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No man is really at his best with someone else’s hand up his arse.
“Ah, oh! Naught, miss. Bit o’ trouble with tha sons o’ Belial, like. No fear, it’s fine.” Whereupon his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell over in a dead faint.
The trees fell away below us, and we could see beyond our mountain, and beyond the next, and the next, into a blue distance, hazed with the breath of the mountains, clouds rising from their hollows.
“No, he wouldna—frigging Sassenach.” Then he caught a glimpse of my face, and gave me a lopsided smile. “I didna mean you, Sassenach.”
He’d led her through the morning light in that clearing, a blood-soaked Adam, a battered Eve, looking upon the knowledge of good and evil. And then he had wrapped her in his plaid, picked her up, and walked away to his horse.
She vanished into the depths of sleep, and he yearned after her, wishing her healed, fearing her flight, and bent his head, burying his face in her hair and her scent.
Then her hands rose and rested on him, the tears cool on his face, congealing, the white of her clean as the silent snow that covers char and blood and breathes peace upon the world.
“No, you were right. I couldn’t have borne any company, beyond Sancho Panza.”
“Claire,” he said, quite gently, “it was you. It’s always been you, and it always will be. Get into bed, and put the candle out. As soon as I’ve fastened the shutters, smoored the hearth, and barred the door, I’ll come and keep ye warm.”
The world could go away, and we would heal.
IN WHICH THINGS GANG AGLEY
Then he thought of something, for he raised his head and kissed his grandfather with a loud smacking noise, between the shoulder blades. Her father jerked, nearly dropping Jem, and made a high-pitched noise that made her laugh. “Is that make it better?” Jem inquired seriously, pulling himself up and trying to look over Jamie’s shoulder into his face. “Oh. Aye, lad,” his grandfather assured him, face twitching. “Much better.”
My heart!!!!!!!
“Mickey Mouse.” She laughed. “A big mouse, life-size—human-size, I mean. He wears gloves.” “A giant rat?” he said, sounding slightly stunned. “And they take the weans to play with it?”
Several soft gray flecks drifted in, feathers or bits of ash, spiraling like snowflakes toward the floor.
“If ye were no longer there—or somewhere—” he said very softly, “then the sun would no longer come up or go down.” He
“Created by Your hand as You created man, Life given for life. That me and mine may eat with thanks for the gift, That me and mine may give thanks for Your own sacrifice of blood and flesh, Life given for life.”
“We’ll avoid notice, he says,”
He held me close, ribs and breath and warmth and muscle, then put me away from him a little and looked down into my face. He had been smiling since I saw him. It lit his eyes, and without a word, he pulled the cap off my head and threw it over the rail. He ran his hands through my hair, fluffing it out into abandon, then cupped my head in his hands and kissed me, fingers digging into my scalp. He had a three-day beard, which rasped my skin like sandpaper, and his mouth was home and safety.
around me. “Not to say ‘seen,’ ” he said, sounding thoughtful. “But I will be damned if he’s no there.” “Who?” I said, rather startled at this. “Murtagh,”
Leaving him with that one image: Murtagh. Murtagh, teeth clenched and bared as he struck. Murtagh, running, coming to save him.
“A wee difference of opinion wi’ the Wilmington Chowder and Marching Society.” “A difference of opinion,” I repeated. “Aye, they thought they’d throw us in the harbor, and we thought they wouldn’t.”
“If one day, a bhailach,” Jamie said conversationally, “ye should meet a verra large mouse named Michael—ye’ll tell him your grandsire sends his regards.”
