Dragonfly In Amber (Outlander, #2)

by Diana Gabaldon

I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eighteenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

‘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.’

‘You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach,’ he said quietly. ‘So long as ye love me.’

‘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 the 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 whisper, and his arms tightened around me. ‘Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.’