The Timeless Marriage between a Bloody Scot and an English Rose

Jamie and Claire’s live action wedding and honeymoon is upon us. I couldn’t resist writing a companion sonnet to the formerly entitled: Highland Groom. After all, what’s a groom without a bride?

If you missed Jamie’s sonnet in the wedding invitation I created earlier this week, here it is again with a handsome picture of our happy husband – at least he will be momentarily, I’m sure. It’s newly entitled: Bloody Scot.

Claire’s sonnet is entitled English Rose and includes a variation of a quote from Diana Gabaldon‘s Outlander, Chapter 38: The Abbey.

“And if there was eternity, or even the idea of it, then perhaps Anselm was right; all things were possible. And all love? I wondered. I had loved Frank; I still did. And I loved Jamie, more than my own life. But bound in the limits of time and flesh, I could not keep them both. Beyond, perhaps? Was there a place where time no longer existed, or where it stopped? Anselm thought so. A place where all things were possible. And none were necessary.

And was there love there? Beyond the limits of flesh and time, was all love possible? Was it necessary?

The voice of my thoughts seemed to be Uncle Lamb’s. My family, and all I knew of love as a child. A man who had never spoken love to me, who had never needed to, for I knew he loved me, as surely as I knew I lived. For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough.”

This is one of Claire’s most poignant moments as she meditates in the chapel of the monastery where Jamie lies dying. This is the night before Jamie shares with her the details of his ordeal with Jonathan Randall. It is through her genuflections in the chapel the answer to saving Jamie’s life comes to her. I selected this passage because it all comes down to the choice she makes for him here . . . to let him die or save his soul.