How did you keep this by you?" Grey demanded abruptly. "You were searched to the skin when you were brought back." The wide mouth curved slightly in the first genuine smile Grey had seen. "I swallowed it," Fraser said. Grey's hand closed convulsively on the sapphire. He opened his hand and rather gingerly set the gleaming blue thing on the table by the chess piece. "I see," he said. "I'm sure you do, Major," said Fraser, with a gravity that merely made the glint of amusement in his eyes more pronounced. "A diet of rough parritch has its advantages, now and again.

Oh, aye, Sassenach. I am your master . . . and you're mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion - and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder.

Everyone can lie, young Roger, given cause enough. Even me. It's only that it's harder for those of us who live in glass faces; we have to think up our lies ahead of time.

Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.

It has always been forever, for me, Sassenach