“Not a hothouse flower, this daughter of Leoch, despite her surroundings.”

“When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.”

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.”

“There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, and when both and neither surround you.”

“It was very quiet here on the mountainside,but, quiet in the of hills and forests. A quiet that wasn't silent at all, but composed of constant tiny sounds. It was small buzzing in the gorse bush nearby, of bees working the yellow flowers -dusty with pollen, far below was the rushing of the burn, a low note echoing the wind above stirring leaves and rattling twigs sighing past the jutting boulders.”

“He blinked , and his eyes moved at last from her face, slowly taking in her appearance, and- with what seemed to her a new and horrified awareness- her height. "My God," he croaked. "You're huge.”

“He wished to cover her with his body, possess her-for if he could do that, he could pretend to himself that she was safe. Covering her so...he might protect her. Or so he felt, even knowing how senseless the feeling was.”