“Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.”

“Well, get the coffer out," said Tobie roundly. "You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?”

“For 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.”

“She gave up combing her hair, which the salt air had reduced to a kind of scrim of brown hessian, and, lying down, proceeded to keep her fingernails short in the way Kate admired least. Then she overslept.”

“His leaf-gold tresses on end, his eyes in baskets from the long night without sleep, Phelim O’LiamRoe smacked his two fists together and cursed. The Queen Dowager, hardly aware of him, had turned her erect body to the window, followed by Margaret Erskine’s wide eyes. But Michel Hérisson, who had arrived so unexpectedly on the Irishman’s heels, ran his hacked and gouty hands through the wild white hair and said through his teeth, ‘Liam aboo, son, Liam aboo! My Gaelic’s all out in holes, the way my arse is ridden out through my breeches; but if you are saying what I hope you are saying, Liam aboo, my son, Liam aboo!”

“Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, "Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers.”

“Will Scott grinned. Grizel Beaton had slapped his face four times, and apart from these four small misjudgements, they had never touched on a topic more personal than which of Buccleuch’s bastards to invite to the wedding. But he liked her fine; and she was good and broad where it would matter to future Buccleuchs, which summed up all his mind so far on the subject.”