Free The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton Page B

“Will I be organizing or acquiring these sorts of things, or archiving and preserving them, or helping him sell them?”
    â€œAye.” Rosie nodded.
    â€œDoes he have someone he works with at a museum?” I asked.
    â€œNo, this is all his, not for display, but he kens he has some museum-quality pieces. ’Tis why ye’re here.”
    As I looked around again, I thought about Edwin’s carelessness regarding the Folio. I couldn’t mention to Rosie that Jenny wasn’t telling where she’d put it, but a tiny bit of why he’d been so trusting with something so valuable crept into my consciousness, a minuscule slice of understanding. Despite appearances, I didn’t believe that Edwin didn’t care about these things; it must have been something else. The only conclusion I could come to in the span of a few seconds was that Edwin MacAlister was silly rich. He was the type of person who had so much money that he could replace anything he wanted just by pulling out his checkbook, or calling Rosie to make the electronic transfer.
    But not really. Folios weren’t easy to find. Neither were medieval weapons.
    â€œHe loves these things?” I said.
    Rosie sighed. “Aye, he does. Truly. He’s a contradiction, Delaney. He’s a gatherer, but not someone who can organize. I think he’s become upset with himself and his care for his treasures, which is why he hired ye. He’s a good man with a heart o’ gold. He feeds and clothes many who canna afford it themselves, but he’ll never tell ye aboot that. He’s brilliant, but sometimes a wee taupie.”
    â€œTaupie?”
    â€œWhat’s the word? Scatterbrained? Does that sound right?”
    â€œAn absentminded-professor type?”
    â€œMeebe, but good tae the core. His goodness gets him into trouble too, but I work tae keep him oot of it.”
    â€œHow do you do that?”
    â€œNothing you need to fret aboot.”
    Oddly, the next question that came to my mind was, “Has that desk seen the likes of kings and queens?”
    â€œOh, aye! The advertisement. It has. It came from the court of William II.”
    â€œFrom the late sixteen hundreds? For real?”
    â€œAye.”
    The desk had truly seen the likes of real kings and queens .
    From the seventeenth century.
    I felt the movement of my very soul as it teetered toward the brink.
    â€œI need to sit down,” I said as I beelined my way to the modern and clearly not overly valuable desk chair. I veered away from the ridiculously valuable desk that was obviously in need of at least a good dusting.
    â€œDelaney, are ye awright?” Rosie said as she stepped toward the desk. Hector whined, a brief and high-pitched squeak.
    I had an unreasonable urge to stop her, to tell her that no one should be so close to the desk until I had a chance to take care of it properly, or at least straighten the stacks of stuff atop it.
    Then, as suddenly as it had gone away, reason came back and took over, and it hit me—I was overreacting. Perhaps it was the combination of everything that had happened, the travel, all the big life changes (in the hierarchy of stressful events, wasn’t moving the number one? Moving to a different country surely pushed that even higher), but there truly was no need to feel panicked or out of control. I chuckled to myself. It wasn’t my job to care for and preserve the entire world. I hadn’t taken a “do no harm to old valuable things and report those who don’t” vow. These items belonged to someone else. Even though I’d worked in a museum, inside Edwin’s warehouse I’d probably never been around so many amazing things in my life. In fact, perhaps no one in Wichita had. I could ignore the distressed characters in the books, at least for the time being. They’d be there when I could get to them. Until this moment—or at least until the moment that I’d