Dragonfly In Amber

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I closed my mouth, and my eyes as well, hoping that my nerve would return, if I couldn’t see the two ashen faces in front of me. Just… let… me… tell… the… truth, I prayed, with no idea who I was talking to. Jamie, I thought.

I’d told the truth once before. It hadn’t gone well.

I pressed my eyelids shut more tightly. Once more I could smell the carbolic surroundings of a hospital, and feel the unfamiliar starched pillowcase beneath my cheek. From the corridor outside came Frank’s voice, choked with baffled rage.

“What do you mean, don’t press her? Don’t press her? My wife’s been gone for nearly three years, and come back filthy, abused, and pregnant, for God’s sake, and I’m not to ask questions?”

And the doctor’s voice, murmuring soothingly. I caught the words “delusion,” and “traumatic state,” and “leave it for later, old man – just for a bit” as Frank’s voice, still arguing and interrupting, was gently but firmly eased down the hall. That so-familiar voice, which raised anew the storm of grief and rage and terror inside me.

I had curled my body into a defensive ball, pillow clutched to my chest, and bitten it, as hard as I could, until I felt the cotton casing give way and the silky grit of feathers grinding between my teeth.

I was grinding them now, to the detriment of a new filling. I stopped, and opened my eyes.

“Look,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “I’m sorry, I know how it sounds. But it’s true, and nothing I can do about it.”

This speech did nothing to reassure Bria

I took hope from his expression, and unclenched my fists.

“It’s the bloody stones,” I said. “You know, the standing stone circle, on the fairies’ hill, to the west?”

“Craigh na Dun,” Roger murmured. “That one?”

“Right.” I exhaled consciously. “You may know the legends about fairy hills – do you? About people who get trapped in rocky hills and wake up two hundred years later?”

Bria

“Mother, I really think you ought to go up and lie down,” she said. She half-rose from her seat. “I could go get Fiona…”

Roger put a hand on her arm to stop her.

“No, wait,” he said. He looked at me, with the sort of suppressed curiosity a scientist shows when putting a new slide under the microscope. “Go ahead,” he said to me.

“Thanks,” I said dryly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start driveling about fairies; I just thought you’d like to know there’s some basis to the legends. I haven’t any idea what it actually is up there, or how it works, but the fact is…” I took a deep breath, “Well, the fact is, that I walked through a bloody cleft stone in that circle in 1945, and I ended up on the hillside below in 1743.”

I’d said exactly that to Frank. He’d glared at me for a moment, picked up a vase of flowers from my bedside table, and smashed it on the floor.

Roger looked like a scientist whose new microbe has come through a wi

“The first person I ran into was an English dragoon in full fig,” I said. “Which rather gave me a hint that something was wrong.”

A sudden smile lighted Roger’s face, though Bria

“The difficulty was that I couldn’t get back, you see.” I thought I’d better address my remarks to Roger, who at least seemed disposed to listen, whether he believed me or not.

“The thing is, ladies then didn’t go about the place unescorted, and if they did, they didn’t do it wearing print dresses and oxford loafers,” I explained. “Everyone I met, starting with that dragoon captain, knew there was something wrong about me – but they didn’t know what. How could they? I couldn’t explain then any better than I can now – and lunatic asylums back then were much less pleasant places than they are now. No basket weaving,” I added, with an effort at a joke. It wasn’t noticeably successful; Bria

“That dragoon,” I said, and a brief shudder went over me at the memory of Jonathan Wolverton Randall, Captain of His Majesty’s Eighth Dragoons. “I thought I was hallucinating at first, because the man looked so very like Frank; at first glance, I thought it was he.” I glanced at the table where a copy of one of Frank’s books lay, with its back-cover photograph of a dark and handsome lean-faced man.

“That’s quite a coincidence,” Roger said. His eyes were alert, fixed on mine.

“Well, it was and it wasn’t,” I told him, wrenching my eyes with an effort from the stack of books. “You know he was Frank’s ancestor. All the men in that family have a strong family resemblance – physically, at least,” I added, thinking of the rather striking nonphysical differences.

“What – what was he like?” Bria

“He was a bloody filthy pervert,” I said. Two pairs of eyes snapped open wide and turned to each other with an identical look of consternation.

“You needn’t look like that,” I said. “They had perversion in the eighteenth century; it isn’t anything new, you know. Only it was worse then, maybe, since no one really cared, so long as things were kept quiet and decent on the surface. And Black Jack Randall was a soldier; he captained a garrison in the Highlands, charged with keeping the clans under control – he had considerable scope for his activities, all officially sanctioned.” I took a restorative gulp from the whisky glass I still held.

“He liked to hurt people,” I said. “He liked it a lot.”

“Did he… hurt you?” Roger put the question with some delicacy, after a rather noticeable pause. Bree seemed to be drawing into herself, the skin tightening across her cheekbones.

“Not directly. Or not much, at least.” I shook my head. I could feel a cold spot in the pit of my stomach, which the whisky was doing little to thaw. Jack Randall had hit me there, once. I felt it in memory, like the ache of a long-healed wound.

“He had fairly eclectic tastes. But it was Jamie that he… wanted.” Under no circumstances would I have used the word “loved.” My throat felt thick, and I swallowed the last drops of whisky. Roger held up the decanter, one brow raised questioningly, and I nodded and held out my glass.

“Jamie. That’s Jamie Fraser? And he was…”

“He was my husband,” I said.

Bria

“But you had a husband,” she said. “You couldn’t… even if… I mean… you couldn’t.”

“I had to,” I said flatly. “I didn’t do it on purpose, after all.”

“Mother, you can’t get married accidentally!” Bria

“Well, it wasn’t precisely an accident,” I said. “It was the best alternative to being handed over to Jack Randall, though. Jamie married me to protect me – and bloody generous of him, too,” I finished, glaring at Bree over my glass. “He didn’t have to do it, but he did.”

I fought back the memory of our wedding night. He was a virgin; his hands had trembled when he touched me. I had been afraid too – with better reason. And then in the dawn he had held me, naked back against bare chest, his thighs warm and strong behind my own, murmuring into the clouds of my hair, “Di

“See,” I turned to Roger again, “I couldn’t get back. I was ru