Page 25 of Pandora

Dora keeps her voice low, an innocent caress. This close she can see the tiny network of red veins monopolizing his nose.

“Aye,” he says, “though I’m sure I would feel far better if Lottie were to administer her healing touch...”

Lottie—whose eyelids are already beginning to droop—perks up at this, rests a stockinged foot on Hezekiah’s leg and rubs it lightly with her toes. Hezekiah sighs deeply. Then, through her drink-fug, the housekeeper slides Dora a suspicious look. “Why’re you here, missum?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Dora counters, clenching hard the stem of her glass. “I’m his niece. I’ve more right to sit at this table than you do, after all.”

For a moment Lottie looks shocked, hurt, almost, and Dora feels a spark of guilt for what she knows was uncharacteristic meanness. But then Lottie’s jaw hardens, a scornful light enters her eye, and Dora’s guilt vanishes as quickly as it came.

“Now now, Dora,” Hezekiah says, face rosy, his voice lacking its usual ire. “There’s no need for such talk. You too, Lottie. Can we not enjoy a little drink together in peace?”

Lottie pouts. “I just want to know what she’s about.” Her words come slow. “She’s never drank with us before. Why now?”

Dora lifts her eyebrows. “Perhaps I wanted to try it?”

“A likely story. You’ve barely had any.”

“How can I when you’ve drunk the majority?”

To this Lottie says nothing, unsteadily pours herself another glass of gin. Dora looks to the bottle. A third gone. How much longer must she wait? She hides her frustration by holding out her own glass for a refill.

“Am I not allowed a change of heart and spend a little time with my uncle?”

Lottie snorts but fills Dora’s glass. The gin spills over the rim onto Dora’s fingers.

“Your heart don’t change, Pandora Blake. It’s as stuck up as your mother’s.”

“How would you know?”

“Stop, both of you,” Hezekiah slurs, raises an appeasing arm. He fumbles for his glass, slides it toward the housekeeper. Lottie fills it to the brim and he knocks it back, holds the glass out once more.

At the mention of her mother, Dora feels a dull familiar ache in the pit of her stomach. Dora does not drink—has never had the opportunity—and she is conscious that with only a few sips the gin has already begun to take hold, her bravado has risen, and it is for this reason she asks, “What was she like, my mother?”

Hezekiah blinks blearily. “Surely you remember?”

Dora hesitates. It has been so long. She was eight years old when her parents died and now, at one and twenty, the memories she has of her childhood are fragmented, glimpsed as if looking sideways at the shards of a broken mirror. She remembers her time in London—her father’s business gatherings at Christmas, those weekly visits to Mr. Clements with her mother which had meant so very much. And then in Greece, she remembers learning her Greek alphabet and numbers every morning, remembers bedtime stories when her mother would recount her love of history and Grecian myth. She remembers star-gazing on mountaintops, how both her parents taught her to identify Orion, Centaurus and Lyra, the Ursas Minor and Major.

She swallows. Dora remembers the dig site that fateful day, the man who pulled her from the wreckage, who later returned her mother’s cameo to her, its carved edges pitted with dirt. Those, those are the large shards. But the smaller ones... those are more fleeting, more difficult to grasp. She remembers al-fresco picnics at dusk, her parents’ laughter as they walked along sun-baked plains hand in hand. She remembers the cameo brooch, more recently the key. Her father’s face she struggles to picture, but her mother’s is more vivid: olive skin, dancing eyes, a quick and easy smile. She smelt, Dora thinks, of orange blossom.

“Some things I remember,” Dora says quietly. “But I knew her only as my mother, not as a woman. Not as a friend, as she would have one day been.”

She cannot keep the wistfulness from her voice. Lottie huffs into her glass.

Hezekiah breathes a deep, lethargic sigh. “Your mother was the most enticing woman I have ever known. So fine. So accomplished. She could draw, she could sing. Yet she had no qualms about wearing a pair of breeches and gallivanting around in the dirt when it suited her...”

Her uncle’s voice falters, trails off. Hezekiah stares a long moment at the large map on the wall and Dora wonders what memory he is picking apart. But then Lottie clears her throat, unlaces the top of her bodice, begins to fan herself with Hezekiah’s discarded wig and his attention goes immediately to the plump creamy curves of her breasts pushing up teasingly from their stays.

“Why think of her when I’m here,” Lottie murmurs, and she resumes rubbing Hezekiah’s calf with her stockinged toes.

The relationship between Lottie Norris and her uncle has never been a secret. It did not take Dora long to understand where Hezekiah had found her—Lottie had barely lived with them a week before it became apparent she was no cook or clean. Those tasks did not come naturally to her. Those tasks she learned as the years went along. No, Dora knows what profession Lottie held before this, but until now she has never had to witness the proof of it and grimacing, Dora looks away. Sitting so close to him she hears the moment Hezekiah’s breath hitches. From the corner of her eye Dora sees Lottie raise the hem of her skirt. Hezekiah reaches for her and Lottie giggles as she is pulled onto his lap.

“You’re far too warm,” she whispers in his ear, fingers teasing his cravat. Then Lottie twists, reaches for the gin, fills her and Hezekiah’s glasses to the top.

Dora looks again to the bottle. Half left.

Very slowly she edges her seat away. The couple do not notice. Lottie tips her glass, lets the gin drip onto her chest. Hezekiah dips his head. The housekeeper laughs.

If, Dora thinks, she is very quiet and still, they will forget she is here.

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