Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2)

by Diana Gabaldon

What would I do if he forbade me to go? Alternatives raced through my mind, everything from planting the ivory letter-opener between his ribs to burning down the house with him in it.

In fact, I thought that I would not feel safe again, until I lay in the security of our bed, with the sheltering silence of the house all about us, feeling the strength and the heat of him around and within me, buttressing my courage with the joy of our joining, wiping out the horror of helplessness and near-rape with the sureness of mutual possession.

I found myself thinking that 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.

“Drunk wi’ power,” he remarked disapprovingly to the ceiling. “Verra unwomanly attitude, that.” I dropped a kiss on his hot forehead and swung my cloak down from its hook. “How little you know of women, my love,” I said.

“Where did the ball take you? No, don’t tell me, take my hand and put it on the wound … and if you put it anywhere else, Rupert MacKenzie, you can die here like a dog, and good riddance to you.”

If the English did come for us here, all of us stood to be hanged for treason. It was easier to mourn for Rupert, who was safely gone, sped on his way by the hand of a friend.

Alive, and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us. “The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace.”