at marbles with his bollucks, aye?
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romance
love
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Diana Gabaldon |
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fd9e4d9
|
He wanted to laugh; the vision of her pounding that wee boy in a fury of berserk rage, hair flying in the wind and a look of blood in her eye, was one he would treasure.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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68f4fd1
|
For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough
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Diana Gabaldon |
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0d8431c
|
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.
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jamie-fraser
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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b887e49
|
Don't move, Sassenach," Jamie's voice came softly, next to me. "Just for a moment, mo duinne--be still." I obligingly froze, until he touched me on the shoulder. "That's all right, Sassenach," he said, with a smile in his voice. "It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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e86a016
|
I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you--then that is my punishment,which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest." His voice dropped, nearly to a whi..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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800d55a
|
You do mean it, then," I said. "You feel ... er ... betrothed to her?" "Well, of course he does, Sassenach," Jamie said, reaching for another slice of toast. "He left her his dog."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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c49ffbe
|
Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone. I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One. I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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f3ee1a7
|
Damn," I said softly to myself. I had been fighting it for some time. Even before this ridiculous marriage, I had been more than conscious of his attraction. It had happened before, as it doubtless happens to almost everyone. A sudden sensitivity to the presence, the appearance, of a particular man--or woman, I suppose. The urge to follow him with my eyes, to arrange for small "inadvertent" meetings, to watch him unawares as he went about h..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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18d93d6
|
Brave' covers everything from complete insanity and bloody disregard of other people's lives - generals tend to go in for that sort - to drunkenness, foolhardiness, and outright idiocy - to the sort of thing that will make a man sweat and tremble and throw up . . . and go and do what he thinks he has to do anyway.
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war
generals
claire-fraser
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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052ede0
|
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.
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jamie-fraser
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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5498813
|
And found myself lying with my head in Jamie's lap. And heard him saying softly, to himself or to me, "For your sake, I will continue--though for mine alone ... I would not."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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34cc921
|
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..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3022594
|
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."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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bbb3fac
|
I didna say I wanted an apology, did I? If I recall aright, what I said was 'Bite me again.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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493a4eb
|
Those small spaces of time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, when both and neither surround you.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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6998125
|
he found that after prolonged contact with Claire and her opinions, he had much less trust in physicians that heretofore - and he hadn't had much to begin with.
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|
humor
lord-john-grey
claire-fraser
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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cbf4e08
|
He thought of such places in a way that had no words, only recognizing one when he came to it. He might have called it holy, save that the feel of such a place had nothing to do with church or saint. It was simply a place he belonged to be, and that was sufficient.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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91f6c9e
|
I regarded him gently over my own bowl of stew. He was very large, solid, and beautifully formed. And if he was a bit battered by circumstance, that merely added to his charm. "You're a very hard person to kill, I think," I said. "That's a great comfort to me."
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death
jamie
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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83869b6
|
The law's a necessary evil--we canna be doing without it--but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience?
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|
law
evil
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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d99d1f4
|
I am thinking that you're verra beautiful, Sassenach," he said softly. "Maybe if one has a taste for gooseflesh on a large scale," I said tartly, stepping out of the tub and reaching for the cup. He grinned suddenly at me, teeth flashing white in the dimness of the cellar. "Oh, aye," he said. "Well, you're speaking to the only man in Scotland who has a terrible cockstand at sight of a plucked chicken."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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396e1ec
|
That only by forgiveness could she forget--and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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837afb1
|
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. The line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland drifted through my mind, and I smiled. Good advice, I supposed - but only if you happened to know where the beginning was, and I didn't quite.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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c158cfb
|
Alright, all right," I said. "What if I tell you a story, instead?" Highlanders loved stories, and Jamie was no exception. "Oh, aye, " he said, sounding much happier. "What sort of story is it?"
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Diana Gabaldon |
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29a9513
|
Jamie. I want you to mark me." "What?" he said, startled. The tiny sgian dhu he carried in his stocking was lying within reach, its handle of carved staghorn dark against the piled clothing. I reached for it and handed it to him. "Cut me," I said urgently. "Deep enough to leave a scar. I want to take away your touch with me, to have something of you that will stay with me always. I don't care if it hurts; nothing could hurt more than leavin..
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jamie-fraser
|
Diana Gabaldon |
|
ea9bfab
|
I'm honest enough to say that I dinna care what the right and wrong of it may be, so long as you're here wi' me, Claire," he said softly. "If it was a sin for you to choose me...then I would go to the devil himself and bless him for tempting ye to it." He lifted my foot and gently kissed the tip of my big toe. I laid my hand on his head; the short hair felt bristly but soft, like a very young hedgehog. "I don't think it was wrong," I said..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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2bb5cbd
|
If ye've ever the privelege of seeing a woman in her skin, gentlemen,"he said, looking over his shoulder toward the door and lowering his voice confidentially, ye'll observe that the hair there grows in the shape of an arrow - pointing the way, ye ken, so as a poor ignorant man can find his way safe home."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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057c686
|
Really rather fascinating, you know,' he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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ed86da5
|
Do you know how rare such a thing is?" he asked quietly. "That peculiar sort of mutual passion?" The one-sided kind was common enough."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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8930476
|
Do I frighten ye, Sassenach?" - "No. It's only... the first time... I didn't think it would be forever. I meant to go, then." - "And ye did go, and came again. You're here, there's no more that matters, than that." I raised myself slightly to look at him. His eyes were closed, slanted and catlike, his lashes that striking color I remembered so well because I had seen it so often. "What did you think, the first time we lay together?" I a..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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547bad7
|
Ye can at least promise me the victory," he said, but his voice held the whisper of a question. "Yes," I said, and touched his face. I sounded choked, and my vision blurred. "Yes, I can promise that. This time." No mention made of what that promise spared, of the things I could not guarantee. Not life, not safety. Not home, nor family; not law nor legacy. Just the one thing--or maybe two. "The victory," I said. "And that I will be with you ..
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Diana Gabaldon |
|
0c5a9ae
|
I've said often enough, and the good Lord kens weel enough that boys were meant to be smacked, or he'd not ha' filled 'em sae full o' the de'il.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b5540db
|
Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting?
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|
Diana Gabaldon |
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17d7ba1
|
There was a smell about the place, which I imagined as the smell of misery and fear, though I supposed it was no more than the niff of ancient squalor and an absence of drains.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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0897140
|
Once I told him I thought beating your son was a most uncivilized method of getting your own way. He said I'd about as much sense as the post I was standing next to, if as much. He said respect for your elders was one of the cornerstones of civilized behavior, and until I learned that, I'd better get used to looking at my toes while one of my barbaric elders thrashed my arse off.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3fa35bb
|
Don't cry, Sassenach," he said, so softly I could barely hear him."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3c29d21
|
Oh. It's Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b2defb2
|
Black Jack. A common name for rogues and scoundrels in the eighteenth century. A staple of romantic fiction, the name conjured up charming highwaymen, dashing blades in plumed hats. The reality waled at my side.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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513b707
|
There were some chains you wore because you wanted to.
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Diana Gabaldon |