Rumors

Posted on Fri Jul 26th, 2024 @ 7:44 by Duke Anthony Cavendish & Sarah Bright

Chapter: Besieged
Timeline: tbd
2570 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Stacia Cavendish waited patiently outside her father's study, her arms laden with the usual array of documents, notes and official correspondence, as well as the daily papers tucked in under her arm. The maid had informed her that her uncle, Duke Anthony Cavendish, had finished breakfast, and was ready to attend to morning business. There was nothing unusual with today's schedule, as far as she was aware, and for that she was grateful. She had a friend in town for the day, and was looking forward to wrapping up today's tasks just in time for a late lunch. She nodded as soon as she saw Duncan, her father's butler, knowing that her uncle would not be far behind.

It was possible that many a young twenty-something dilettante would rankle at the notion of being regarded as just another employee while in their own family home, but for Stacia this was nothing new really. Usually it was her father Matthew she both advised, and took advice from, but with her parents wintering the in the Caribbean, it was the least she could do to offer her services, and open her home to her aunt and uncle, following the destruction of their home. She was happy to, actually. She'd always enjoyed her time with Auntie Bella and Uncle Tony, It was her honor and privilege, actually. The concept of Family first had been drilled into her ad nauseam throughout her childhood. She'd tried to stay true to that, but in truth part of her had always taken it for granted. Only now was she starting to realize why the lesson had been so necessary. Stacia had always tried to give others, especially family, the benefit of the doubt, but her cousin Claire had a lot of explaining to do. Sadly, it seemed she couldn't be bothered.

With a little black book in his hand Duke Anthony Cavendish rounded the corner a few steps after the butler had preceded him. His young brother's townhouse and study was a lot less spacious and extravagant as his own had been but it had the distinct advantage of not being burnt to the ground by Mutant terrorists. "Stacia, good morning." He gave a small nod and smile as she saw her arms wrapped around a stack of documents. "What do you have for me today?" It wasn't that she was standing there every morning, ready to dump a load of documents on his desk, but it hadn't been the first time that she had tipped him off about a potential disruptive element in some of the higher social circles she frequented.

"Good morning, Uncle Tony." Stacia said, returning the smile and stepping aside to make way for Duncan and fall in behind the Duke. "From the morning courier." She said first, handing over a sealed, plain manilla envelope that contained several smaller letter envelopes. While most of the Duke's official correspondence was handled through his office and personal secretary, anything requiring an immediate signature or review was dispatched directly to him. Stacia was permitted to sign for all but the most sensitive deliveries, and out of discretion she had the courier drop them into a manilla envelope, partly so that she didn't have an inkling of what they were, or who they were from. But mostly it was to keep them all together in one bundle, to make maintaining the chain of custody that much easier, as they remained on her person until she delivered them directly to the Duke.

"I spoke to Grayson first thing, he said the insurance company is stalling again, they want to send yet another claims adjuster to inspect the remains of the estate before they approve any clean up work. He intends to give them no more than 72 hours before giving the contractors the green light to begin work, and kindly asks that you state the same if they try to bypass him and call you. The insurance company did call about twenty minutes later. I let the answering machine take the call." Grayson was the lawyer handling the insurance claim on the Duke's former estate. Stacia was known to him as a confidante of the Duke's on this matter, and though she wasn't making any major decisions, she was coordinating between the involved parties to put up a united front against the insurance company, freeing her uncle as best she could from this unpleasant distraction, so that he could keep his political work his main focus. Unfortunately the insurance company was still not recognizing her as an agent acting on the Duke's behalf, despite two separate attempts to include her name, and as such they still wouldn't even give her the time of day.

Anthony suppressed a response to the dragging of the insurance company's feet. Earlier in the proceedings they had tried to rely on the 'Act of God' clause in his policy. Grayson had quickly stricken that down, since Mutants were still recognised as people under UK Law. The company had continued to drag its feet because the complete rebuild of a London townhouse from the Victorian era was not a cheap endeavour. "Good to know you're on top of it, if they call again I shall explain to them how we shall proceed." When it came to people like Duke Cavendish there was rarely an instance where he'd have to ask, he simply told. He took the manilla envelope and tucked it under his arm, it wasn't an appropriate time to open it, and he'd wait for privacy to do so.

Having made his way towards the desk he sat in the chair, all the while thinking it was, overall, just a less comfortable experience than his own home and study. He looked at the document that remained in Stacia's care, knowing the binder was one that came from inside the house, so he deduced that it was a personal project that she wanted to discuss with him. "Anything further that requires my attention?"

"Two things." Stacia said after a moment of what could almost be considered hesitation. Someone with her pedigree did not flounder about with frivolous interjections like uhh and umm. She'd been schooled in more refined ways of expressing uncertainty or stalling for time. One of those things she'd mentioned would open up a conversation she didn't really want to have, but it had been weighing on her for days, and she wanted to be done with it. Of course what she began with was not that thing.

"Just a few stock picks." Stacia said with a measure of confidence as she handed over a sheet of paper. "Henry will caution you against investing heavily in them, of course, but you know he is skeptical on anything involving the World Wide Web." Though Stacia was the stereotypical dilettante who had no real profession and a few job titles that really existed in name only, she was quite good at making money in the stock market. Some quarters she even outperformed the family wealth manager and investment planner, Henry. Her investment style was a bit riskier though, as she favored stocks in internet service providers and other online-based startup companies. Many of them didn't amount to much and there had been some losses, but overall her numbers were in the black, and she'd be able to afford to buy a modest home of her own with the profits she made on her personal (and for the most part ill-advised) investments in the past ten years alone.

"There's one more thing." Stacia quickly followed up, but again nearly hesitated in elaborating on. "The other day, when I was delayed with your morning brief, you were already at your desk working when I arrived. When I set down the envelope with your morning dispatches, my eyes couldn't help but pass over the page open on your book there." She motioned toward the black book the Duke was rarely seen without. "Just some names, and I honestly hadn't intended to give them a second thought. I know its none of my business, but one of the names looked familiar to me." Stacia paused, giving her uncle time to respond to that. She didn't feel the need to apologize for accidentally glancing at an open book on his desk, and certainly wasn't going to blurt it all out in an effort to explain herself. She did feel the need to tread carefully though.

There was a moment where Anthony wanted to react to that, and react to in quite badly. As she talked though it was clear that she hadn't glanced anything noteworthy. All the most noteworthy things were in a cipher, if there were names to be glanced they were only interesting in periphery. "And what name would that have been?"

"Sarah Bright." Stacia said without anymore hesitation. "Though I knew her name was familiar the moment I saw it, I couldn't quite remember why at the time. Otherwise I would've said something then and there. Two days ago I remembered who I'd heard the name from, one of my old friends, Kyra Saxby; I don't know if you'd remember her, but you might be familiar with her parents, Chas and Jan. Anyway, she just got back from winter holiday, and we made plans for lunch yesterday. That's when I got her story. To be clear"

Stacia paused for a moment to regroup and focus. This was not just gossip shared over lunch with friends. Her uncle was a very busy man, and not one to be trifled with, even from a favored niece. It would be best to keep what she'd heard simple and straightforward.

"To be clear, I was discreet. I steered us toward school days, who we'd seen recently, who we hadn't... that sort of thing. Kyra attended Easton Academy for Girls, this would've been the late seventies, 78 I believe. I knew the name had some notoriety so I didn't even need to mention her specifically, just to hear the story again. Kyra told me Sarah was a year or two ahead of her at Easton. A popular girl. But another girl took her diary and broke into the teacher's lounge to make photocopies... no small feat in those days. The copied entries were about homosexual crushes, pretty common stuff among confused teens at all-girls schools, but still enough to get yourself shunned and maybe even kicked out school if evidence of it got out into the open.

"Kyra claims Sarah tried to poison half the school that same day, though she has no idea how she did it. Just that the moment Sarah showed up in the cafeteria and got shunned by her friends, most of them became violently ill... both ends." Stacia winced, clearly not wanting to go into greater detail. "Then a bunch of other girls got sick just by witnessing it. There was a rush for the exits and a few girls got hurt in the stampede. About twelve students were hospitalized, most of them Sarah's... former friends."

As the story was conveyed to him Anthony started making notes on a stray bit of paper. He'd add it to the proper page in his black book at a more convenient time. Their records on staff and students from Avalon had been steadily increasing, but some of the people there were proper enigmas. Sarah Bright was one such enigma. The incident that was regaled by Stacia was nowhere in the official record, "78?" He checked to make sure before leafing through his booklet to come back to the page on the Avalon librarian. "They tested her in 81, didn't show an x-gene. So there was a suspicion of mutation with her family."

Stacia nodded a yes when her uncle asked to confirm the year of the account. "78 is the year she recounted." As for what he said after, she couldn't say. "There wasn't much Kyra could tell me after that, and I didn't want to be too obvious with more questions. She was Sarah was American, but had been at the school for a long time. And that after the incident, relatives came and picked her up the same day. Kyra never saw her again after that. Kids talked about her for a while after, of course, but she said it all seemed like conflicting rumors and nonsense. She was fairly certain the school replaced the cafeteria staff, and nothing like it every happened again. Could be a coincidence, but.... that seems like a fairly standard cover-up tactic regardless of the real cause." Stacia shrugged. "If I were a school administrator in 78, I'd rather try and sell the contaminated food excuse to a host of angry parents than, well... whatever this was." Stacia didn't even know if people talked about mutants back then. Like Sarah and Kyra, she'd also been a teenager at the time, and hadn't been concerned about such things. She hadn't even learned about her cousin Claire being a mutant until several years later.

"Very helpful information, Stace, as always." Anthony gave a modest smile as thanks. "I'll divert some resources to investigate this further." His asset inside Avalon could possibly be used in this instance. Though they hadn't had any real indication of whether the Librarian had any powers. Everyone seemed to work under the assumption she didn't. This new information might be able to help though. Besides it gave them an opportunity to investigate further using private investigators both locally and stateside. "If there is mutation at play, she'll have to register come February first. I'd be curious to see if she'd volunteer that information or if she is too ashamed of the genetic defect she carries." He put the page he was taking notes on and pressed it between the pages of his notebook before closing it and looking over at his niece. "Anything further?" There were important matters to attend this close to the activation of the new registration law, and in order to successfully launch the campaign he'd have to give it his full attention.

Stacia nodded her head with a measure of grace, accepting the compliment. Her uncle was a hard man to please, and had even higher expectations from family. Stacia knew to take whatever praise she could get, and to temper her own expectations accordingly. "Of course." She replied simply, conveying that he would always get her best.

"Nothing further. Bella and I will be leaving in an hour for our salon appointments downtown, but we should be back by mid-afternoon. Please call if there's anything you need while we're out. Here's the number for the salon, if we're not in the car." She placed a note down on the edge of his desk. He of course already had the number to her car phone.

Anthony turned his attention towards one of the many files that had come from the manilla envelope that Stacia had handed over to him at the start of their interaction. He barely acknowledged her remark, but did reach over towards the phone number and put it into an inside chest pocket. He pushed his reading glasses slightly up his nose to hone in on a report from the General on his initial inspection of G.O.U.'s new facility. Everything was coming together exactly as planned, it wouldn't be long now before they'd be back in control of the biggest threat to England since 1707.