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3f208bd
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For him, the gateway had opened, and the loss was hers to bear: that at least she could do, and honour his teaching. She could remember what he was and what had died with him: all the virtues and vices of Scorpio: And that other he had: a capacity for human love so great that its denial in Sybilla had changed his life; and its power, once unleashed for herself, had been more than he could manage.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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30962b6
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Men throughout Scotland and over the narrow seas who lived different lives because they had known him. To carry his bright legacy into the future, he did not require to have children. No one, once they had met him, could remain the same.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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cfdfbf3
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My beloved is dead.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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9bce5a8
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And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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5716c14
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Do you regret it?' said Sybilla. 'I would have kept it for you if I could. I did not know, you see, what you were to be.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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168424c
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My dear, there is no blame, where there lives a passion like that: do we not know it? Rest at peace. We are your children; and we love you.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d1f749b
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Do you think he will notice?' Danny said. 'I sometimes feel if I placed myself nude on the floor between the Voevoda and one of his meetings, he wouldn't even walk round me.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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817a7cf
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Adam!' said Danny. 'You mustn't drop out of the choir. We have too much to do. What we have to do?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f8c9b97
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You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d02d897
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Gorgeous I called him and that he is, Maeve: you'd be surprised. And nasty I called him, and that, Maeve, was a shrewd piece of insight, for nasty he certainly is. And a clever bastard, I called him.... Not to his face, dear. We're not all born to be heroes. But what he may not know, Maeve, is that I'm a clever bastard as well.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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219cb85
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She looked,' said Alec Guthrie dryly, 'like a clever woman who was not unaware that five ill-dressed passers-by were displaying an unhealthy interest in her personal life.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f69dc3f
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I do not ask,' said Dee. 'You note I do not ask--but I would swear, by all I have learned, that you are Scorpio.' 'With the sting in the tail?' Lymond said. 'You are probably right.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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0b068cb
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We may lack some polish,' he said. 'But distrust the society which displays overmuch dangerous charm.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ac35fd5
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It was to be a long, newsy letter, effective in spelling and conveying inexplicitly in its latter pages an explicit injunction from his mother to come home at once. The fact that Francis Crawford's mother had made no such request and before she did so would bleed in her coffin like pie-meat was a matter of minor importance.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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aa8fc59
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I'm tired of training,' Danny complained. 'Couldn't we plunder something, such as decadent idols with emerald eyes and a lot of clean, unspoiled village maidens?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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44bcc14
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At every second location Danny said monotonously, 'You can't do that,' and Plummer bridled and said, 'They built Sviajsk three years ago in four weeks. They felled the timber at Uglich and floated the logs down the Volga----' 'The cost. The cost, you fool!' Danny would scream.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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a44524b
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Lancelot Plummer had expected to undertake this survey with Adam, but had been foiled calmly in passing by Lymond. 'Ah, no. One aesthete and one philistine are what we require.' There could have been few philistines, thought Plummer acidly, as insistently common as Hislop.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7a06c40
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You are not coming.' 'But----' said Christopher. 'You heard your father,' said Killingworth. 'You can't hold enough liquor.' 'Can you?' said Christopher, goaded. 'No,' said George Killingworth, after a moment's reflection. 'But who else is going to help us to bed?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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9a345d8
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The sea demands a man who knows the sea and respects it. A man who is prepared to be lonely. There is no isolation like that of the helm in a storm, except the isolation when it is windless.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d7667bf
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If I am dead I cannot sponsor your travels. Except, clearly, in a direction you will never be called on to follow.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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6aa40a4
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I hear you held a feast for our blood-drinking Besermani neighbours, which they attended in two parts, polled head on one side of the field and crossed legs on the other.' 'Rumour exaggerates,' said Lymond politely.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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cf65a02
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I hope never to have to do that to you again. I hope one day you will forgive me. Try to remember, just at this moment, that my trade calls for acting. Try to remember, Richard, as I have told you, that because of your own honesty I can't confide in you.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f4e414d
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I do not know whether this man is a traitor or not, but he is an individualist, and in war the two are the same.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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6129aa6
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If you had asked me, I could have told you, without putting yourself to the trouble of experiment, that no one, saint or sinner, is likely to seduce Francis against his will. Unfortunately.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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44c5a10
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The carrying voice of Alec Guthrie said unexpectedly, 'But as Sir Graham has already pointed out, every practising Christian must serve two masters.' 'My God ... I know it,' said Lymond. 'My nerves are on edge like a Dublin butcher over the conversation as it is. The situation is that Sir Graham's other Master and I are in perfect accord; whereas, being human, I am not convinced that Sir Graham and I should necessarily be.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ee4aa2b
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Men fall short of your desire, and so you abandon men. The Crown falls short of your expectations, and you abandon the Crown. A leader with no following is an aerolite unloosed, M. Crawford, its power blinding and blistering where it wantonly falls, until it burns itself out. To take a puny man and make him great is your gift.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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10e1da1
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You did not expect human values from a machine. You did not grow angry with a machine, or be disappointed or feel betrayed by it. You treated it with detachment and curiosity, as you would any soul-deprived object, and if it kicked you in the teeth, you side-stepped and kicked it back, harder.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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28434d8
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Before you die, there must be nothing you have not experienced. When you die--and I shall be there--it will be an experience which no man has savoured. Guard your health, Mr Crawford. I should not like you to leave us too soon.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f2008c2
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He had survived that. He would survive this.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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17f1546
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All your life you have resented control and brooked no hint of instruction or guidance. This time, your will is not paramount.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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189d05d
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I told a lie. You must forgive me. I broke an oath, letting him perish. Should I have chosen him to survive, knowing his heritage?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ae36cbe
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There is little you cannot already guess. You know now what you want. You are about to learn how to give. But the hardest lesson of all is accepting. Am I not right?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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8bc112b
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This man Jerott,' said Danny Hislop accusingly. 'You said he was middle-aged.' Jerott turned. 'I didn't,' said Adam Blacklock indignantly. 'I said he was stinking rich and cut his old allies dead in the street. I did not say he was middle-aged.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1ce18f6
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She said peevishly, 'Do you consider I'm old enough to stop calling you Mr Crawford?' 'No,' said Mr Crawford shortly. 'What alternatives would you suggest? Master? Uncle?' 'That would certainly unsettle the Marechale, for one,' said Philippa more cheerfully.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2ff4a5d
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If you're going to marry the youth, I shan't touch him.' 'But you will be nasty to him,' said Philippa gloomily. 'You know you can't help it.' 'I shall probably be nasty to him,' Lymond agreed firmly. 'But I shan't touch him.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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a177f0a
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Meanwhile Sir Wat Scott of Buccleuch was riding westward from Edinburgh, free at last of the Governor's councils, and leaving behind him his good friend Tom Erskine, a distraught smuggler, and a depressed pig.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d357632
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And Lymond's bright, sardonic face, looking into hers, lost all its amusement; all its icy amiability; all its social charm. 'My dear sister in Christ, and mother in expectation, I may be what Buccleuch has called me: a harlot. But a discriminating harlot, my dear.' And, flashing out an arm, he snatched, lightly from below her labouring grasp, a fine glass vase of Sybilla's at her side. 'You don't sign your work twice,' he said softly. 'It'..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2667db1
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I have nothing to lose,' Marthe said. 'So nothing can harm me.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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10f3fe7
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For a moment no one spoke. Then Lymond got to his feet. 'I have a better idea. marry her,' he suggested.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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18f7b65
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Francis.... You are St Mary's. You and no other. It sounds trite, but it is precisely true. I don't know your secret. There is no spiritual bond between you and your company: no common faith, no rites, no rules of chivalry. How is it done?' 'Charm of personality,' said Lymond. 'Allied to a generous wage scale.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b70f5dc
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Lymond is back.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ece8a5d
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Andrew's a nice, gentlemanly lad, but his estate's been bled dry; and as for the ill-armed crew he calls followers--Man, they'd lay on a battlefield like dandruff.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2106543
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There are those that want to take time and men to hunt down Lymond and his band of murderers; and those that demand that Culter should lead them as proof of his loyalty. But if Richard Crawford of Culter won't interfere; says he has better business to attend to and refuses flatly to hound down his brother baying like the Wild Jagd, that still doesn't make him a traitor.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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6a00413
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Nouvelle amour, nouvelle affection; nouvelles fleurs parmi l'herbe nouvelle. Tell Richard his bride has yet to meet her brother-in-law, her Sea-Catte, her Sea-Scorpion, beautiful in the breeding season.
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Dorothy Dunnett |