178 Quotes by Dorothy Dunnett

How nice,” said Lymond, “to have simple emotions. No trouble with principles; no independence of thought; no resistance to suggestion; no nonsense about adult behaviour when it comes to one’s own amour propre.

You invited them without Lymond knowing?’ said Danny Hislop. He wriggled into the circle. ‘Can I be there when he hears about it?

There breaks a crutch Scotland never knew it possessed.

Quarrelling with the Prince of Barrow was like fighting a curtain. Robin Stewart gave up.

It was of no importance. Birth did not matter; heredity was merely a hurdle; one was what one made of oneself; that and no other.

I have only to dismount, and be sick, and then I am, as ever, your man.

Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels – the latter for preference; both if necessary.

The guiding hand at one’s pony; the voice at one’s porridge bowl; the splendid athlete one watched from one’s books in the cold tower window, while outside in the sunshine he rode at the ring, threw his spears, matched his sword with the master-at-arms. The brother who had cared for him, a grown man in illness, and defended him against calumny, and who at length, heartbroken at his defection, had turned his back on him a year ago in Scotland.

To the Frenchmen risking their lives to drive the English from Scotland, such a feud seemed no doubt an ill-timed indulgence. To Buccleuch, any comment from a foreigner was a piece of damnable impertinence, no less.