Page 39 of Pandora

“Not in you,” Cornelius replies, brandishing the implement at him the way a teacher wields a pointing rod. “In you I have complete faith. It’s everyone else I find deplorable.”

Edward sighs, shakes his head. “She is offering me the chance to look at a large collection of antiquities. To write a paper using them. And I cannot help but feel that there is something in this. What did you tell me the other day? That you would support me no matter what I chose to do.”

For a moment Cornelius looks nonplussed. He finally raises the fork to his mouth and his expression becomes thoughtful as he chews. “I will,” he says once he has swallowed. “Of course I will. But this is such a flimsy notion of yours, to put your fate into the hands of a woman who conceded herself that you might not get anything out of it.”

“But there is a chance.”

“There is also a chance I might get run over by a tandem,” Cornelius replies evenly. “That doesn’t mean it will happen.”

Edward opens his mouth to retort, but finds he has nothing to say. Instead he focuses his attention on the leg of lamb swimming in mint gravy on his plate. Absently he swirls a potato around in it, watches the sauce make greasy rivers in its path.

“Is she attractive?”

Edward looks up.

“What?”

“Is she attractive?” his friend says again, and Edward stares at him without blinking.

“Is she... Why?”

Cornelius is watching him across the table. His cutlery has been set down neatly either side of his plate. There is a closed look to his face, one Edward has rarely seen, and it worries him.

“Do you like her?” Cornelius asks now, his tone measured, quiet.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“A great deal, I should think.”

“Ah. You think my head has been turned.”

“Hasn’t it?”

Edward shrugs. “She is...” He trails off, tries to put Pandora Blake into words. He thinks of their conversation, how closely she sat next to him on the bench, how he thought he could smell the faint aroma of lilies and how it made him unsure of himself, nervous, almost giddy. He thinks of her as he first saw her, standing at the door of Blake’s Emporium, her outmoded clothes, her dark haphazard hair kept in place by a ribbon, those magnificent eyes hidden behind wire oval spectacles. How she is taller than him and he must look up at her which does nothing for his confidence at all.

“She is quite unlike anything I have ever seen,” Edward says finally.

Cornelius snorts. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“You believe my head has been turned. I cannot rightly say it has.”

And at that moment Edward believes it. He does not understand the measure of his emotions in regard to Miss Blake. It is his lack of experience with the fairer sex, Edward tells himself, which attributes to his shyness, nothing more. He leans forward in his seat—the mahogany creaks beneath him—and tries to mollify his friend.

“She is not attractive in the typical sense of the word. She is no Sarah Siddons. But there is something about her, I admit. Her eyes...”

But Cornelius has turned his attention back to his dinner, is cutting into his leg of lamb with renewed vigor.

“What of them?”

“Like honey syrup.”

“Brown, basically.”

Edward stares. “Why are you being so pig-headed?”

“I’m not. I’m merely stating facts.”

A beat. “She has a pet bird,” Edward tries instead, and this at least makes Cornelius pause.

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