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Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2) Page 193
Author: Diana Gabaldon

"You can't possibly be sure," he muttered to her under his breath.

"What's that, luv?" said Mrs. Andrews, looking up absently over her spectacles. "Oh, you weren't talking to me. That's all right, then, I've found one a little better. It's still not her whole face—she's turned sideways, like—but it's better nor the other." She plopped the new picture down on top of the other with a triumphant little splat.

This one showed an older man with half-spectacles and the same fairhaired girl, bent over a table holding what looked like a collection of rusted motor parts to Roger, but which were undoubtedly valuable artifacts. The girl's hair swung down beside her cheek, and her head was turned toward the older man, but the slant of a short, straight nose, a sweetly rounded chin, and the curve of a beautiful mouth showed clearly. The eye was cast down, hidden under long, thick lashes. Roger repressed the admiring whistle that rose unbidden to his lips. Ancestress or not, she was a real dolly, he thought irreverently.

He glanced at Claire. She nodded, without speaking. She was paler even than usual, and he could see the pulse beating rapidly in her throat, but she thanked Mrs. Andrews with her usual composure.

"Yes, that's the one. I think perhaps we would like to talk to the Director, if he's available."

Mrs. Andrews cast a quick glance at the white-paneled door behind her desk.

"Well, I'll go and ask for you, dearie. Could I tell him what it's for, though?"

Roger was opening his mouth, groping for some excuse, when Claire stepped smoothly into the breach.

"We're from Oxford, actually," she said. "Mrs. Edgars has applied for a study grant with the Department of Antiquities, and she'd given the Institute as a reference with the rest of her credentials. So, if you wouldn't mind…?"

"Oh, I see," said Mrs. Andrews, looking impressed. "Oxford. Just think! I'll ask Dr. McEwan if he can see you just now."

As she disappeared behind the white-paneled door, pausing for no more than a perfunctory rap before entering, Roger leaned down to whisper in Claire's ear.

"There is no such thing as a Department of Antiquities at Oxford," he hissed, "and you know it."

"You know that," she replied demurely, "and I, as you so cleverly point out, do too. But there are any number of people in the world who don't, and we've just met one of them."

The white-paneled door was beginning to open.

"Let's hope they're thick on the ground hereabouts," Roger said, wiping his brow, "or that you're a quick liar."

Claire rose, smiling at the beckoning figure of Mrs. Andrews as she spoke out of the side of her mouth.

"I? I, who read souls for the King of France?" She brushed down her skirt and set it swinging. "This will be pie."

Roger bowed ironically, gesturing toward the door. "Aprés vous, Madame."

As she stepped ahead of him, he added, "Aprés vous, le déluge," under his breath. Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn't turn around.

Rather to Roger's surprise, it was pie. He wasn't sure whether it was Claire's skill at misrepresentation, or Dr. McEwan's own preoccupation, but their bona fides went unquestioned. It didn't seem to occur to the man that it was highly unlikely for scouting parties from Oxford to penetrate to the wilds of Inverness to make inquiries about the background of a potential graduate student. But then, Roger thought, Dr. McEwan appeared to have something on his mind; perhaps he wasn't thinking as clearly as usual.

"Weeeel…yes, Mrs. Edgars unquestionably has a fine mind. Very fine," the Director said, as though convincing himself. He was a tall, spare man, with a long upper lip like a camel's, which wobbled as he searched hesitantly for each new word. "Have you…has she…that is…" He trailed off, lip twitching, then, "Have you ever actually met Mrs. Edgars?" he finally burst out.

"No," said Roger, eyeing Dr. McEwan with some austerity. "That's why we're asking about her."

"Is there anything…" Claire paused delicately, inviting, "that you think perhaps the committee should know, Dr. McEwan?" She leaned forward, opening her eyes very wide. "You know, inquiries like this are completely confidential. But it's so important that we be fully informed; there is a position of trust involved." Her voice dropped suggestively. "The Ministry, you know."

Roger would dearly have loved to strangle her, but Dr. McEwan was nodding sagely, lip wobbling like mad.

"Oh, yes, dear lady. Yes, of course. The Ministry. I completely understand. Yes, yes, Well, I…hm, perhaps—I shouldn't like to mislead you in any respect, you know. And it is a wonderful chance, no doubt…"

Now Roger wanted to throttle both of them. Claire must have noticed his hands twitching in his lap with irresistible desire, for she put a firm stop to the Director's maundering.

"We're basically interested in two things," she said briskly, opening the notebook she carried and poising it on her knee as if for reference. Pick up bottle sherry for Mrs. T, Roger read out of the corner of one eye. Sliced ham for picnic.

"We want to know, first, your opinion of Mrs. Edgars's scholarship, and secondly, your opinion of her overall personality. The first we have of course evaluated ourselves"—she made a small tick in the notebook, next to an entry that read Change traveler's cheques—"but you have a much more substantial and detailed grasp, of course." Dr. McEwan was nodding away by this time, thoroughly mesmerized.

"Yes, well…" He puffed a little, then, with a glance at the door to make sure it was shut, leaned confidentially across his desk. "The quality of her work—well, about that I think I can satisfy you completely. I'll show you a few things she's been working on. And the other…" Roger thought he was about to go in for another spot of lip-twitching and leaned forward menacingly.

Dr. McEwan leaned back abruptly, looking startled. "It's nothing very much, really," he said. "It's only…well, she's such an intense young lady. Perhaps her interest seems at times a trifle…obsessive?" His voice went up questioningly. His eyes darted from Roger to Claire, like a trapped rat's.

"Would the direction of this intense interest perhaps be focused on the standing stones? The stone circles?" Claire suggested gently.

"Oh, it showed up in her application materials, then?" The Director hauled a large, grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face with it. "Yes, that's it. Of course, a lot of people get quite carried away with them," he offered. "The romance of it, the mystery. Look at those benighted souls out at Stonehenge on Midsummer's Day, in hoods and robes. Chanting…all that nonsense. Not that I would compare Gillian Edgars to…"

There was quite a lot more of it, but Roger quit listening. It seemed stifling in the narrow office, and his collar was too tight; he could hear his heart beating, a slow, incessant thrumping in both ears that was very irritating.

It simply couldn't be! he thought. Positively impossible. True, Claire Randall's story was convincing—quite awfully convincing. But then, look at the effect she was having on this poor old dodderer, who wouldn't know scholarship if it was served up on a plate with piccalilli relish. She could obviously talk a tinker out of his pans. Not that he, Roger, was as susceptible as Dr. McEwan surely, but…

Beset with doubt and dripping with sweat, Roger paid little attention as Dr. McEwan fetched a set of keys from his drawer and rose to lead them out through a second door into a long hallway studded with doors.

"Study carrels," the Director explained. He opened one of the doors, revealing a cubicle some four feet on a side, barely big enough to contain a narrow table, a chair, and a small bookshelf. On the table, neatly stacked, were a series of folders in different colors. To the side, Roger saw a large notebook with gray covers, and a neat hand-lettered label on the front—MISCELLANEOUS. For some reason, the sight of the handwriting sent a shiver through him.

This was getting more personal by the moment. First photographs, now the woman's writings. He was assailed by a moment's panic at the thought of actually meeting Geillis Duncan. Gillian Edgars, he meant. Whoever the woman was.

The Director was opening various folders, pointing and explaining to Claire, who was putting on a good show of having some idea what he was talking about. Roger peered over her shoulder, nodding and saying, "Um-hm, very interesting," at intervals, but the slanted lines and loops of the script were incomprehensible to him.

She wrote this, he kept thinking. She's real. Flesh and blood and lips and long eyelashes. And if she goes back through the stone, she'll burn—crackle and blacken, with her hair lit like a torch in the black dawn. And if she doesn't, then…I don't exist.

He shook his head violently.

"You disagree, Mr. Wakefield?" The Director of the Institute was peering at him in puzzlement.

He shook his head again, this time in embarrassment.

"No, no. I mean…it's only…do you think I could have a drink of water?"

"Of course, of course! Come with me, there's a fountain just round the corner, I'll show you." Dr. McEwan bustled him out of the carrel and down the hall, expressing voluble, disjointed concern for his state of health.

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Diana Gabaldon's Novels
» Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander #8)
» An Echo in the Bone (Outlander #7)
» A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander #6)
» Drums of Autumn (Outlander #4)
» Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2)
» Voyager (Outlander #3)
» A Trail of Fire (Lord John Grey #3.5)
» Outlander (Outlander #1)
» The Fiery Cross (Outlander #5)
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» A Plague of Zombies