Page 55 of The Scandal You Started
“Two hundred and four letters, four diaries, and three accounts books,” Matt said, nudging his round glasses up his nose.
Of a similar height to Rayna, Matt was a quiet man with brown eyes and brown hair and looked like he was both twelve and forty years old. But when it came to historical knowledge, his mind was a brilliant mill that could churn out unique facts and clever theories very quickly.
Next to him was Cassie, a curvy woman in her late fifties with a blonde pixie cut. She was the head of theTregencycuration team and an academic historian with three PhDs under her belt, and who Rayna had known the longest of the three.
“Thankfully, our main focus will be the letters,” Cassie said, “in order to ensure they’ve all been catalogued before being displayed, ready for the opening gala of the revampedTregencyexhibit.” She smacked her lips together. “It might be a bit of an ask, but if we stick to a reasonable target per day, it will hopefully be doable.”
“Can you tell Cassie’s stressed?” Hania said with a cheeky glance at the older woman.
Rayna and Matt grinned. Cassie shook her head with tired amusement. And pretty, slender Hania with golden-brown skinand a golden heart, set a blushing smile on Dominic as he lifted his humoured gaze from the letters to her.
Something about it nagged at Rayna.
No, not nagged. That was too strong of a word.
It was more like a teeny tiny, mega small, very little,minute,odd…feeling. Like that slight numb sensation when, as children, she, Benedict, and George had seen how many of Winnie’s sewing pins they could stick into the callused skin around their fingernails. That kind of mute awareness that something about the way Hania looked at Dominic didn’t sit right with Rayna.
“Of course, I’m stressed,” Cassie said with a huff. “Sometimes I feel like the museum Board forgets that the actual purpose of a museum is to facilitate the study of artefacts and our history, rather than to display them just to impress their funders and members.” She waved a dismissive hand around. “Well, it’s not that they don’t want us to do our study. But gosh are they being demanding this time.”
“Some of these are encrypted,” Dominic said as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. He was the only one who’d been doing a slow circle of the table, inspecting the letters intently.
Cassie’s face immediately lifted into a beaming grin. “They are. I’m glad you noticed that, Dominic.” She did a little shoulder jiggle. “Isn’t that exciting? It means someone had secrets to hide that we get to discover.”
Rayna leaned over the glass table to peer at the letter Dominic was looking at, and from upside down, she could make out jumbled letters that resembled coded words.
“Who did you say donated these?” she asked.
“Rupert Something Bastille the third,” Matt answered.
“Apparently, he was renovating his family’s ancestral home in Central Khaas, and the construction workers stumbled upon a sealed box when they made a hole in the wrong wall,” Cassie explained. “He took them to the Jillian and Sophia Museum, butas you know, they don’t have aTregencyresearch team, so they sent them up to us.”
“I’m assuming some of the letters will go back to them then,” Rayna said.
“Oh, yeah. They’ll be distributed amongst the regions’ biggest museums.” Cassie rolled her hand around with every museum she counted. “So us, the J and S, Lord Chambers, etcetera, etcetera.”
Rayna nodded thoughtfully as Dominic stopped by her side. “Many are written by and to an I.Y.B.. Do you know who that is?” he asked.
“It’s Lord Ian Young Bastille, the fourth Earl of Hanin,” Hania said. “Rupert Bastille’s five times removed great-grandfather.”
Dominic’s brows rose. “Earl of Hanin?”
“You recognise the name?” Rayna asked, conscious that what he said or gave away could cause a potentially difficult problem for them to explain to the other three.
But clever man that he was, he realised his mistake and shifted on his feet. “Well, I have heard—read, rather, of him.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shrugged. “Off the top of my head, he was a government figure who did not have much of a central role. But there were rumours he had an army of Street Runners who reported to him, and the secrets he gathered allowed him to pull more strings amongst his peers than anyone truly knew.”
At the end of his explanation, a quizzical silence settled through the room.
Rayna looked to Cassie. Cassie peered at Matt. And Matt glanced across to Hania.
Then the four of them stared at Dominic.
“Well…” Cassie said with a smack of her lips. “I think I speak for all of us when I say, we are incredibly glad to have you onboard for this project, Dominic.” She grinned joyfully. “Looks like you’ll be helping us with more than just cataloguing them.”
Chapter 17
Dominic
Dominic took back what he said about detesting museums.
