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071bd85
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And, knowing their parentage now, you could see Sybilla in both her sons; but more clearly still, the legendary presence of the first baron Crawford of Culter: blurred through two generations in the square, brown-haired person of Richard; and undiluted in Francis, the love-child.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2380501
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You are the only person with a shaky interest in ethics and the emotional stability of a quince seed in a cup of lukewarm water.....
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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940f0be
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Jerott had no reason to challenge her wit. For a woman, it seemed to him at times excessive to tiresomeness.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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13ec511
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You sit on trouble, don't you, until it blows up in your face?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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5de86d7
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It was the only field, so far, in which the Pearl of Fortune had shown any precocity, other than the feat of keeping her head, her reason and her sense of the ridiculous amid conditions of civilized lunacy.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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420e2e8
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She had grown. Kate's vicious friend, once so elevated, was taller by little more than a head. She drew her brows together, and studied the circles under his eyes. He said lightly, 'My dear girl; it's Almoner's Saturday. With six frails of figs and a sackful of almonds, I am offering you my name.' Philippa's lips parted. The smith in her chest, changing a wooden mallet for a small charge of gunpowder, pulverized brain, lungs and stomach and..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b9553dd
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She ought to be at home in Flaw Valleys, doing her morning exercise on the lute, at which, said her teacher, she would have had a distinguished future, had she not been born English.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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63458fe
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A trained fighting man, accustomed to hard words and hard blows and the company of men like himself, for years ruled by the self-discipline required by the world's greatest order of chivalry, Jerott had come to terms now with the fact that one man could make him feel and act like a rhinoceros in a cloud of mosquitoes.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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a2b2832
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Without thinking at all deeply about anything, he was chiefly aware of the need to be back in a company of men, fighting something.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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0d4215d
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I told her grace that he might not marry the girl if she lost the use of her limbs or her dowry; but I couldn't think of anything else that would deter him.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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e922a8b
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With his education and heritage, Harry Darnley will be the only turncoat in England who can practise sodomy in Alcaic stanzas.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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bd490c6
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She may be hoping for Lug of the Long Arms but what she has is the family Crawford, qui peut de tous bois faire fleches in order to sit in the butts and shoot hearty rounds at each other.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2e32ccc
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You wouldn't expect me to make social calls if you had the remotest idea of the work entailed in bringing two unfortunate persons to the altar.' Careless words. 'It takes ten minutes, in my experience,' Lymond said.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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4ddae60
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The door opened. 'Hercules?' said Danny tremulously. 'Isosceles? The Triangle? The Angel Apostate?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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9015a02
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You lecture me, Mr Crawford?' 'I,' said the comte de Sevigny, 'am attempting to offer you foodstuffs.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1ea0757
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I am sad,' said the Bishop of Orkney to Lord James Stewart as the tables were gently drawn and the floor cleared and the candied ginger passed from place to place. 'I am sad because we live, you and I, on two sides of one river. And whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hart we both covet.' 'There is a remedy,' said the Queen's half-brother. 'Is there? I doubt it,' said Reid of Orkney. 'There might have been, in the past. But this hart is ..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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a80ed47
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I know,' said Danny Hislop. 'I want to see them being fond of one another. I want to see everybody brazening it out. And then I want to see what your petit Francois does to you when the party's over.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1561989
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Let us save everyone's faces,' Lymond said, 'while we can. And before Master Buchanan is hurled to the floor by either Nicolas or a thunderbolt from the late Copernicus.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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15b0e17
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A great many inferior people, Mr Crawford, have helped you over the years in your well-publicized career of adversity, but you mustn't be surprised if the circle begins to diminish. To go by what happened this evening, the man who has finally emerged from it all isn't worth helping.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d1afd90
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My dear man,' Philippa said. 'It seems to me that you have no spirit left but the spirit of resentment.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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264f8eb
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Scorpio,' Lymond said, 'does not caper. He stings. We are damned, as the man says, of nature: so conceaved and borne as a serpent is a serpent, and a tode a tode, and a snake a snake by nature ...' He looked at her again, a little wryly. 'And you, I suppose, are the Crab. It doesn't matter. If you want to bite, bite.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7af88d5
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I devised a somewhat arbitrary way out of my own difficulties that evening.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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787e2d8
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You tried to ...? How?' 'In the time-honoured fashion,' he said. 'My cuffs are too tight to gratify you with a view.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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3473b1d
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Of course. You have always tried to escape.' 'And I have always harmed the friends who have tried to stop me,' Lymond said. His voice was uninflected. He added, 'I have tried many times to warn you not to come too close to me.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f2d12d0
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Level-headed and constructive to the end,' Philippa said, 'in confronting all your personal problems. And now? A trifle of hemlock?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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776911c
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And you can't adjust to bastardy?' He said evenly, 'Give me, perhaps, until tomorrow instead of today to achieve it.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7fc9f2d
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You are proving, aren't you,' said Philippa contemptuously, 'that to be base-born makes you a fourth-rate son of a fourth-rate little country?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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6b360e5
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I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d'Albon's chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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3810ab1
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Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b7a598a
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She wouldn't send anyone, nor would she take anyone with her. She organizes witches' Sabbaths every full moon,' explained Philippa tartly.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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a3b27ca
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He received another kiss which led him to wonder, hopefully, if the English bastard at the Hotel d'Hercule was dying.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7801f37
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I asked,' Sybilla said, 'because I have seen him like this before ... once; when he elected to take everyone else's business in hand and return it to them correctly aligned, like an artist with a child's drawing.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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48d6f22
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From limbo, you cannot say forgive me, unless you can also say you regret what you have done. I have no regrets. I have nothing to tell you, except what you know already: that love is a powerful master. For his favours do you pay tribute and toll while flesh endures, and no doubt after.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ae76ba2
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Archie shrugged. 'All I know is what's going to happen.' Philippa said, 'What should I do?' And Archie said, 'Break him.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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33f3003
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Absence is absence, whatever causes it. It is no more or less an affront to you. I did say, as I remember, that I would try to do what you wished me to do. And that you must forgive me if I failed.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d9bec08
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He said, 'Then you don't know, Philippa, what I am.' 'I know what you think you are,' Philippa said.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b60d3e3
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I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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59f70ad
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He said, 'Don't. That is not a weapon for you. And it destroys what we have.' 'But I have nothing, yet,' Philippa said. 'And all the nicety is on your side. Which means I choose any weapon that suits me.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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740b13a
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Why not? I thought we were speaking of death and dishonour? You would advance to your grave and I should join the ranks of your numerous dead: Diccon and Salablanca, Tosh and Christian Stewart; Oonagh; Will Scott and his father; Turkey Mat and Tom Erskine; the dog Luadhas; the child Khaireddin.... What shall I say to your son when I meet him?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7954198
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Try to remember.... There is a difference between absence and death. And you are needed.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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62728da
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Every other woman since Eve,' he said. 'Except you.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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9e982a6
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How, in twenty days, do you create for a man a new and irresistible motive for his existence? And how, this done, do you preserve him and his family from a blow so devastating as to be, in some ways, worse than self-destruction?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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c704387
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No ties; no duty; no relief. Three filaments gone in the life-thread, fragile as the thread of the silk-moth, which has no organs by which it can nourish itself, but instead is born, and loves once, and then dies.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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96eef9b
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I am like the Swiss. I prefer not to fight on a Wednesday.
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Dorothy Dunnett |