Page 109 of Pandora

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 jewelry 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 jewelry. 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 realizes 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 shoveling 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?

Had matters not progressed as they have, Edward would be reaching again for the coat he has not long discarded. But he has now more important things to attend to—his application to the Society has paled in significance to all he has seen and done these last few hours. Instead Edward goes to his washstand, takes his time to clean the stench and memory of London’s docklands from his skin.

***

Sir William shows Edward into a room at the far back of the house that he is using (so he tells Edward) as his office until Lady Hamilton takes it upon herself to commandeer it in the name of redecoration. As Edward settles himself in a deep leather chair, he looks about him.

Hamilton has spared no space. The loss of half his collection on the Colossus does not seem to have dented the overall collection itself. With that one room in the house accommodating a small museum, and this room showcasing many of the diplomat’s favorite pieces—the man in question points to a vase very similar to the Portland one he sold some years before (his deepest regret, says he)—it is clear he has been collecting extensively near half his life.

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