The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [65]
Returning to his rooms at the end of the seminar, though, Roger finds unexpected hope. Four heavy boxes, filled with memories: the family silver, old photographs, ancient toys, and jewelry. The note with them reads, “You once told me that everybody needs a history. This is mine. Will you keep it with yours?” The note is signed simply “B,” in Brianna’s strong black hand.
Roger’s puzzlement increases and his elation abates as he grasps the implications of this delivery. Consternation changes to alarm when he dumps out the contents of Brianna’s jewelry box to find two items missing: his silver bracelet, which she always wears—and her grandmother’s pearls … which she never wears.
Rushing to the phone, he calls Boston, hoping against hope that his apprehensions are unfounded.
It took forever to get the international operator on the line, and a longer time yet of vague electronic poppings and buzzings, before he heard the click of connection followed by a faint ringing. One ring, two, then a click, and his heart leapt. She was home!
“We’re sorry,” said a woman’s pleasant, impersonal voice, “that number has been disconnected, or is no longer in service.”
A quick call to Joseph Abernathy, Claire’s friend and Bree’s informal guardian, reveals that Brianna has come to the Highlands, and Roger at once heads for Inverness, hot on her trail. The trail leads, as he feared, directly to the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. She has gone back in search of her parents—without telling him.
Fear for her safety is mixed with rage at her abandonment—and guilt at his own betrayal. Whether she has found the news item he tried to conceal from her, or whether her flight into the past has been impelled by something else, the fact remains: Brianna is gone, and there is only one way to follow—if he can.
Roger finds unexpected help in Inverness. The granddaughter of Mrs. Graham, the Reverend’s old housekeeper, Fiona has inherited more from her granny than a talent for scones and clotted cream. She is the leader of the group of women who dance on Craigh na Dun at dawn on the Feast of Beltane; she is the caller of the sun. More important, she knows something of Gillian Edgars, the woman who vanished into the past and transformed herself into the witch Geillis Duncan.
Gillian has left behind her grimoire, her book of magic—or in this case, her speculations as to the means of time travel. Fiona has read it, and knows what Roger means to attempt. A loyal friend, she offers her help and goes with him to the circle on Midsummer’s Eve, the ancient sun feast of Litha. If Geillis was right in her speculations, the door of time stands widest open on fire feast and sun feast—and the stones are buzzing as Roger approaches.
His first attempt ends in failure—and near death. Entering the time passage, Roger is thinking of his own father, long dead, and wondering whether … The result of this is a brief and ghostly meeting with his father, and an almost catastrophic meeting with himself; by inadvertence, he has crossed his own lifeline, and the impossibility of existing twice in the same time has blown him out of the stones to lie unconscious on the grass, his clothes in flames, where his mother’s garnet-crusted locket, carried for luck, has vaporized in his pocket.
Still, he is not dead—and many previous time-travelers have ended up that way. Evidently, Geillis’s injunctions regarding the protective benefit of gemstones have merit. Fiona gives him her diamond engagement ring, insisting that he take it. Summoning strength and resolve for another try, he takes farewell of Fiona and walks back through the stones, clinging tightly to his thoughts of Brianna.
The Bridge at Inverness.
BRIANNA HAS INDEED reached her destination—at least the first leg of it. Not knowing exactly where her parents may be, she goes to Lallybroch in search of information, and finds more than she bargained for: an unexpectedly large, warm family—and Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser, her father’s second wife.
Reeling from Laoghaire’s bitter accusations