Pandora(95)

This is a lie, she admits to herself as she climbs up to the attic room. But she cannot think on it now. She must not. She means to collect her things, leave before Hezekiah returns. No, now is not the time to let emotion rule her.

It is in this frame of mind that Dora scoops up her dresses, petticoats, chemises. The carpet bag of her mother’s – Dora’s mouth twists when she sees the rip – is just serviceable enough for her clothes not to fall through, but she lines the bottom with one of her older dresses anyway, folds the rest inside.

She breathes a sigh of relief when she finds her spectacles – mercifully undamaged – but pauses when she sees the coin purse, the tinderbox, and her copy of the basement key. So, Dora thinks, he found it. Then she pauses, the realisation bringing her up short.

He found it.

What on earth was he looking for?

‘Missum?’

Dora looks up. Lottie stands at the door. Clutched in her hands is Dora’s sketchbook.

‘You left this beneath the counter.’ The housekeeper takes a small step into the room. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I looked through it. They’re …’ Lottie takes a breath. ‘They’re very good.’

‘What do you want, Lottie?’ Dora says, what little patience she had quite spent. The headache that has been threatening to dig its fingernails into her skull since her walk over has finally begun its incessant burrow. ‘You’ve never been this nice to me. What is it? Guilt?’

‘Yes.’

Dora blinks. She did not expect that. Neither, it seems, did Lottie, for she blushes deep, fumbles the sketchbook, and it falls from her hands, slams onto the floorboards.

‘Why?’

But Lottie is shaking her head and Dora hurts too much to press her.

‘Please yourself,’ she mutters, packing the rest of her things into the bag – her mother’s cameo, a hairbrush, the jewellery supplies, her designs (the mock-cannetille has a wire snapped), scissors, thread – while Lottie continues to hover at the attic’s lopsided door.

It is when Dora finally brings herself to turn to the cage and pick up one of the soft rainbow-shot feathers on the floor that the housekeeper speaks again.

‘He is selling it.’

Very gently Dora strokes the feather. She feels a lump begin to form in her throat and she puts the feather into the bag too before the lump can take shape and choke her.

‘Selling it?’

‘The vase.’

The pithos. The source of her misery. All of it, as it turns out.

‘To whom?’

‘I don’t know. He had a man come this morning to see it. He’s going to auction it off.’

‘I see.’

But what is it to her now? As Sir William said, there is no proof. None then, and certainly none now. So what difference does it make to her if Hezekiah is finally selling it?

‘I saw your drawings. In the book.’ Lottie nods at it, still marooned on the floorboards. ‘You … you haven’t finished sketching it, have you?’

‘No,’ Dora says, faint.

‘Why were you drawing it?’

Dora takes a breath. ‘For my jewellery. For …’ She stops. Her lips twist.

For Edward.

‘Then if you want to finish it,’ suggests the housekeeper, ‘you’d best be quick about it.’ When Dora finally meets her gaze, Lottie looks grave. ‘You see, missum, he means to move it to an auction house next week.’





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE





He finds a letter waiting for him at his lodgings, redirected from the bindery in Tobias Fingle’s tight, spidery hand, and staring down at it Edward realises he has not been in to work for days. Had he much to do? He tries to picture his little candle-filled room, the side table he uses to stack books due for finishing – cannot – and for the first time in his life Edward feels guilty about it.

The last few days have been a revelation. So many souls in this city have suffered, and continue to do so in ways he knows he cannot even begin to imagine. He thinks of Dora, the Coombe brothers, Jonas Tibb, the night-soil men shovelling shit day after day at the docks. He thinks of the child he saw from the carriage the night of the soirée, the naked man this morning. Edward is uncomfortably conscious of what liberties he has been allowed – the reasons for it, how his friendship with Cornelius has compounded them – but truth be told his torment is long done with, has been for years. There is no reason for his complacence, his resentment. Not any more. All that work, building up. Commissions left unfinished. No wonder the bindery lads despise him.

Before he opens the letter – a missive from Gough it seems, for the wax is stamped with the Society’s seal – Edward writes one of his own to Fingle, promising his presence the next day. Dora, after all, has no wish to see him; she has made that perfectly clear. No matter what his future plans, no matter what happens between him and Dora, he still has commitments to uphold. A day or two without him might do them both the world of good.

He scatters sand on the ink before he seals it. Then, Edward snaps the seal of Gough’s letter. As he scans the lines he gives a wry smile.

Gough’s scientists confirm everything that Hamilton has already told him. The pithos originated in southern Greece, with markers suggesting the Peloponnese. It is not to be taken as foolproof accuracy – science, Gough warns, has not progressed so far as that – but it is a good indication. Will Edward please see him at his earliest convenience?