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.

What a mystery blood was -- how did a tiny gesture, a tome of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the ehoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments. the shadow of a face looking back through the years -- that vanished again into the face that was now.

Your face is my heart Sassenach, and the love of you is my soul

...still I dinna expect anything to happen to me. But if it should...If it does, then I want there to be a place for you; I want someone for you to go to if I am...not there to care for you. If it canna be me, then I would have it be a man who loves you.

The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep's wool." He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, inspite of his obvious perturbation. "Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it's going to rain verra soon now.

And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.

For I had come back, and I dreamed once more in the cool air of the Highlands. And the voice of my dream still echoed through ears and heart, repeated with the sound of Brianna's sleeping breath. "You are mine," it had said. "Mine. And I will not let you go.