Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
7th Sep 2013 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WRITTENInMYOwnHEARTSBlood #Book8 #OutMARCH25th #destiny
“What would you have wanted to be?” I asked, on impulse. “If you hadn’t been born the laird of Lallybroch?”
“I wasn’t. If my elder brother hadna died, ye mean,” he said. A small shadow of regret crossed his face, but didn’t linger. He still mourned the boy who had died at eleven, leaving a small brother to pick up the burden of leadership and struggle to grow into it—but he had been accustomed to that burden for a very long time.
“Maybe that,” I said. “But what if you’d been born elsewhere, maybe to a different family?”
“Well, I wouldna be who I am, then, would I?” he said logically, and smiled at me. “I may quibble wi’ what the Lord’s called me to do, now and then, Sassenach—but I’ve nay argument wi’ how he made me.”
I looked at what he was—the strong, straight body and capable hands, the face so full of everything he was…and had no argument, either.
“Besides,” he said, and tilted his head consideringly, “if it had been different, I wouldna have you, would I? Or have had Brianna and her weans?”
_If it had been different_… I didn’t ask whether he thought his life as it was had been worth the cost.
He leaned over and touched my cheek.
“Aye, it’s worth it, Sassenach,” he said. “For me.”
I cleared my throat.
“For me, too.”