Dragonfly In Amber

“Eh?” He straightened up, blinking.

“Thought you might do with some tea, Mr. Wake – I mean, Roger.” Fiona set down a small tray containing a cup and saucer and a plate of biscuits.

“Oh, thanks.” He was in fact hungry, and gave Fiona a friendly smile that sent the blood rushing into her round, fair cheeks. Seemingly encouraged by this, she didn’t go away, but perched on the corner of the desk, watching him raptly as he went about his job between bites of chocolate biscuit.

Feeling obscurely that he ought to acknowledge her presence in some way, Roger held up a half-eaten biscuit and mumbled, “Good.”

“Are they? I made them, ye know.” Fiona’s flush grew deeper. An attractive little girl, Fiona. Small, rounded, with dark curly hair and wide brown eyes. He found himself wondering suddenly whether Bria

Apparently taking this as a gesture of disbelief, Fiona leaned closer. “No, really,” she insisted. “A recipe of my gran’s, it is. She always said they were a favorite of the Reverend’s.” The wide brown eyes grew a trifle misty. “She left me all her cookbooks and things. Me being the only granddaughter, ye see.”

“I was sorry about your grandmother,” Roger said sincerely. “Quick, was it?”

Fiona nodded mournfully. “Oh, aye. Right as rain all day, then she said after supper as she felt a bit tired, and went up to her bed.” The girl lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “She went to sleep, and never woke up.”

“A good way to go,” Roger said. “I’m glad of it.” Mrs. Graham had been a fixture in the manse since before Roger himself had come, a frightened, newly orphaned five-year-old. Middle-aged even then, and widowed with grown children, still she had provided an abundant supply of firm, no-nonsense maternal affection during school holidays when Roger came home to the manse. She and the Reverend made an odd pair, and yet between them they had made the old house definitely a home.

Moved by his memories, Roger reached out and squeezed Fiona’s hand. She squeezed back, brown eyes suddenly melting. The small rosebud mouth parted slightly, and she leaned toward Roger, her breath warm on his ear.

“Uh, thank you,” Roger blurted. He pulled his hand out of her grasp as though scorched. “Thanks very much. For the… the… er, tea and things. Good. It was good. Very good. Thanks.” He turned and reached hastily for another stack of papers to cover his confusion, snatching a rolled bundle of newspaper clippings from a pigeonhole chosen at random.

He unrolled the yellowed clippings and spread them on the desk, holding them down between his palms. Frowning in apparent deep concentration, he bent his head lower over the smudged text. After a moment Fiona rose with a deep sigh, and her footsteps receded toward the door. Roger didn’t look up.

Letting out a deep sigh of his own, he closed his eyes briefly and offered a quick prayer of thanks for the narrow escape. Yes, Fiona was attractive. Yes, she was undoubtedly a fine cook. She was also nosy, interfering, irritating, and firmly bent on marriage. Lay one hand on that rosy flesh again, and they’d be calling the ba

Wondering just how much he would have to say about it, Roger opened his eyes and then blinked. For there in front of him was the name he had been envisioning on a wedding license – Randall.

Not, of course, Bria

With a sense of shock, Roger thumbed rapidly through the bundle of clippings, then returned to read them more carefully. Though the papers had made as much sensation as possible of the story, the facts were sparse.

Claire Randall, wife of the noted historian Dr. Franklin W. Randall, had disappeared during a Scottish holiday in Inverness, late in the spring of 1946. A car she had been driving had been found, but the woman herself was gone without trace. All searches having proved futile, the police and bereaved husband had at length concluded that Claire Randall must have been murdered, perhaps by a roving tramp, and her body concealed somewhere in the rocky crags of the area.

And in 1948, nearly three years later, Claire Randall had returned. She had been found, disheveled and dressed in rags, wandering near the spot at which she had disappeared. While appearing to be in good physical health, though slightly malnourished, Mrs. Randall was disoriented and incoherent.

Raising his eyebrows slightly at the thought of Claire Randall ever being incoherent, Roger thumbed through the rest of the clippings. They contained little more than the information that Mrs. Randall was being treated for exposure and shock at a local hospital. There were photographs of the presumably overjoyed husband, Frank Randall. He looked stu

He examined the pictures curiously. Frank Randall had been a slender, handsome, aristocratic-looking man. Dark, with a rakish grace that showed in the angle of his body as he stood poised in the door of the hospital, surprised by the photographer on his way to visit his newly restored wife.

He traced the line of the long, narrow jaw, and the curve of the head, and realized that he was searching for traces of Bria

With a sigh, he closed the book and gathered up the clippings. He really must stop this mooning about and get on with the job, or he’d be sitting here for the next twelvemonth.

He was about to put the clippings into the keepsake pile, when one, headlined KIDNAPPED BY THE FAIRIES?, caught his eye. Or rather, not the clipping, but the date that appeared just above the headline. May 6, 1948.

He set the clipping down gently, as though it were a bomb that might go off in his hand. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up that first conversation with the Randalls. “You have to be twenty-one to drink in Massachusetts,” Claire had said. “Bria

Unable to count backward fast enough, he rose and scrabbled through the perpetual calendar that the vicar had kept, in a clear space to itself on his cluttered wall. He found the date and stood with his finger pressed to the paper, blood draining from his face.

Claire Randall had returned from her mysterious disappearance disheveled, malnourished, incoherent – and pregnant.

In the fullness of time, Roger slept at last, but in consequence of his wakefulness, woke late and heavy-eyed, with an incipient headache, which neither a cold shower nor Fiona’s chirpiness over breakfast did much to dispel.

The feeling was so oppressive that he abandoned his work and left the house for a walk. Striding through a light rain, he found the fresh air improved his headache, but unfortunately cleared his mind enough to start thinking again about the implications of last night’s discovery.