Pandora(32)

Dora kneads her lower lip with her teeth, taps her fork with her fingernail. Perhaps …

‘Uncle?’

‘Mm?’

‘Would you mind if I went out for a few hours?’

‘Out?’ Her uncle’s voice is over-sharp. He rolls the second egg across the table with his left hand and its shell splinters under the pressure. ‘Why?’

Dora does not want to be seen to plead, but a taint of the plaintive slips its way in nonetheless.

‘To sketch. It is so dark and dreary in here, I should like to escape it for a spell.’

‘Wouldn’t we all.’ Hezekiah stares at her a long moment before resuming work on the egg. ‘I suppose I can spare you. Lottie may mind the shop.’

She hears the words he does not speak – I want you out of the way – and her fingers tighten on the cutlery. ‘Thank you, Uncle.’

Dora is surprised how calm she sounds. Inside her heart is clenching like a fist.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN





The bindery business card presses deeply into her palm as Dora crosses the muddy cobbles of Russel Street, looking for number six in the gloom. By the time she finds it – right at the far end where the road curves at a sharp angle onto Drury Lane – her skirt hem is thickly spattered with muck.

She stops to assess the building. Despite its location (shops down narrow side streets are invariably of a questionable sort), it is strangely elegant. Dora can see that the paintwork is smooth and relatively fresh – red brick with black fascias, gold lettering that actually fits the board. For a moment she thinks of the Blake shopfront. It too, upon a time, had looked much like this. Cared for. A great deal of money has been spent on this business and its quality seems woefully out of place; its decoration belongs to trades situated on Fleet Street or the Strand, not here in the wastrel roads of Covent Garden where whores and pickpockets are as common as fleas.

Dora tucks the business card back into her reticule, takes a firmer hold of her sketchbook. She did not expect to see him so soon, if at all, but they may well be of use to each other; Mr Lawrence’s obvious ability to recognise a forgery shows that he must therefore, in turn, recognise pieces of worth. Her own knowledge is limited to childhood memory but he … well, he brings scholarly experience with him. It is this experience she needs.

She pushes the door open. Inside it is lit with a warmth that smells of leather and a subtle hint of honey. The counters gleam mahogany and the same black and gold detailing can be seen throughout. A striking Indian carpet runs the length of the shop. On one wall stands a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with beautiful books, their calf-skin spines shining richly in the candlelight. A magnificently spiky plant sits grandly in a pot next to the main counter and beyond it, glass cabinets stand full of prints and intricately detailed frontispieces.

Dora can do nothing else but stare. She has never been inside a bindery before, and she is not sure she has ever seen anything quite so lovely. Mr Clements’ shop … Well, she will always love the flash of white diamond, the deep forest of emerald, the midnight blue of cut sapphire, but this is a beauty quite apart from it, something opulent, ornate. Dora is still staring wide-eyed when a dark-skinned man she had not noticed steps from behind one of the glass counters, a small stack of books held in his arms.

‘Can I help you, miss?’

His voice is smooth, warm, carrying on it the lilt of an accent she cannot place

‘Oh, I …’ Dora trails off, feels now unaccountably embarrassed. ‘This shop is so …’ She smiles shyly. ‘It is …’

The man – tall, his face heavily lined, wearing a neatly coiled but plain grey wig – dips his head. ‘I thank you, miss. We take great pride here at Ashmole’s.’

‘You are Mr Ashmole?’

He blinks. ‘The overseer, Mr Fingle.’

‘I see,’ Dora says, though she does not.

Mr Fingle asks again, ‘May I help you?’

Dora takes a breath, summons some authority into her voice.

‘I am here to see Mr Edward Lawrence.’ She fetches the trade card from her reticule once more and holds it out. ‘A matter of business.’ Mr Fingle glances at the card but does not take it from her. Cannot, Dora realises, looking at the books in his arms. Her hand falters. ‘Is he here?’

‘He’s here, miss.’ The man pauses, sends her a confused but kindly sort of smile. ‘If you head through to the very back – the door with the glass panes – you will find him there.’

‘Oh, yes, very well. Thank you.’

Mr Fingle nods, once. She does not sense disapproval. No, he appears altogether far too surprised which in itself is surprising. Perhaps Mr Lawrence does not receive visitors? Dora dips her knee needlessly in a nervous bob, disappears through the arched doorway he indicated with a shunt of his chin.

She finds herself in a narrow corridor. Here is decidedly less sumptuous but it is still warm and clean. On either side are two open doors, and as she goes down the corridor Dora looks through each.

Workshops, both, with long tables set in the middle, but the rooms appear to have a different purpose. One holds sheets of paper (some spread on the tables, others hanging from the ceiling), spools of linen, lots of pots and brushes, hammers and metal tools. At the far end are three large wooden contraptions Dora cannot fathom the purpose of. The other room is filled with rolls of leather, more metal tools, and what Dora thinks is a guillotine. And in both rooms are boys and young men in aprons, all of whom have stopped and are looking at her with an almost comical mixture of shock and curiosity. Feeling herself redden she continues on to the end of the corridor, but there is a shuffling commotion behind her and she knows they have come to the threshold to stare.