The basement archive of the British Museum breathed a cold, metallic draft that smelled of damp limestone and old glue. Eleanor Marsh sat at her oak desk, the pale winter light from a high sash window illuminating the dust motes that danced above her ledger. She adjusted her velvet headband, her grey-blue eyes fixed on the man delivering the morning’s burden. A heavy wooden crate sat before her, stencilled with the black double-headed eagle of the fallen Romanovs and crusted with the soot of a long journey from Yekaterinburg.
She pulled on her white cotton archive gloves, the fabric snapping softly against her wrists. The box was a jagged intrusion in her orderly world of dove-grey wool and inkwells. Her contract was a fragile thing, a three-year tether to this sanctuary of foxed paper, and cataloguing these smuggled letters was the task that would define her tenure. Mr Croft had been clear about the discretion required. No eyes but hers were to touch the vellum until the Foreign Office gave the word.
Her fingers brushed the rough pine. The crate was secured by a heavy blob of crimson wax, brittle and dark as dried blood. She reached for the palette knife, but her pulse quickened before the steel could even touch the surface. Eleanor's glove catches the edge of the wax seal, and the lid of the crate shifts upward.
