Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

If you had asked me, I could have told you, without putting yourself to the trouble of experiment, that no one, saint or sinner, is likely to seduce Francis against his will. Unfortunately.

His defences are good. But it is his friends that will bring him low, not his enemies, Lady Culter. Keep you out of his way. That's the best advice I can give you.

The carrying voice of Alec Guthrie said unexpectedly, 'But as Sir Graham has already pointed out, every practising Christian must serve two masters.' 'My God … I know it,' said Lymond. 'My nerves are on edge like a Dublin butcher over the conversation as it is. The situation is that Sir Graham's other Master and I are in perfect accord; whereas, being human, I am not convinced that Sir Graham and I should necessarily be.

I've been in Scotland more lately than any of you. I tell you, there are twenty sides in that fight, never mind two, and when they get tired throwing things at each other, they'll all turn and stamp on the mediator.

I am glad then,' said Catherine, 'that there was nothing between us, rather than mediocrity.' And from the homes … of Unicornes … 'There was kindness,' he said. 'And that was a great deal.

It is laid on me by love,' said Míkál. 'As a cord of twisted bark bound upon the neck of each ploughing bull, I waded to thee through darkness, as though I waded through a full sea; but thou didst not receive me. I stood in darkness, with fear my innermost garment, and thou didst not warm me. Soon the devil thou dost swallow will claim thee, and where shall I be? I am a Pilgrim of Love, Hâkim; and thy soul is of rock.

I don't bed with children.' 'Rumour says,' said Catherine d'Albon, 'that you did. Or are the Knights of St John all mistaken?' 'You know too much,' said Francis Crawford slowly. 'Shall I amend it? I don't bed with young girls who are virgins, unless they ask me, and unless I am married to them.

It was hard to say therefore why he did not go below, and rally his brother, and encourage him to let the past fade, and look forward to what lay before him. Unless, in his heart of hearts he recognized as Lymond did that what lay around him were shut gates; and what lay before him was nothing.

She rose. 'You mean,' Catherine d'Albon said, 'I have agreed to marry a libertine?' 'Everyone marries libertines,' Lymond said comfortably, rising and taking her elbow. 'But not everyone knows it beforehand.

Philippa … release me from my promise.' She put her hands over her mouth, and then took them away. 'I can't. I can't.' He had pulled his own hands down, looking still at the stool, his face quite turned away. 'You can. Philippa. Please let me go.'

Words is but wind but dunts is the devil

You will be told when and from where the fleet is leaving. I am…conscious that you are all giving up money and position in France for this." "We only came in the first place," Danny said, open-eyed, "because you were coming.

There is a man in him that could support it,' Archie said. 'True enough. But it is maybe a man the world could do without.

He got everyone out of the room, keeping Danny. Danny stood, his hands dangling unhelpfully. 'Well?' he said. 'Adam is your man, you know, for sensitive nursing.' D'Harcourt, his hands pressing through Lymond's hair, said, 'But just think how he is going to enjoy finding you watching him when he wakes up.

Your husband appears to possess an uncanny gift for seducing his enemies.

Pray don't allow the shock of it all to confuse you, she said. Popular resurrections are a tedious pastime of Francis's.

He said something, and became aware that he was expected to leave. He felt like a dog, he thought, whose master had died. He left the house, but did not remember the journey to Fenchurch Street.

No," said Erskine of Dun. "Come naked of creed or of kind or even of purpose, but bring with you what Orkney saw, all those years ago. We are too small a nation to be able to spare saints to Rome or Geneva, or any other refugees seeking to glorify either the flesh or the spirit. There is no one to understand us, except ourselves." "That I know," said Francis Crawford.

Allowed?' said Marthe. 'I have finished with asking permission for what I do and what I think. I have finished with being dispatched scurrying from errand to errand. I am my own mistress now. I am going to move the pieces. I am going to direct the end of the game.

Duty; friendship; compassion. Which moved him to die for you?

You should know,' said Lord Grey, adjusting his sight to the folded paper he had just raised from his desk, ' that I am tied to the Hexham Saphronia, who combines total chastity with a jackal-like taste for digging up my family history. With twelve barons Grey to research she should be rendered peacefully harmless, with no sharp quality of heat, either biting the tongue or offending the head. She will also bring you a fortune in dowry.' He looked up.

If you wish to carry this paper from France and deliver it into Lord Culter's hands,' he said, 'I know of no power which would stop you, unless an earthly one.' 'And that,' said Daniel Hislop, 'is the first totally accurate prediction I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Give me that.

And, knowing their parentage now, you could see Sybilla in both her sons; but more clearly still, the legendary presence of the first baron Crawford of Culter: blurred through two generations in the square, brown-haired person of Richard; and undiluted in Francis, the love-child.

Too late, too late, too late; it had happened.