Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [451]
“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.
Once away from the claustrophobic confines of the carrel and the proximity of Gillian Edgars’s books and folders, Roger began to feel slightly better. Still, the thought of going back into that tiny room, where all Claire’s words about her past seemed to echo off the thin partitions…no. He made up his mind. Claire could finish with Dr. McEwan by herself. He passed the carrel quickly, not looking inside, and went through the door that led back to the receptionist’s desk.
Mrs. Andrews stared at him as he came in, her spectacles gleaming with concern and curiosity.
“Dear me, Mr. Wakefield. Are ye not feeling just right, then?” Roger rubbed a hand over his face; he must