Dragonfly in Amber 2(397)

“Have another?” he offered, reaching for the bottle, but Brianna shook her head decidedly.

“Thanks, no. We have to be going. Don’t we, Roger?”

Seeing the dangerous glint in her eye, Roger wasn’t at all sure that he wouldn’t be better off staying to split the rest of the bottle with Greg Edgars. Still, it was a long walk home, if he let Brianna take the car. He rose with a sigh, and shook Edgars’s hand in farewell. It was warm and surprisingly firm in its grip, if a trifle moist.

Edgars followed them to the door, clutching the bottle by the neck. He peered after them through the screen, suddenly calling down the walk, “If ye see Gilly, tell her to come home, eh?”

Roger turned and waved at the blurry figure in the lighted rectangle of the door.

“I’ll try,” he called, the words sticking in his throat.

They made it to the walk and half down the street toward the pub before she rounded on him.

“What in bloody hell are you up to?” she said. She sounded angry, but not hysterical. “You told me you haven’t any family in the Highlands, so what’s all this about cousins? Who is that woman in the picture?”

He looked round the darkened street for inspiration, but there was no help for it. He took a deep breath and took her by the arm.

“Geillis Duncan,” he said.

She stopped stock-still, and the shock of it jarred up his own arm. With great deliberation, she detached her elbow from his grip. The delicate tissue of the evening had torn down the middle.

“Don’t…touch…me,” she said through her teeth. “Is this something Mother thought up?”

Despite his resolve to be understanding, Roger felt himself growing angry in return.

“Look,” he said, “can you not think of anyone but yourself in this? I know it’s been a shock to you—God, how could it not be? And if you cannot bring yourself even to think about it…well, I’ll not push you to it. But there’s your mother to consider. And there’s me, as well.”

“You? What have you got to do with it?” It was too dark to see her face, but the surprise in her voice was evident.

He had not meant to complicate matters further by telling her of his involvement, but it was clearly too late for keeping secrets. And no doubt Claire had seen that, when she suggested his taking Brianna out this evening.

In a flash of revelation, he realized for the first time just what Claire had meant. She did have one means of proving her story to Brianna, beyond question. She had Gillian Edgars, who had—perhaps—not yet vanished to meet her fate as Geillis Duncan, tied to a flaming stake beneath the rowan trees of Leoch. The most stubborn cynic would be convinced, he supposed, by the sight of someone disappearing into the past before their eyes. No wonder Claire had wanted to find Gillian Edgars.

In a few words, he told Brianna his relationship with the would-be witch of Cranesmuir.

“And so it looks like being my life or hers,” he ended, shrugging, hideously conscious of how ridiculously melodramatic it sounded. “Claire—your mother—she left it to me. But I thought I had to find her, at the least.”

Brianna had stopped walking to listen to him. The dim light from a corner shop caught the gleam of her eyes as she stared at him.

“You believe it, then?” she asked. There was no incredulity or scorn in her voice; she was altogether serious.

He sighed and reached for her arm again. She didn’t resist, but fell into step beside him.

“Yes,” he said. “I had to. You didn’t see your mother’s face, when she saw the words written inside her ring. That was real—real enough to break my heart.”

“You’d better tell me,” she said, after a short silence. “What words?”

By the time he had finished the story, they had reached the car-park behind the pub.

“Well…” Brianna said hesitantly. “If…” She stopped again, looking into his eyes. She was standing near enough for him to feel the warmth of her breasts, close to his chest, but he didn’t reach for her. The kirk of St. Kilda was a long way off, and neither of them wanted to remember the grave beneath the yew trees, where the names of her parents were written in stone.

“I don’t know, Roger,” she said, shaking her head. The neon sign over the pub’s back door made purple glints in her hair. “I just can’t…I can’t think about it yet. But…” Words failed her, but she lifted a hand and touched his cheek, light as the brush of the evening wind. “I’ll think of you,” she whispered.



* * *



When you come right down to it, committing burglary with a key is not really a difficult proposition. The chance that either Mrs. Andrews or Dr. McEwan was going to come back and cop me in the act were vanishingly small. Even if they had, all I would have to do is say that I’d come back to look for a lost pocketbook, and found the door open. I was out of practice, but deception had at one point been second nature to me. Lying was like riding a bicycle, I thought; you don’t forget how.