“And if there’s no trouble, you’ll make it,’ offered Will Scott, his eyes bright, his cheeks red. ‘No. At the moment,’ affirmed Lymond grimly, ‘I am having truck with nothing less than total calamity.”

“Scott, deaf and enchanted in the gallery, and the whole row of pretty heads at his side saw the concerted rush on Lymond: his assailants downed him without malice and eighteen stones of Molly planted themselves on his chest. “A throw!” said Molly, and Lymond, half buried, gave a choked whoop of laughter and raised a defeated hand in signal to Tammas.”

“The wedding ended, hurriedly, on a surge of masculine bonhomie and relief. Five minutes later, followed by the red-eyed glares of their womenfolk, Buccleuch and his friends and his new-married son had plunged off to join Lord Culter, head of the Crawfords, and Francis Crawford his brother, to fight the English once more. * Sentimentally, Will Scott thought, it made his wedding-day perfect. Cantering, easy and big-limbed, through the bracken of Ettrick-side, with leaves stuck, lime-green and scarlet on his wet sleeves, blue eyes narrowed and fair, red-blooded Scott face misted with rain, he was borne on a vast, angry joy.”

“If you can repress for a moment your spinster-like longing to meddle in my affairs,’ said Lymond cuttingly, from the door, ‘I am waiting to go.”

“We’ll do it,’ said Will Scott comfortably, shouting over the tumult. ‘If it’s no more than an hour, we’ll do it.’ ‘Christ, I believe you’re sorry, you flaming maniac,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t I keep telling you that this is bloody childishness, and don’t you keep agreeing?”

“The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there’s something unchancy about a left-handed race.’ ‘I’m right-handed,’ offered Will Scott. ‘Aye.’ ‘And six foot three in my hose.’ ‘Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.’ ‘I’m saving it,’ he said austerely, ‘till I’ve the theme for it.’ ‘Oh!’ said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. ‘Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to?”

“If you were a dear, good little wife, Janet,’ had said Lymond, ‘you’d fall into a mortal decline that day, or at least hide his boots.’ ‘Francis Crawford, are ye daft! What ever kept a Scott from a fight? Women? Boots? If yon one were deid, he’d spend his time in Heaven sclimming up and down the Pearly Gates peppering Kerrs.”