Pandora(107)

Perhaps she is in the other room. He gets up, walks naked from the bedroom, pauses at the threshold when he sees the room is empty.

Where is she? He wonders briefly if she has gone back to Clevendale but somehow, somehow, he cannot shake the feeling that she has not gone there, that she has, in fact, done exactly what he said she should the night before.

You must discover the truth from your uncle.

He curses underneath his breath, rushes to pick up his clothes from the floor.



The door is locked. There is no answer when he calls. No Hezekiah, no Lottie, no Dora. For minutes Edward stands there, peering into the gloom of the shop. There is no sign of movement, no candles burn in their sconces, and Edward feels the niggle in his stomach slip its noose and knot itself into fear.

He cannot stand here all morning. What if Dora is in there and Hezekiah has harmed her? What if … But Edward swallows, will not entertain the thought.

Furtively he looks about him. No one will pay attention, no one will hear over the loud flow of traffic moving like a river down Ludgate Street. Quickly, before he can change his mind, Edward jabs his elbow hard into one of the door’s glass panes. He winces at the break, looks about him again to see if anyone has noticed.

No one has noticed. No one has even blinked an eye.

As fast as he can he slips his hand through the empty pane, locates the rusting bolt, draws it across. He lets himself in, the bell above him jangling. Edward shuts the door.

The shop is dim. It takes a moment for Edward’s eyes to adjust.

‘Dora? Lottie?’

The hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

He takes a shaky breath, moves slowly into the middle of the room, looks down through the shelves to the basement doors.

And Edward stares. They are wide open, but that is not what shocks him. The floorboards …

‘What on earth?’

He begins to move forward, then stops. Something catches in his nostril, making it twitch.

A smell. The same smell as the one at the Coombe loft.

A creak behind him. A blinding pain.

And then there is nothing.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE





Dora clutches her reticule close, marvels at the weight of it in her hands.

She did not expect Mr Clements to be so generous, but when the jeweller opened his doors to her – she called on him so early that not even his liveried footman had arrived – he seemed quite unable to hide his shock and excitement.

‘They took all of them, Miss Blake! I could scarce believe it. First thing Monday morning, in they came. You only left me with a few designs and when those had gone, they wiped my cabinets clean!’ He blinked at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘You’re creating more, aren’t you?’

Dora assured him she was, told him of the commissions already lining up, that Lady Latimer herself had offered patronage, and Mr Clements excused himself into the back room, returning with a purse the size of his fist, filled with banknotes and coins.

Outside Dora locates the pocket in her dress, drops the purse inside. The weight makes her lopsided but she does not care – the idea of being attacked for it (though the likelihood of such a thing at this time of day is exceedingly slim), makes her over-cautious.

For a long moment Dora considers her next move. She spies an empty bench in St Paul’s churchyard and makes her way over to it. The seat is wet but she gathers her skirts and sits anyway.

The sky threatens rain again. How miserable this country is, Dora thinks, then conjures in her mind’s eye cerulean skies, the warmth of a Mediterranean breeze, verdazurine oceans and mountains lined with Cypress trees. All the joys of her childhood, lost. Slowly Dora removes the black-and-white feather she had slipped between her sleeve and the skin of her wrist, twists the calamus between forefinger and thumb, watches wistfully how the light catches the memory of Hermes’ rainbow hue.

You can’t ignore it for ever.

Dora knows Edward is right – she cannot put it off any longer. She rises from the bench and begins to slowly walk in the direction of Blake’s Emporium.

She thinks of Edward’s paper. He let her read it, the sheets twisted between their naked legs. Her cheeks colour at the memory.

‘You see,’ he murmured, his fingers lifting a curl from her neck. He pressed his mouth to the tender skin he exposed, sending thrilling shivers across her scalp. ‘Your name isn’t there. Neither is his. I would never hurt you, Dora. I couldn’t. It would be like hurting myself.’

And then he had kissed her, and she had pulled him close.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX





He wakes to blackness.

It is familiar, a thing he thought long behind him, yet here he is again. He thought he had mastered it, that old panic, his irrational fear of the dark, but it has already begun to rear itself and Edward starts to shake uncontrollably.

And the fear is irrational. He taught himself that after he became accustomed to the wood store and all its nooks and dents and scents and sounds. Reason, he thinks to himself now. You are not there, you are not at the bindery, Carrow has not locked you in. You are here.

But where is here?

Edward raises his arms, immediately cries out in pain when they hit something hard, and he tries to stem the terror that teases the length of his spine.

Try again.