Pandora(100)

Lady Latimer is looking about her again, her head nodding every now and then with approval which makes her ridiculous wig bounce dangerously. Horatio seems ready to catch it at any moment.

‘Your Mr Lawrence keeps a fine little house.’

Dora coughs, both at the implication and description. ‘Little house’ is not how she would describe Clevendale, but in comparison to Lady Latimer’s own home Dora supposes it must indeed appear so.

‘It does not belong to Mr Lawrence, ma’am.’ The old woman blinks. ‘This is Mr Ashmole’s home.’

A pause. ‘Oh! Then you and Mr …’

Her ladyship’s meaning is quite clear.

‘Good heavens, no, my lady, not at all.’ Dora hesitates. ‘Mr Lawrence could not offer me his home for he lodges. Here at least there are guest rooms and Mrs Howe, the housekeeper, acts as chaperone.’

Lady Latimer looks relieved.

As if, Dora thinks wryly, she would be in any maidenly danger from Cornelius Ashmole. She shakes herself, clears her throat.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Lady Latimer?’

‘Ah, yes.’ The old woman needlessly arranges her skirts. ‘I’d like to commission more pieces from you. But now that I see you are unsettled in your situation I am more than happy to wait until you have re-established yourself. You have capital?’ Dora hesitates, but her ladyship seems not to notice. ‘Either way I would be happy to offer my patronage. I am entirely grateful to you, my dear, for making my outfit the crowning glory of my soirée, and I would be very sorry to see a woman of your talent go to waste. There have been others who have approached you for commissions, I assume?’

Dora can barely eke out a nod in the face of this news. Patronage? Can she truly mean it?

‘Very good. But I shall not bother you any more today,’ Lady Latimer is saying, and she rises from her seat in a cloud of choking lavender. ‘I will let you think on it, how about that?’



Dora cannot sleep. For hours it seems, she tosses and turns, her mind fluttering frantically like butterflies trapped in a bell jar.

She thinks of Lady Latimer’s offer this afternoon. A part of her is thrilled, but the old woman’s news is overshadowed by everything else. Dora cannot forget the loss of Hermes, the truth about—

Dora shuts her eyes, tight. She still cannot let herself think on it. Not yet.

When the clock strikes one she finally admits defeat. Dora gets up, reaches for her father’s banyan which she managed to salvage from her attic room. She ties the cord around her waist and then brushes her fingers over the bobbles in the shoulder, tries to remember what it felt like when Hermes used to perch there, talons catching in the material, and Dora swallows a sob when she realises the memory has already begun to fade.

She means to go into the front room, attempt once more to sketch out a design. But when she reaches the bottom of the stairs she notices an orange glow on the tiles. Dora turns. Under the far door – the library she was shown into the first day she came here – shines a light.

Mr Ashmole is awake.

For a long moment Dora hesitates on the stair. A part of her does not wish to see him, to speak to him at all. But company – even his – must surely be a better tonic than her restless thoughts and so, grudgingly, she makes her way down the corridor.

He answers her knock at the door wearing a banyan of his own – this one distinctly more regal and modern – but it falls open at his chest. The skin is smooth, chiselled like a Grecian bust, and Dora blushes, fast averts her eyes.

‘Do not concern yourself,’ he says tiredly. ‘You know I won’t touch you. Come in,’ he adds, heading back to his chair by the fire. ‘Shut it behind you, will you?’

She does as he asks, follows him into the room. He gestures at the partnering chair.

‘Drink?’

He holds up a decanter. Its content is the colour of amber. Whiskey or brandy, she thinks and Dora nods, wanting to feel numb. Mr Ashmole pours her a generous helping, hands it to her over the tiger rug. She sits.

‘You can’t sleep either?’

He rests his head on the chair back. ‘I can never sleep.’

Dora takes a sip from her glass. Grimaces.

‘Rum,’ Mr Ashmole provides.

The fire pops. An ember falls onto the floor, glows for a split second before fading. Edward’s friend stares at her.

‘I am sorry about your magpie.’

A beat.

Dora nods.

Mr Ashmole turns his face, watches the flames dance in the grate. It seems at first he means for them to sit in silence but then he shifts in the chair, lets out a long breath that promises conversation.

‘When I came home from the Grand Tour,’ he says quietly, ‘and returned to Sandbourne, I wrote to Edward at the bindery. It belonged to a tradesman named Marcus Carrow back then, a monster of a man, though I wasn’t to discover that for some months.’

Dora cradles her glass.

‘I wrote, every week. Never once did I receive a reply. It didn’t occur to me anything was wrong. I thought …’ Mr Ashmole rubs a hand over his eyes. ‘I thought he’d made new friends, had forgotten our childhood together in Staffordshire. And that made me angry. It hurt me. After all I’d done for him. I’d shared my books, my home. My life. And my father had given Edward the means to make a life for himself, a much better one, but what had Edward done? Taken what he wanted and never looked back.’ A smile twists his mouth. He looks at Dora, away again. ‘You have to believe that’s what I thought. I’m sure it can come as no surprise that I struggled to make friends. I’ve been an arrogant arse all my life. I hated my time at Oxford. Resented being sent to Europe. Oh, I learnt the ways of the world, it’s true. I gained a thorough education, moved in all the right circles and I commanded respect, too. I understood how to work the ranks. But I just wanted to be home. With him. And his rejection … it hurt like the Devil.’