...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?

Tell him I hate him to his guts and the marrow of his bones!

Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.

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

An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time

This was nonsense, he thought. The need of her was a physical thing, like the thirsty of a sailor becalmed for weeks on the sea. He'd felt the need before, often, often, in their years apart. But why now? She was safe; he knew where she was - was it only the exhaustion of the past weeks and days, or perhaps the weakness of creeping age that made his bones ache, as though she had in fact been torn from his body, as God had made Eve from Adam's rib?

If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.