145
" Sleeping under the moon and stars in the arms of a naked lover, the two of you cradled by furs and soft leaves, lulled by the gentle murmur of the chestnut trees and the far-off rumble of a waterfall, is terribly romantic. Sleeping under a crude lean-to, squashed into a soggy mass between a large, wet husband and an equally large, equally wet nephew, listening to rain thrump on the branches overhead while fending off the advances of a immense and thoroughly saturated dog, is slightly less so. "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
146
" I am improvising a brassiere,” I said with dignity. “I don’t mean to ride sidesaddle through the mountains wearing a dress, and if I’m not wearing stays, I don’t mean my breasts to be joggling all the way, either. Most uncomfortable, joggling.” “I daresay.” He edged into the room and circled me at a cautious distance, eyeing my nether limbs with interest. “And what are those?” “Like them?” I put my hands on my hips, modeling the drawstring leather trousers that Phaedre had constructed for me—laughing hysterically as she did so—from soft buckskin provided by one of Myers’s friends in Cross Creek. “No,” he said bluntly. “Ye canna be going about in—in—” He waved at them, speechless. “Trousers,” I said. “And of course I can. I wore trousers all the time, back in Boston. They’re very practical.” He "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
148
" I did sometimes wonder what he saw in you,” he said, his tone deliberately light. “Jamie.” “Oh, you did? How flattering.” I sniffed, and blew my nose. “When he began to speak of you, both of us thought you dead,” he pointed out. “And while you are undoubtedly a handsome woman, it was never of your looks that he spoke.” To my surprise, he picked up my hand and held it lightly. “You have his courage,” he said. That made me laugh, if only halfheartedly. “If you only knew,” I said. He didn’t reply to that, but smiled faintly. His thumb ran lightly over the knuckles of my hand, his touch light and warm. “He doesn’t hold back for fear of skinned knuckles,” he said. “Neither do you, I think.” “I can’t.” I took a deep breath and wiped my nose; the tears had stopped. “I’m a doctor.” “So you are,” he said quietly, and paused. “I have not thanked you for my life.” “It wasn’t me. There isn’t really anything much I can do, for something like a disease. All I can do is to … be there.” “A little more than that,” he said dryly, and released my hand. “Will you have more ale?” I was beginning to see quite clearly what Jamie saw in John Grey. The "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
149
" For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. The sett of his tartan was nearly the same now as then; black check on a crimson ground, plaid caught at his shoulder with a silver brooch, dipping to the calf of a neat, stockinged leg. His linen was finer now, as was his coat; the dirk he wore at his waist had bands of gold across the haft. Duine uasal was what he looked, a man of worth. But the bold face above the lace was the same, older now, but wiser with it—yet the tilt of his shining head and the set of the wide, firm mouth, the slanted clear cat-eyes that looked into my own, were just the same. Here was a man who had always known his worth. "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
154
" Don’t you go up on the roof in that!” I exclaimed, sitting up abruptly. “That’s your good woolen shirt!” He halted by the door, glared briefly at me, then, with the rebuking expression of an early Christian martyr, laid down his tools, stripped off the shirt, dropped it on the floor, picked up the tools, and strode majestically out to deal with the leak, buttocks clenched with determined zeal. I "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
155
" We didn’t speak anymore, then, as the melting boundaries of our bodies disappeared. It was slow, dreamy and peaceful, his body and mine as much as mine was his, so that I curled my foot round his leg and felt both smooth sole and hairy shin, felt callused palm and tender flesh, was knife and sheath together, the rhythm of our movement that of one heart beating. The "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
156
" Two hundred years from now, she had—I will? she thought wildly—stood in front of this portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, furiously denying the truth that it showed. Ellen MacKenzie looked out at her now as she had then; long-necked and regal, slanted eyes showing a humor that did not quite touch the tender mouth. It wasn’t a mirror image, by any means; Ellen’s forehead was high, narrower than Brianna’s, and the chin was round, not pointed, her whole face somewhat softer and less bold in its features. But the resemblance was there, and pronounced enough to be startling; the wide cheekbones and lush red hair were the same. And around her neck was the string of pearls, gold roundels bright in the soft spring sun. "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
160
" I was used to paying a great deal of attention to my hands, one way and another. They were my tools, my channel of touch, mingling the delicacy and strength by which I healed. They had a certain beauty, which I admired in a detached sort of way, but it was the beauty of strength and competence, the assurance of power that made its form admirable. It was the same hand now, pale and long-fingered, the knuckles slightly bony—oddly bare without my ring, but recognizably my hand. Yet it lay in a hand so much larger and rougher that it seemed small, and fragile by comparison. His "
― Diana Gabaldon , Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)