Page 74 of Pandora

It is not denial. Not precisely. He knows something is not right. But to put it into words... Well, that is something he does not wish to do. To say he is ill, to say he fears his leg has grown gangrenous, that might make it true, and he is not willing to give voice to such an unhappy truth. Not yet.

He hisses as Lottie lays the cloth over the wound, bunches the sodden bed sheet in his fist. Lottie tuts, shifts on the bed. Hezekiah glances at her swollen lip, then away again. He did not mean to hit her, but he was just so damn angry and it was done before he realized it. He had not felt so much anger since...

Since.

In his mind’s eye Coombe’s face looms before him. There is a fine line between coincidence and fate. Is there really something to what the oaf says? Is the vase cursed? Is that why he reacted as he did?

Fool!

Hezekiah dampens the memory down, shifts again on the bed. It creaks under his weight and Lottie adjusts her own position, folds the wet cloth in her hands.

“How do the Coombe brothers?” he asks as she wipes the cloth over the tender skin of his thigh. He tries to stop its involuntary shake. Noticing, Lottie gentles her touch.

“They do not improve, though they do not grow worse.”

“Does Matthew help you?”

“He helps turn Sam so I can wash him. He encourages Charlie to take food. There is not much else to be done.”

“And his own wound?”

Lottie hesitates. “Matthew’s wrist looks much worse than this.”

She gestures at the growing hole in Hezekiah’s thigh, the foul-smelling sore that should not be a sore at all but a shallow wound, only. A wound that should have scabbed over days ago.

“It starts to turn black. I fear...”

She does not say what he knows she thinks, that the skin on his leg—like Coombe’s arm—will soon begin to die. Hezekiah takes another long sip of gin.

“I am glad,” Lottie says now, her voice a little brighter, “that I no longer need go there. It’s as well you gave Matthew his money so he can fetch a doctor. He was desperate, yesterday. Kept telling me how he would have made things difficult for you. He still might.”

Hezekiah grunts. Another thing he does not wish to think of.

The money from Lady Latimer has more than amply paid off Coombe—the man should not bother him again—but it does not help his cause. The buyer he claimed to have in line does not exist; Hezekiah wanted to salvage his prize first before approaching his associate to open sales, ensure his future, make it secure.

The idea of the vase being somewhere he cannot keep a close watch on it disturbs him. What if someone recognizes it? But then, he reasons, who would? The only people who might have recognized it for what it is are either dead or far, far away from London. And there can certainly be no chance of one of Latimer’s guests opening it and finding what he has sought so desperately all these long years. Not now Dora...

He thinks of her, thinks of what she does not own up to but what she surely, surely must know.

“She must have hidden it,” he mutters.

Lottie pauses in her tending.

“Hidden it?”

He did not realize he had spoken out loud. Hezekiah looks at Lottie through gin-fugged eyes.

“What was in the vase. It was there. I know it was.”

“What, Hezekiah?”

He takes a breath. He has not told her everything, only what she has needed to know. Too dangerous. Too...

“The damn girl has taken it. She keeps it from me. But why doesn’t she do anything?”

Hezekiah tries to turn. The water from the basin slops over the side onto Lottie’s skirts. He presses a fist to his eye, the glass to the other.

“She must be waiting,” he moans. “She is working against me, I know it. Has got that boy involved. She has told him everything, he must be helping her. She’s told him everything!”

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