Page 53 of The Scandal You Started
Ok that works
I don’t mind waiting
Chapter 16
Dominic
Two days later, on Wednesday morning, Dominic got to see what the future looked like past the boundary lines the farmhouse sat on when Rayna drove them, rather expertly, down country lanes and town roads into the city to Fronis Museum.
He stared wide-eyed out the passenger side and front windows, both unnerved to be riding in a car for the first timeand amazed by how the world he’d known had changed so significantly in over two hundred years. He hadn’t enough eyes on his head to take it all in.
From the variety of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, driving in civilised synergy rather than full steam ahead, with no care for whose path they impeded. To the different architecture of buildings and shops, some stacked so high in the sky Dominic had to crane his neck to catch a glimpse of the top.
He was trying not to feel overly dismayed by the general lack of clothing on the people walking the streets, but damn on Neves, Rayna hadn’t been kidding about society’s comfort with showing body parts that would have had people from his time clutching their pearls and neckcloths with shaking hands.
Eventually, they reached the museum, where Rayna walked him through a carved stone archway into a massive courtyard. There were vast groups of people, some waiting around, the majority walking between metal barriers towards the large staircase entrance of the building.
It was a beautiful structure built from weathered grey stone, intricately carved with animals, plants, and geometric designs, and covered by a flat-top pyramid roof of black tiles. The entrance was lined with tall, chiselled columns, where a group of excited children all uniformly dressed, walked between them into an open set of glass doors.
Rayna led Dominic along the left of the building on the opposite side of the barriers, allowing them to skip the long queues. They reached a plump lady wearing a bright yellow, shiny waistcoat at the end of the last metal barrier.
Rayna pulled a small rectangular card, similar to the company credit card River had given him to use, from the cream bag across her shoulders and showed it to the lady.
“He’s new, so I’m escorting him to have his badge made,” she said when the plump lady asked to see his card too. The woman smiled and let them pass.
“Normally, we’d go through that side door, there,” Rayna said, pointing to the door in the left corner by the stairs. “But because you don’t have a badge, and I need to get mine reinstated, we’ll be going through the reception today.”
He hummed absently as he looked all around them, trying to take in every detail as if it were the first and last time he’d see the place.
“How are you feeling?”
He lowered his gaze to her and flashed her a wonky smile. “Amazed, if I am to be honest. It feels rather dreamlike all over again.”
“Yeah, it’s showing,” she said, a teasing slant on her supple lips.
Dominic’s heart pattered a little harder, and he wished he could have stopped her just for a second to feel her smile against his mouth.
“Remember,” she added. “No flirting or touching. And forget everything you know about the machine or the lab.”
Her timely reminder almost made him laugh. He rubbed a set of fingers over his grin and nodded. “Yes, I remember, sweetheart.”
Her face fell. “Dominic.”
“Ah, apologies,” he said, realising his mistake. “I meant Rayna.”
Rayna
“Gosh, where on Neves did you find him?”
Rayna side-eyed Maleeka with light-hearted judgment when the receptionist sighed out the question, dreamily eyeing Dominic.
The tanned woman, with green eyes and straight brown hair, was in her forties and had been behind the Fronis Museum reception desk for as long as Rayna could remember. It probably wasn’t more than a decade, but Maleeka had witnessed Rayna go from being a regular visitor to a historian who showed up often to work on various projects. They’d become friends as a result.
The other receptionist was Clifford, an olive-skinned man with a kind but awkward demeanour, who was helping Dominic fill out a form at the other end of the seamless marble desk. Behind Rayna was spread out the rest of the grand entrance hall, tiled in rustic, square slabs of marble with a stone balustrade gallery that ran along three sides on the first floor.
“He applied for the role like everyone else,” Rayna deadpanned.
Maleeka scowled. “You know what I mean.”
