“Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.”

“Money might not buy happiness, I reflected, but it was a useful commodity, nonetheless.”

“It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.”

“I had not slept with many men other than my husband, but I had noticed that before to sleep, actually sleep with someone did give this sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out of you to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconscious knowing.”

“Ye werena the first lass I kissed," he said softly. "But I swear you'll be the last.”

“I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then...”

“Ma chère, I serve a man who multiplied the loaves and fishes”—he smiled, nodding at the pool, where the swirls of the carps’ feeding were still subsiding—“who healed the sick and raised the dead. Shall I be astonished that the master of eternity has brought a young woman through the stones of the earth to do His will?” Well, I reflected, it was better than being denounced as the whore of Babylon.”