"Bloody hell! Kate thought. No one knows me. He sounds like he's talking about a saint. What would all these people say if they knew the real Kate Blackwell? Sired by a thief and kidnapped before I was a year old. What would they think if I showed them the bullet scars on my body?" Prologue, p. 15

"The trip back to Klipdrift was easy and comfortable, and when Jamie thought of the hell he had gone through on this same journey, he was filled with a sense of wonder. That's the difference between the rich and the poor, he though. The poor walk; the rich ride in carriages." Book One, Jamie 1883-1906: Chap. 2, p. 51

"Jamie was unable to sleep that night. He kept visualizing thirty-five miles of sand sprinkled with enormous diamonds belonging to Van der Merwe. He thought of the sea and the jagged reefs, the dogs...