The undiscriminating vulture is not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile again, and would be of no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our sturdy pat...
The sparkling smile became enormous. ‘Do you think she has a dagger there? Do you? Ask her, M. Francis? For,’ said the most noble and most powerful Princess Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland, delving fu...
The sea demands a man who knows the sea and respects it. A man who is prepared to be lonely. There is no isolation like that of the helm in a storm, except the isolation when it is windless.
The round, unformed script on the fly-leaf said, Francis Crawford of Lymond. She stared at it; then put it down and picked up another. The writing in this one was older; the neat level hand she had se...
The knowledgeable gypsy eyes scanned the dairy-maid skin, the gilded hair, the long hands, jewelled to display their beauty while the Master, serenely smiling, returned the compliment under relaxed li...
The gorgeous creature by the window did not move, nor was there a notable change in his plumage. But by some means it was made clear that against the latticed panes of the casement stood a man trained...
The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drif...
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 o...
The alternative is English force: reprisals and raids and counter-raids and broken promises, as you say. Of course you must try to secure this alliance. You might have achieved it in the last reign bu...
That was your son, man, who went out just now ... What better proof do you want? That and his looks … and his guts.’‘Thank you,’ said Lymond. ‘If that is a compliment.
That night Lymond, too, broke free from the prison he had made for himself. He drank of intent, until one by one the barriers crumbled and let run loose all those qualities he possessed, like Alkibaid...
That day, engrossed together in the fate of the child, he met her mind to mind and fell in love with her, with every grain of his spirit and cell of his body; with the essential finality of death.
Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the disheveled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the gli...
THE ELEGANT WORKING out of designs historical and romantic, political and commercial, psychological and moral, over a multivolume novel is a Dorothy Dunnett specialty.
Standing safely on the opposite bank with her dry maid, her dry escort, and a company of streaming horsemen, Philippa said scathingly, ‘That’s men for you. Cover the lady’s retreat, the book says. A h...
Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences.
Sometimes,’ said Míkál, ‘one must travel to find what is love.’‘Sometimes,’ said Philippa stoutly, ‘one must travel to find what is kindness. I know what is——I know what love is.
Something comes out of every voyage,’ said the other man sharply. ‘Out of every bloody fruitless endeavour. All the striving after the unknowable. The unattainable, the search for Athor, the creative...
So: ‘Why did you laugh?’ demanded Philippa, and shook Jerott’s hand off her arm. ‘Oh, that?’ said Lymond. ‘But, my dear child, the picture was irresistible. Daddy, afflicted but purposeful, ransacking...
Right? said Lymond. You pathetic, maladroit nincompoop, you’re never right.