Page 92 of The Long Road Back to Yesterday

Elizabeth laughed.

“Have we converted you, sir?”

“To antiquarianism? Certainly not.”

Wynn returned to his book. “But I have spent too many years listening to people insist that something impossible happened to them to dismiss a story merely because I cannot explain it.”

Elizabeth looked at him.

“What sort of impossible things, sir?”

“Most proved quite ordinary once the facts were known.”

“Most?”

He glanced at her over the book.

“Yes.”

She waited, but he offered nothing more.

* * *

Two mornings later, Dr. Wynn and the Radcliffs entered the room before the Darcys arrived and found Elizabeth alone with Brand.

Mrs. Radcliff approached Elizabeth. “My dear girl, Mr. Radcliff and I are to join the other members of the committee for the poor at the parsonage this morning. I am afraid you will have only my father and the Darcys for company.”

“It is no burden, Mrs. Radcliff. I very much enjoy studying with Dr. Wynn.”

“I thought you would not mind, my dear. We will be off, then.”

The Radcliffs departed, and Dr. Wynn settled into his usual chair.

“I have remembered a story about Arbor Low, though it is not much.”

“I should like to hear it, sir.”

“Years ago, I had a patient whose mother frightened her children with stories about the stones. She warned them never to go near Arbor Low on the eve of the winter solstice because the fairies might carry them away.”

Elizabeth pushed Brand aside. “Do you remember the family?”

“The woman was Mrs. Turner. She lived in this part of Derbyshire all her life and died more than twenty years ago. One of her daughters may still be living near Bakewell.”

Elizabeth opened her notebook. “Do you remember her name?”

“I remember what it was before she married. Give me another day, and I may remember the rest.”

Elizabeth wrote Mrs. Turner’s name beneath the disappearance dates. The story was not evidence of another disappearance, but it gave her something almost as valuable: a local tradition connecting Arbor Low with the winter solstice and a woman who might know where it had begun.

The sound of horses came from outside, and Elizabeth looked toward the window before she could stop herself.

Dr. Wynn noticed but said nothing.

Darcy and Georgiana entered several minutes later, and the morning’s work began.

* * *

Near noon, Georgiana stopped reading and rested her hand upon the open page of Camden, but she was no longer looking at it.