Tristan turned and spotted her before she could make her escape. Even from across the room, she could see that he was shocked to see her. His eyes widened.
“Hyacinth,” he said quietly.
“Yes, I'm sorry. I was exploring and heard the fountain and I was curious.”
To her shock, he flashed a smile. “So here you are.”
Hyacinth took a shaky breath. “And so here I am. I'm sorry to disturb you. I’ll go.”
“No.” The word emerged loud, echoing up to the high ceiling. “You’re not interrupting.” He glanced about him. “Would you like to see?”
Hyacinth bit her bottom lip. “Are you certain?”
“I'm certain. Come.” He lifted his hand, as if he was asking her to dance, and then took a few steps toward her.
She crossed the distance and ached to put her hand in his, but he dropped his arm as she approached.
“As you can see, it is very much a makeshift laboratory.” He sounded almost chagrined. “But it works for my purposes.”
Hyacinth couldn’t imagine any reason for the hint of reticence she heard in his tone. She took in the shelves and the rows and rows of bones. Some tiny. So small that several of them would fit in the center of a palm. Some of them large, some enormous. All of them impressive and fascinating to her. She wanted to study each one.
There were shelves of books too, along with what looked like ledgers or notebooks. Then, set on its own inside a glass case upon a dais of velvet, sat one particular set of bones.
“Are those…?”
“Yes.”
The bones of the dinosaur that had captured the interest of the queen and resulted in her granting him a knighthood.
“Would you like to have a closer look?”
“Oh, you needn’t?—”
“If you’re interested, I’d be happy to.”
Hyacinth stepped a bit closer and looked up into his eyes. “Yes, please.”
He opened the glass lid gently, then extracted one of the larger bones and turned to place it in her outstretched palms.
She realized she was holding her breath and exhaled slowly. “It's extraordinary to think about how old this bone is and the creature it belonged to. From so long ago and yet it’s survived and is here with us now.” Hyacinth looked up at him, awed. “It's extraordinary.”
Tristan’s smile softened the sharpness of his jaw, carved a dimple at the edge of his cheek. “It is. And they are a mystery we’re attempting to solve, yet we have these precious clues to help us understand them.”
Hyacinth carefully offered the bone up to him, and he scooped it from her palm. When their skin brushed, she felt a rush of warmth up her arm.
“It gives us a sense of the vastness of history. The enormity of time. And it does put things in perspective.” He spoke with quiet earnestness that held her spellbound.
Once he’d replaced the bone next to the others and closed the glass box, he turned back to her.
They stood close enough for her to see the thickness of his lashes, the streaks of gold in the deep blue pools of his eyes.
Hyacinth felt her pulse speed, knew her breaths were coming too quickly.
“We humans tend to feel like we are the center of the universe, but there were other living creatures here long before us.” He let out a soft chuckle. “The whole matter has often raised controversy. Perhaps you don’t agree.”
“Of course I agree.” She knew he likely referred to the debates about the dating of dinosaurs and reconciling where they fell in geologic time and how they might conflict with the religious views of some. “Did you think I would disagree?”
He laughed lightly again. “I have only ever found you to be agreeable, Miss Bridewell.”
