The Headline
"Gideon, don't—" Sebastian started, but Gideon already had the note half out of my hand.
Priya moved before I did. She'd spent three years handling objects worth more than any of us would earn in a lifetime, and her instincts didn't ask permission. She caught his wrist with both hands and simply didn't let go.
"This is now logged evidence in an active provenance dispute," she said, her voice gone flat and formal in a way I'd never heard from her. "If you damage it, that's not a family embarrassment anymore, Mr. Pruitt. That's destruction of auction house property under active investigation. I will call the police myself."
Gideon's grip didn't loosen, but his eyes went to Sebastian, waiting for a command that didn't come. Sebastian just stood there, looking at the note in my hand like it was the first true thing he'd seen in years.
"Let go," he said finally. "Gideon. Let go."
Gideon let go.
Rosalind had her phone out before anyone told her to, photographing the note, the card, the open compartment, from every angle, her hands finally steady now that there was something useful to do with them. "In case anyone gets any ideas about it disappearing again," she said, not looking at Gideon at all.
I don't know which of us called security, or whether Priya's raised voice had already done it for us. What I know is that within twenty minutes there were two guards in the doorway, and behind them, drawn by the noise, a photographer who'd been covering the preview exhibit for a society page, camera already lifted, already shooting.
None of us slept that night. By seven the next morning my phone wouldn't stop buzzing.
The headline, when I finally made myself look, sat above a photograph of the nightingale brooch, wing open, and beneath it: HEIRLOOM'S HIDDEN SECRET: DOES A CENTURY-OLD SCANDAL PROVE THORNCASTLE FAMILY BURIED THE TRUTH?
My phone rang again before I'd finished reading. Rosalind's name on the screen.
"Tamsin," she said, breathless. "You need to come to the house. Now. Everyone's here — the whole family, lawyers, a woman from the historical society. It's happening. All of it, today."