Page 46 of Pandora

“Who was the young lady who visited you a few days ago.”

It is a question but spoken without the upward lilt, and while Dora Blake is not a subject Edward wishes to discuss with Fingle she is better than the alternative, so he tries for a brighter tone, grasps the change of tack. What happened was not, Edward reminds himself, Fingle’s fault.

“Her name is Blake. She came to ask my advice on some antiquities in her possession.”

“Oh. I see. I thought that perhaps she was your...”

He knows what Fingle means to say, and the unspoken word—sweetheart—sends Edward warm at his collar.

“I barely know her.”

“Well, now. It might be good for you. Considering.”

“Considering?”

Fingle fidgets again. “Well, now,” he repeats, placating. “We all know how close you and Mr. Ashmole are. It would be good for you to spend time with someone different for a change. Someone more... Well, you’ve led such a sheltered life.” Edward stares at him. Fingle clears his throat. “This came for you a moment ago.”

The overseer takes from his waistcoat a crisp-looking note, and as he passes it over the table Edward feels a tightening in his throat. There, plain to see, is the Society of Antiquaries’ seal.

Taking it he snaps the red wax, nervously unfolds the letter, stares down at it in disbelief.

“Anything wrong?” Fingle asks as Edward gets up, wordlessly, and reaches behind the overseer for his coat.

Mr. Richard Gough—the director himself—has summoned him.

***

On his arrival at Somerset House, Edward makes his way at speed toward the director’s office, the tap-tap-tapping of his heels on the parquet floor attracting the unwanted attention of two bespectacled old men who shoot him looks of annoyance, as if he has no right to be walking with such loud purpose at two o’clock in the afternoon on a cold and dreary Wednesday.

Once he has reached the top of the ornately decorated staircase, Edward passes through a wide arch flanked on either side with two monstrous-looking gilded amphorae. He continues right—not straight on which would take him through to the Royal Society that shares the anteroom (much to Gough’s chagrin) with the Society of Antiquaries—to find Cornelius waiting for him in the large meeting room.

“What is it?” Edward asks, shrugging out of his coat.

“Do not panic,” his friend warns with half-amusement, half-something else, taking the coat from him and hanging it on a nearby hook. “We have had the clay sample analyzed, that’s all.”

Edward stares. “And?”

“The results are... interesting,” Cornelius finishes, and at Edward’s questioning look, he shows him through into Gough’s office.

The room is not as large as Edward expected, but certainly it is as grand. Taking up most of the cramped space is a cavernous leather-top desk; on the desk, a decanter filled with claret-colored liquid sits between two glasses on a circular silver tray; to the left of the desk, a bookcase crammed full of the Society publications that always give Edward a thrill when he reads their spines—Vetusta Monumenta and Archaeologia—and to the right, a small fire crackles beneath a narrow fireplace above which hangs a particularly impressive medieval map in a gold-gilt frame.

Gough himself—an aging man of squat stature—sits behind the desk, indicates Edward be seated with an incline of his bewigged head.

“Mr. Lawrence.”

Edward seats himself in the chair opposite Gough, and as Cornelius takes position in front of the bookcase the director produces from the desk drawer the glass vial of powdered terracotta Edward retrieved from the pithos. Very carefully, Gough places it between them where it looks small and innocuous, stranded on leather the color of pine.

“Tell me, Mr. Lawrence, from where did you get this?”

Edward links his fingers together in his lap. He knows Gough’s reputation for directness, his predilection for making even the most confident of men quake in their stockings, and Edward strives for calm.

“From a recent acquaintance, sir.”

A beat. Impatience.

“And this acquaintance’s name?”

Edward catches himself. He thinks of Miss Blake, the danger it might put her in if he were to answer. He glances at Cornelius, then away again.

---