Page 5 of Pandora

“I prefer, Uncle, to think on more practical endeavors rather than flights of fancy.”

“And is designing jewelry a practical endeavor or a flight of fancy?” Dora looks away. “I thought as much,” he says, his sneer even more pronounced. “No goldsmith will accept a female designer—you know that, I’ve said so often enough but you will not listen. You waste the sketchbooks I buy you. Do you realize how much good paper costs?”

Lottie comes in then to clear the plates. It is just as well, for Dora is on the verge of tears. As the housekeeper slides her master’s plate across the tabletop, Dora dips her head. She will be damned to let them see her cry.

“I do not want to work for a goldsmith.”

“What now?”

She spoke too quietly, she knows. Dora steels herself, raises her head to look at him squarely across the table.

“I do not want to work for a goldsmith,” she repeats. “I want to open my own establishment, to work independently of anyone else.”

Hezekiah stares at her a moment. Lottie stares too, empty plate in hand; a drip of gravy threatens to make its escape onto the floor.

“You mean to make the jewelry yourself?”

Her uncle’s voice is laced now with amusement, and his mockery makes Dora color.

“I wish to become a reputable artist, for a jeweller to make up the designs on my behalf. Mother’s friend Mr. Clements, perhaps.”

There is a beat of silence. Dora had not expected Hezekiah to support the notion—that would be far too much to hope for—but then, as the ridicule spills itself from her uncle’s lips in cruel disjointed laughter, joined by the giggled snorts of Lottie Norris, her chest tightens with anger.

“Oh, dear heaven,” Hezekiah cries on a sigh, wiping the corners of his eyes with fat thumbs, “this is the most amusement I’ve had in weeks. Come now, Lottie, what a fine joke she tells!”

Dora scrunches the napkin she holds in her fist, directing all her frustration into the starch. “I assure you, sir,” she says tightly, “I am perfectly serious.”

“And therein lies the joke,” Hezekiah crows. “Practical endeavours indeed! You have neither the education nor the capital to carry out such a thing. No one in their right mind would take a peculiar half-foreign orphan like yourself seriously. You would be laughed right out of trade before you’d even started.” He sits back in his seat, expression sobering. “You have your mother’s creative talents, I grant you. But also, like your mother, you think far too highly of them. She was convinced she and your father, my own dear brother, God rest his soul, could make their fortune in antiquities, would be recognized the world over for their more, ah, unique finds. But look where her ambition took them...”

Dora is silent. Her uncle’s neglect, though painful in those early years, she is used to. His fits of anger, manageable. This cruel contempt, however... this is new, and simply too much for Dora to entertain. She takes a deep breath that pulls painfully at her lungs, begins to push her chair out from behind her when Hezekiah raises his hand.

“Sit. We are not yet done.”

But I am. The words stitch themselves to her tongue, will not unpick themselves as she does as she is told, but Dora glowers deeply at her discarded plate, recites the Greek alphabet internally to calm her:

Alpha, beta, gamma, delta...

“Lottie,” Dora hears Hezekiah say, “will you bring in the tea?”

The housekeeper is all simpers and curtseys. When the door swings shut behind Lottie Dora senses Hezekiah turn back to her, and he offers up a humorless laugh.

“I can admire your aspiration at least, as lofty and unrealistic as it is. Draw away, if you must. It will keep you amused in the coming months. I will even continue to provide the paper.”

Something in his voice. Dora’s brow furrows. She looks up.

“Uncle?”

Hezekiah is lazily stroking his scar.

“You’ve grown to be quite a picture in the last year. So much like your mother...” A log in the fire cracks. “You’re twenty-one now,” he continues, leaning his complete weight onto his elbows. “A woman. You’re far too old to still be sharing my roof.”

Dora is silent a moment as the import of his declaration sinks in. She swallows hard. “You mean to be rid of me.”

He spreads his hands. “Don’t you also mean to be rid of me?”

She hesitates, cannot dispute the question.

“Where would you have me go?” she asks instead, but Hezekiah merely shrugs. Smiles.

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