Bellewether Quotes

“Wars lay easier upon the conscience, Lydia decided, when you could not see the faces of the people you were fighting. And it was vastly easier to hate a man when you’d not learned his Christian name, or pried into his private thoughts and learned that he was human.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Every family needs its own historian, someone to guard the stories, yes? Or else they will be lost.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Joseph doesn’t see a wall,” their mother used to say, “only the ways to get around it.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“He had been a child when he had last made cider. He’d forgotten the sharp rush of smells, the sweetness and the almost-rotten richness and the way it lingered everywhere. He had forgotten, too, the way the cider tasted freshly pressed, before it had fermented. Before time had changed its purity to something stronger. Harder.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“One person cannot own another, darling, for our souls belong to us and God and no one else.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“My grandmother,” he told me, “had a theory about doors. Whenever things were going wrong, she’d have my stepdad come hang a new door for her. He’d tell her she was nuts, that doors were doors, but she’d say no door ever opened exactly the same as the last one, the new one was always that little bit different, and anyway it never did any harm to walk through a new door now and then, and see where you end up.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“You love her."
Jean-Philippe did not- would not- deny it.
Pierre sighed. "You're like the sheep, Marine, so stupid. Always you look back at where you've come from, what you've been, what you believe you are, and so you do not see the path you should be taking."
"I'm a soldier. I don't get to choose my path." He'd meant for that to stop the argument.
It didn't. "You're a soldier, so you follow, yes? Then follow this." Pierre's hard finger jabbed him in the chest, above his heart. "God gave you this. He set it like a light within you, so that you could see it well and know the way to go. You follow this, Marine. Don't look behind.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Outside, the night was soft and fresh. There was a half-moon shining brightly in a field of stars, a glowing ring of light surrounding it, and it had made a trail across the bay that showed in places through the darker screen of trees.
They walked in silence, and she breathed the mingled scents of wildflowers sleeping in the shadows, and the salt air of the sea.
He had not let go of her hand. She did not want him to. They did not leave the clearing but at length they reached its edge, where rustling branches stretched above them and the light and noise and music of the barn seemed far away. One heart-shaped leaf fell from a nearby tree and landed on his shoulder and unthinkingly she lifted her free hand to brush it off before it marked the white coat she had worked so hard and long to clean.
She felt him looking down at her, and glancing up self-consciously she started to explain. And lost the words.
And then he bent his head and kissed her.
Everything around her seemed to stop, and still, and cease to matter. She could not have said how long it lasted. Not long, probably. It was a gentle kiss but at the same time fierce and sure and full of all the pent-up feelings she herself had fought these past months, and now she knew he had felt them just as she had, and had fought them, too. It was a great release to give up fighting. Give up everything, and float in the sensation.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“It was just how they did things. It meant something then, when a man gave his word.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“About that,” Tyler said.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“He’d forgotten, having lived so long with fighting and with death, how life looked when it was beginning over. Beautiful.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Good. You’ll find most people, when you get to know them, are not what you were afraid they’d be. They’re only people.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Men aren’t so complicated—what you see is what you get. But sometimes what we see is what we want to see, and not what’s really there. And that’s what gets us into trouble.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Lydia, sitting in silence through all of this, had absorbed gradually what they were speaking of, and what it meant. And for days after that she had lived with a heavy place deep in her heart where a piece of her innocence had been torn out and replaced with the weightier truth of the world.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“ My grandmother," he told me, "had a theory about doors. Whenever things were going wrong, she'd have my stepdad come hang a new door for her. He'd tell her she was nuts, that doors were doors, but she'd say no door ever opened exactly the same as the last one, the new one was always that little bit different, and anyway it never did any harm to walk through a new door now and then, and see where you end up.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“A disease may ruin the most happy and excellent memory, and make a man forget his own name; a little knock on any side of the head may level the highest understanding with the meanest; beauty, health, and strength, may be blasted by a disease, or a thousand other accidents.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“One cannot make a buzzard into a hawk. The officers of Canada, their blood is that of habitants, of farmers, and whatever they achieve, that will not change. Their children always will have one foot in the fields. In France, our social rank and reputation is inherited, an honour we can pass on to our sons.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“She asked her father something and he answered her and although it was difficult for Jean-Philippe to follow what was said, he heard the word "exchanged" and realized, not knowing French, she and her father would not know he and de Brassart were not part of this cartel.
It would be hard for them to learn the truth, he thought.
She looked at him, and he could see her eyes were guarded. "I am sorry," he told her directly, "we are not exchanged."
Her eyebrows drew together faintly. "Not exchanged?"
He was not sure if "yes" or "no" was proper in this instance, so he simply said it over. "Not exchanged."
"Oh."
As he watched, incredibly, her eyes grew slightly happier. He held that knowledge even when she'd looked away.
And in that moment, when the wind rose up and struck him sharply, it seemed only half as cold as it had seemed before.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“He touched her shoulder. Shook it lightly. Said her name. She did not wake. And then, after considering his options, he reached down and gently lifted her and carried her upstairs.
Had he been able to stop time, he might have stopped it then. The weight of her within his arms, the warmth of her against his chest, the softness of her breath against his shirt- these were sensations that he wanted to remember. He climbed slowly, set his feet with care, and told himself it was because he did not wish to rouse the household, but he knew that was untrue, just as he knew he'd have to rouse at least one person.
Taking her into her room would risk her reputation and his own. He'd have to wake her father.
Monsieur Wilde, to his relief, slept lightly. Jean-Philippe had barely knocked upon his chamber door before it opened. Moonlight slanted through the window just behind and made the older man a silhouette in shadow while illuminating Lydia, and Jean-Philippe searched through the English words he'd learned to find the right ones to explain. "She sleeps," he said, "downstairs." And so there could be no misunderstanding, added, "In the chair."
The pause that followed made him wonder if he'd been mistaken in his phrasing, but at last Monsieur Wilde nodded and stepped out and motioned Jean-Philippe to follow him across the landing to the other bedchamber. The moonlight here, though not as strong, was still enough to show him where to lay her on the bed. But as he lowered her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him more closely. Forced to bend, he did not mind the time it took to set her down and cautiously extract himself from her possessive hold, but when he drew the blankets over her and straightened he was glad he could not see her father's face, and that they neither of them knew the other's thoughts.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Do you ever feel your mother?"
Lydia's pencil stilled. "Yes," she said, quietly. "Sometimes I do."
Later that evening, when supper was finished, she took up her mending and curled herself into her mother's old chair with its leather seat slung in the low X-shaped frame like a welcoming lap. She could almost imagine her mother's arms holding her, here in the room with the warmth of the fire and the light of the candles, the wind rising hard at the glass of the window.
The men were still sitting around the long table in cross conversations, her brother and Mr. Ramírez discussing the length of the Bellewether's deck, while her father and Mr. de Brassart debated the merits of some play by Shakespeare, and Mr. de Sabran sat back and observed.
All the voices ran into and over each other and blended like billowy waves folding into the sea, and she struggled to stay on the surface while all of those waves with the troubles they carried went by. "Feel them passing?" her mother asked, rocking her gently.
Except they weren't passing. They bore her relentlessly down like great weights on her shoulders until she was sinking.
And then in place of her mother's arms she felt the strong ones of Mr. de Sabran, protecting her as they had done in New York, and it suddenly wasn't so terrible, drowning. She held him and drifted down into the dark.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“And while the walls in all the other rooms were filled with artwork, here there was a single painting hung with care- a path through a forest with shadows and soft morning sunlight on fallen trees, everything quiet and green.
"It's by Shishkin," Wendy told me, when she noticed I was looking at it. "Ivan Shishkin.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Acting from instinct he angled his body so it would shield Lydia's, sweeping her back into the recession of a doorway that, while closed, would give her shelter. Pressing close, he wrapped himself around her so the blows would strike him first.
They did. Repeatedly. A clump of mud and small stones that had missed its target struck and shattered on the doorframe and he felt her jump and start to tremble, so he bent his head and murmured words of reassurance, low and calm over the wailing of the injured man, and all the ugly shouts of his tormentors.
Fear, he knew, was mostly in the mind, and he would spare her that. He'd long since learned to channel his own fear to action, so it was surprising to him now to feel it twist within his chest- a fear not for himself, his safety, but for hers. It lingered even when the mob had passed them by, the angry tumult growing fainter down the street, and there was no more danger.
Stepping back, he gave them both the space to breathe. Her face was pale, and she appeared to still be shaking but she only drew her cloak a little tighter as though wanting him to think it was the cold, and he had seen enough cadets who did not wish to show him weakness that he recognized her brave attempt to seem more strong in front of him, and though he was not fooled by it he understood her need to make the effort. Having satisfied himself she was unharmed, he wanted for her to collect herself sufficiently to leave the sheltered doorway, then he offered her his arm again, and once again she took it, holding tighter to him this time, and they crossed the street in silence.
But the feeling, strange and new, stayed firmly lodged beneath his ribs, as though once having taken hold it was now part of him, and he had no idea what to do with it.
We always fear what we don't know, he'd told the young de Joncourt boy.
And walking now with Lydia's gloved hand upon his arm, her warmth beside him, Jean-Philippe admitted there was truth in what he'd said. Because in all his twenty-seven years, with all that life had dealt him, he had not known anything like this.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“He's really so adorable. The dog, I mean. Did you know he's a rescue beagle?"
I'd remembered Frank and Sam had used the term the day I'd first encountered Bandit, but I'd just assumed it meant that he'd come from the pound.
Rachel had set me straight. "They use them to experiment on. You know, in laboratories. Sam says they use beagles because they're so gentle and sweet-tempered they won't even bite you when you're hurting them. And after a few years when they 'retire' the dogs, some labs give them to rescue groups who try to find them homes. Sam says that Bandit didn't even know what grass was when he got him. It's his second rescue beagle. He had one before, a girl dog, but she ended up with cancer and he had to put her down. So he got Bandit."
"Beagles," Sam said now, as he stood squarely on the scaffolding, "don't like to be alone. So she'll be doing me a favor."
"What about the doggie day-care place?"
"Nah. There's a Labradoodle there that's always picking on him. He'll be better hanging out with Rachel."
I was not completely fooled. I knew he'd talked to Rachel for a while, because she'd told me that he had. "He's really nice," she'd said. "He listens."
So I knew he knew that Rachel wasn't finding this an easy time, and I suspected Sam just figured she and Bandit were a lot alike in needing some companionship from somebody who understood and didn't push their boundaries.
Whatever his true motivations, it was an inspired move.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“From that position he had a clear view of Lydia within her garden, working with an admirably single-minded steadiness.
She'd changed her hair. She normally pulled all of it straight back and off her face and bound it simply, letting part of its coiled length hang down beneath the plain white muslin of her cap. But on this morning she had not been so severe with it. He liked the fuller, softer waves of brown about her forehead and her temples.
"So," he told Pierre, "it would be useful for me, while I'm here, to learn more English, so that in the future I can speak to those I capture."
"You are maybe overconfident, Marine, to think you will return to war."
"I'll be exchanged eventually." With a shrug he said, "So then in English, tell me, would you tell someone that it's nice, the way they wear their hair today?"
Pierre's glance held amusement. "This is how you deal with men you capture, eh? You compliment their hair? It's very threatening and very tough, I'm sure it leaves them terrified."
He hadn't had much cause for smiling since coming here, but Jean-Philippe felt his features relaxing now into a genuine smile at the other man's dry remark, and without meaning to, he looked again toward Lydia.
And found her looking straight back at him.
Once he'd been hit an inch under his heart with a bullet- there had been no pain but he'd lost all the wind from his lungs and been knocked right off balance, and what he felt now felt like that. This time, though, despite its swift and sudden strike, the feeling was decidedly more pleasurable. As he sent a nod across the clearing to acknowledge her, his smile of its own volition broadened like a schoolboy's.
He was letting down his guard, he knew, allowing the Acadian to witness where his interest- and his weakness- lay, but for some reason, standing in the sunshine with her watching him, he'd ceased to care.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“And this morning while she'd harvested her beans for seed she'd glanced up from the garden and to her complete astonishment Mr. de Sabran had been smiling.
Not at her- he had been saying something to French Peter, his attention focused mainly on the cider press. But still, he had been smiling. And that simple act had made his face a thing she barely recognized.
His teeth were even. Very white and very straight although the smile itself was lopsided, so wide it carved deep lines in both his cheeks and made his eyes crease at their edges. He looked younger. He looked-
Then, as if he'd known that she was staring, he had turned his head and for the briefest, stomach-dropping instant, he had turned that smile on her. Her hand had itched to hold a pencil that would let her somehow capture it, but with one polite, quick nod he had looked away, returning to his conversation and his work.
Since that moment, she had found herself innumerable times now glancing up from her own work to see if she might catch him smiling in that way again. She hadn't, but she noticed he looked more relaxed today than she had seen him; more at ease with both their company and his surroundings, as though he were there by choice and not by force of circumstance.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“To be fair, no one yet had complained of the dinner. Since the uncommon hour made it too late for breakfast and still a few hours too early for dinner, it had been a scramble for Violet to make them a meal on short notice. She'd curdled some cream with sweet wine and a grating of cinnamon, serving it warm to the table, and thickened the porridge of Indian meal they had eaten at breakfast and fried it in cakes drizzled thick with molasses, brought pickle and cheese from the cellar and rounded it off with two pies of the first apples picked from their orchard, still fresh from her baking of yesterday.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Here on the upland where the land had been well cleared, she had a view not only of the bay but of the wider Sound, and of the ships that came and went continually between New York's harbor and the sea.
Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He'd watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William's four: the Bellewether, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox.
Of these, her favorite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest.
"She will run before all the others," had been William's explanation of the sloop's name. "Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock."
"You've spelled it wrong," their mother had said mildly as she'd read the brave name painted on the hull. "It is spelled 'bellwether,' without the second e."
"But 'belle' is French for 'beautiful,' and she is surely that," had been his answer.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether

“Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He'd watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William's four: the Bellewther, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox.
Of these, her favorite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest.
"She will run before all the others," had been William's explanation of the sloop's name. "Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock."
"You've spelled it wrong," their mother had said mildly as she'd read the brave name painted on the hull. "It is spelled 'bellwether,' without the second e."
"But 'belle,' is French for 'beautiful,' and she is surely that," had been his answer.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Bellewether