Home > Work > Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
121 " You sit on trouble, don’t you, until it blows up in your face? "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
122 " You are proving, aren’t you,’ said Philippa contemptuously, ‘that to be base-born makes you a fourth-rate son of a fourth-rate little country? "
123 " I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d’Albon’s chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. "
124 " Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception. "
125 " She wouldn’t send anyone, nor would she take anyone with her. She organizes witches’ Sabbaths every full moon,’ explained Philippa tartly. "
126 " He received another kiss which led him to wonder, hopefully, if the English bastard at the Hôtel d’Hercule was dying. "
127 " I asked,’ Sybilla said, ‘because I have seen him like this before … once; when he elected to take everyone else’s business in hand and return it to them correctly aligned, like an artist with a child’s drawing. "
128 " From limbo, you cannot say forgive me, unless you can also say you regret what you have done. I have no regrets. I have nothing to tell you, except what you know already: that love is a powerful master. For his favours do you pay tribute and toll while flesh endures, and no doubt after. "
129 " Absence is absence, whatever causes it. It is no more or less an affront to you. I did say, as I remember, that I would try to do what you wished me to do. And that you must forgive me if I failed. "
130 " I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground. "
131 " Try to remember.… There is a difference between absence and death. And you are needed. "
132 " Every other woman since Eve,’ he said. ‘Except you. "
133 " How, in twenty days, do you create for a man a new and irresistible motive for his existence? And how, this done, do you preserve him and his family from a blow so devastating as to be, in some ways, worse than self-destruction? "
134 " No ties; no duty; no relief. Three filaments gone in the life-thread, fragile as the thread of the silk-moth, which has no organs by which it can nourish itself, but instead is born, and loves once, and then dies. "
135 " I am like the Swiss. I prefer not to fight on a Wednesday. "
136 " Like the narration of those who preach to those who do not wish to hear, my story has failed to excite anyone. They don't believe me. "
137 " She’s got sense, that girl; and too much backbone to push herself where she’s not wanted. Tell her it’s no good, and she’ll soon see the point. "
138 " Dear God,’ Richard said, and stood up. ‘Can you not dispense with a bawd between Thursday and Monday? "
139 " I wonder if there exists any other man, even at this Court, who has to be restrained day and night to preserve a girl’s honour? "
140 " I showed you your face in the mirror. It was not only the face of one who loves, but the face of one whose love is returned. "