01UndatedOnly eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed’s coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour’s death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe—Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
03UndatedAnd habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative , of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
04UndatedFor an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
05UndatedBut I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
06UndatedI am in love-desire, and unless you take me now, I shall fall in pieces...but I do not think I can be moderate. Forgive me, forgive me...'But her breathing was as changed now as his, and all order retreating before the strength of the living force beating about them. She pressed the latch, and set the last door to lie open.'Khush geldi: welcome: thou art come happily,' she said gently, and let him come, where he belonged, within her gouvernance.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
07UndatedAnd then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
08UndatedAnd then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
09UndatedMy dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoeDorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
10UndatedAt the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
11UndatedYou might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.Dorothy Dunnett / quote ↗
