The Rules of the Red - 2nd Edition |✓|

Chapter Nine, Part One - What Happened In The Past

I walked the halls of the New Yorker Museum with Tidus. We were matched in stride, yet we remained distant. He spoke politely, opened doors for me, and caught me by the hand once when I tripped going down a step. But he hardly ever looked at me and when he did it was rarely in the eye. He was torn between the monster and the gentleman - two halves struggling to conquer one soul. And all I could do was hope that in the end the right half would win.

At some point we found ourselves standing before a display. Tidus seemed to be studying Frost at Giverny, but a perceptive eye could see he was troubled. As beautiful a painting as Claude Monet's, it simply couldn't hold his attention. Tidus stared at the artwork but I knew he didn't really see it. I wanted to ask if he was ok, or if perhaps he felt like talking. But then I remembered he wasn't interested in friendship, so instead I walked away.

After an hour of solemn strolling we finally hit pay dirt in one of the last rooms of the museum that was open to the public. It was a large open area with strange tribal paintings and pictures of odd symbols on the walls. I paused, disturbed, but unable to look away from the depiction of a large snake assaulting a young woman.

Tidus nodded towards one of the room's few display cases. "Looks like we've found what we're looking for."

We approached a small, glass podium of waist-height. With excitement and apprehension I stooped to observe an open ring box that lay on a satin, cream-colored pillow. Within the box was a large black diamond in a canary-colored band. Light from the museum windows struck the ring, shooting glimmers of gray against the walls.

"Stunning, isn't it?"

I looked up to see a tall, thin man staring down at me from the opposite end of the podium. He wore a crisp suit with a pin bearing the hotel's name and insignia on the breast pocket. His hair was brown and greying prematurely, and there was a gauntness to him that suggested he'd recently fallen ill. But his full smile and the hardness in his eyes said he was still agile for a man in his condition.

"Very," I straightened. "I've never seen a ring like it. It's gorgeous." I offered my hand, along with a polite smile. "I'm Naomi and this is my... friend, Tidus."

"Hello, I'm Ben Foster." He extended his hand to each of us. "I'm the museum's head curator and leading archaeologist. I see the ring has caught your attention. Usually we aren't interested in carrying jewelry, but this piece happens to have very significant history behind it. Have you ever heard of the Countess- Neona Aslin?"

I shook my head and was surprised to see Tidus give an odd smile and nod.

"In the eighteenth century, the Countess' family owned a very large and profitable chain of textile mills. Their enterprise supplied well over half of England's fabric so you can imagine the wealth her family acquired."

Mr. Foster paused to motion at a portrait hanging beside us. It was an oil painting of a beautiful, olive-skinned woman in a yellow ruffled gown. Though her neck remained elegantly bare, she donned small pear earrings and a large diamond ring with a yellow band. It looked an awful lot like the ring in the display case, except this diamond was black and hers was white.