Page 153 of The Scandal You Started
As if to prove the point, Winnie sighed dramatically, an errant blonde curl slipping against her temple. “It seems the cat is finally out of the bag, darling.”
River’s mouth dropped, George made a stifled sound of shock, and Dominic perked up.
“It seems so,” Declan replied with a loving smile. “It’s probably a good time to tell them that you were once my Study too.”
Rayna didn’t think her jaw could drop any lower, but it did.
Winnie chuckled. “Oh dear. Look at their faces.”
“I didn’t know this,” Rayna’s dad muttered to himself, still on speaker.
“But–but–but you, and you…you,” George stammered, his pointed finger moving between their uncle and aunt.
“I guess I should start at the beginning for it all to make sense,” Declan said as he rested his elbows on the table. “This rule—No Study under any circumstance will be permitted to stay, blah, blah, blah—didn’t exist when I joined the project straight after my master’s, more than thirty-odd years ago. There were actually several cases we were taught about, and one that I witnessed too, where Studies were allowed to stay and live the rest of their lives among us with new identities given to them by the project.”
He encased Winnie’s hand around his elbow with his own, and she cuddled closer to his side. “Winnie was one of those Studies.The last one, in fact.” He explained, “I’d been a historian for two, nearly three years when Sanjana, a Study Scout, brought her to the present.”
“Winnie Imani Fisher from 580 PR,” Winnie introduced herself proudly. “I was the twenty-year-old daughter of an established sea merchant. I’d travelled all across Neves on my father’s ship before he passed away and left me orphaned.”
“Similar to Dominic’s case,” Declan continued, “Winnie’s case consisted of a case study report and a longer project, so I paired up with Sanjana to work with them…and we fell in love.”
Warm affection shone from them both as they shared a moment.
“It shouldn’t have been a problem for her to stay. But at the time, there was a scientist, Dr Onu Wilson, who’d just presented a new theory to the Board, suggesting that taking someone out of their place in history could cause problems for our timeline. A Rupture, he called it.”
“His theory was that history’s one straight line of events”—Declan drew a line with his index finger on the surface of the table—“where certain people have to be and things have to happen. Take someone out of that set series”—he traced a curve up from the middle of the invisible line—“and it creates a Rupture. A tear that could cause a series of events that deviate from the original timeline.
“Though eventually…” He continued to curve the Rupture in an upside-down U until it reached the first line. “The new events will return to converge with the original timeline, and history will continue on the path it was intended to take.”
He stole a quick glance at Winnie. “Unfortunately, Dr Wilson also warned the Board that if they weren’t careful who and how many people they let stay, a series of multiple Ruptures could occur that might not restore themselves, causing a break in thenatural flow of time. Which could create a new, unpredictable timeline, messing up our own.”
There was a moment of silence as Declan Griffin let them process what he’d said.
“That obviously scared the Board,” he then said. “They began talking about stopping Studies from staying altogether. But we were determined to make them see otherwise about Winnie, so we went to speak to Dr Wilson. He had us tell him everything we knew about her past and present in a hope of predicting what could happen if we took her out of her time.”
Winnie sat a little straighter. “You see, my mother passed when I was a child, and when my father did too, the ship, our home, everything went to a distant male cousin who made it very clear he wanted me gone. He didn’t care where; he just simply wasn’t willing to take on the responsibility of me. I had no other relatives I knew of, so I was planning to buy cheap passage to another state when Sanjana found me and offered me a short escape.”
“We took what we knew to the Board,” her husband said, “but they still hesitated, even though Winnie had very little ties to her life in the past.”
Winnie patted his arm playfully. “So your uncle here thought it’d be a good idea to sock two Board members in the face. But it meant they gave us more time, and thankfully so. Because we found out I was pregnant at my next checkup.”
Declan smiled reminiscently. “We married a week later. By that point, the Board had no choice but to let her stay.”
Their story ended with a pleasant quiet, and a tiny smile sat on Rayna’s lips.
With how cheesy and romantic her aunt and uncle were, it was no surprise their love story was something out of one of those romance novels Erin read daily. She would’ve been cooing andcrying and rolling around on the floor had she been there to hear about it.
George shook his head in disbelief. “That’s just…”
“Scandalous?” Winnie offered with a wiggle of her brows.
George scoffed and nodded. “Yeah.That.” He nudged Rayna. “And here the Board is calling you and Dominic a scandal. But the scandal you started holds nothing on them.”
Declan huffed out a single chuckle. Even Victor’s mouth tilted as he adjusted his glasses.
Not for the lack of effort on Dominic’s part, Rayna thought as she snuck a glance at him. From the dancing flicker in his golden irises, she knew he was thinking the same thing. If she’d agreed to it, he would have gotten her pregnant and married her in a matter of minutes.
“What about the research?” River asked. “How come we were never told about Ruptures?”
