Pandora(101)

Dora watches Mr Ashmole study the glass in his lap.

‘When did you realise you loved him?’

He chuckles low in his throat, but it holds no amusement. ‘When did you guess? The footman?’

‘A little before that, actually.’

In response Mr Ashmole shakes his head, raises the glass to his lips, and Dora can see by his inability to keep it straight that he has been drinking since long before she came downstairs. He takes a sip of rum, stretches his mouth at the burn, hisses through his teeth.

‘I realised when I found him. After what must have been nine months, perhaps ten, I don’t remember now, I’d still had no reply to my letters and I couldn’t let the matter lie. It was stubborn pride that kept me away at first, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. If I’d gone after my first letter went unanswered …’ He shakes his head again. ‘In the end I went to London, sought him out. But he wasn’t there. I couldn’t understand it. Had Edward left? No, sir, not that I recall. Where is he then? Oh, about. About? What does that even mean?’ Mr Ashmole takes another sip of rum. ‘Carrow was taunting me, didn’t much care that by his very vagueness he became an object for suspicion. But I saw I’d get no answer from him so I left. I rented a hovel of a room opposite the bindery and watched. I never saw Edward, but there was a man – Tobias Fingle as it transpired – who would leave the shop every morning for an hour. And I never saw him without a bruise. After a week, I caught up with him. Demanded he tell me what went on in there. It took three days to get him to speak. I remember how thin he was. It was food in the end that loosened his tongue.’

Mr Ashmole takes a very long drink from the glass. When he lowers it again, there is only an inch of rum left in it.

‘It turns out the bastard beat all the lads under his care – but Edward, him being so small, he got the brunt of it. Carrow worked all of them within an inch of their lives for no pay, and rarely let them sleep let alone eat. Three boys had already died that year, so Fingle told me. He’d had to dump the bodies in the river himself. As for Edward … How he survived all those years I’ll never know. Carrow kept him in a pitch-black wood store for days on end.’

Dora goes cold as she remembers the shadowed spot she saw that day in the bindery. She thinks of the candles in his office, Edward’s hesitance to go down into the basement that first night, his fear of the dark, and she looks at Mr Ashmole in horror.

‘What did you do?’

‘Had the authorities come. They arrested Carrow – he swung from Tyburn the next year.’

‘And Edward?’

Mr Ashmole screws his eyes. ‘Got him out of the store myself. My God, you should have seen him. Emaciated, black and blue. I took him to my father’s town house to recover … You know the rest.’

Dora could cry. Oh, Edward …

‘He doesn’t speak of it. It’s been some years now and still he rarely mentions it. I tried to get him to, once, but he walked out on me and we didn’t speak again for a week. I’ve never brought it up since.’ Finally Mr Ashmole looks at her. ‘I know Edward will never return my feelings. He will never love me as I do him. But I suppose I always hoped that maybe, one day … And then you came along.’

He stares at her for what feels like an endless moment, one that spins out on itself, and all his jealousy and disappointment is encapsulated into that one single look. Then he turns his face, becomes lost once more in the flames.

‘Do not punish Edward for his ambition, Miss Blake.’ His voice is a low murmur, a silken thread. ‘He meant no harm by writing what he did. All he has ever wanted was to rise above what once was. I should not have made things awkward between you. I know what you mean to him. He’s as like to cause you hurt as I would him.’

The fire cracks. Dora’s stomach flips. Mr Ashmole drains his glass.

She waits to see if he will speak again. When he does not Dora rises, places her still full glass of rum down on the small table beside the chair.

‘I think I shall sleep now.’

At first he does not respond, but at the door he whispers her name, so softly she is not sure at first if she imagined it, and then he says, ‘He doesn’t know. I don’t think it’s even occurred to him. He hasn’t experienced enough of life to …’ Mr Ashmole sucks in his breath. ‘You won’t tell?’

Dora shakes her head. ‘Of course not.’

He nods.

A beat.

Dora turns to leave. Turns back again.

‘I never thanked you. For taking me in. I thank you now.’

‘Well.’ He turns his face to look at her. ‘I hardly had a choice, did I?’

Sardonic again. She thinks she likes it.

‘Goodnight, Cornelius Ashmole.’

A ghost of a smile.

‘Goodnight, Pandora Blake.’





CHAPTER FORTY-ONE





Hezekiah stares at the key to the Bramah safe in his hand, the smooth black revolving disc at its head. He looks back at the wall, the wall that for years has been just a wall to him and nothing more.

He thought at first they must have meant a different one, and so he moved everything into the centre of the floor, ran his hand along each blank wall in turn. But there were no keyholes and besides, it made sense for it to be this one. All that missing room … it never occurred to him that there should have been more floor space than this, and yet it is obvious now that he thinks about it. Hezekiah curses himself he did not think about it before.