Page 90 of Pandora

“Yes, but—”

“Help me up.”

That old stoic. Lottie shifts her position; the broken plates tinker and scrape. Dora offers a hand; Lottie’s fingers pinch as she holds on and Dora must put her arm around Lottie to steady her. On the floor, Hermes tilts his head.

“You must go to bed,” Dora poses. “I’ll fetch for a doctor.”

Lottie shakes off the hold Dora has on her. She will not now meet her gaze.

“I’m not ill. I don’t need no doctor.”

“Please, let me fetch someone,” Dora tries again. “Or if you won’t let me fetch someone then let me stay. I can finish off here...”

The housekeeper manages to scoff, and her voice is harsh when she says, “Do you even know how to cook?”

“Do you?” Dora returns sharply—instinctively defensive—but she immediately regrets the words, touches her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “I can help, at least,” she adds, more gently. “Your eye—”

But Lottie turns from her, ambles over to the fire, its steaming pot.

“I’m fine, missum. I don’t want no help.”

There is no arguing, it seems. With one last troubled look at her, Dora retrieves Hermes and turns to go. But at the door Lottie calls Dora back.

“Yes?”

“Guinea-fowl soup for dinner. Tatties too. Curd for pudding.”

The words are said quietly, no scorn in them, and Dora recognizes the gesture—the housekeeper is trying to express her thanks.

“Oh, I... I won’t be here for dinner.”

Lottie hesitates. “Off out again?”

Dora understands clearly the words she does not say.

“I can stay if you want me to.”

And she will, if Lottie asks. But the housekeeper is shaking her head.

“You’ll be no use here. No, you’d best stay clear.” She busies herself with stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. Then, “Where you going this time?”

“I’ll be dining with Lord and Lady Hamilton tonight. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back. But thank you, all the same.”

“Lord and Lady? What high circles you travel in now! Well, no matter,” she adds, over-brisk. “It won’t go to waste, I’m sure.”

Uneasily Dora watches her. Lottie’s face is blotchy from tears and even from a distance, her bruised eye looks appalling. For years Dora has felt only dislike for the woman. For the way Hezekiah always favored her over his own niece, how he always let Lottie speak down to her, her nonchalance in the upkeep of the shop, the neglect of her attic. But something has shifted...

“Will you be all right, Lottie?” Dora asks quietly.

Lottie’s hand stills on the spoon. “You’d best get gone, missum,” she says finally. “Neither one of us has time for pleasantries, do we?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Before dinner Sir William invited his guests to peruse his extensive collection of antiquities in a room reserved specifically to display them. Dora—who did deign to arrive, to Edward’s intense relief—has said not one word to him, has let herself be commandeered completely by Lady Hamilton rather than let Edward near her at all. Disappointed, he has had to content himself with observing her from a distance, watching Dora trace a fingertip over the curve of a marble statue of Athena, and without quite realizing it he found himself so fascinated—not by the beauty of Athena, but the beauty of her—that he forgot to answer when Hamilton asked him a question. Then Cornelius rudely placed himself between them, commenting drily that Sir William was lucky to acquire the statue before the French did, and it is this subject that engages the small assembly now over their white wine sole.

“He has this hare-brained idea,” the diplomat says, “that theft is not theft but merely appropriation of the spoils of war. Moreover, that France is the best place for the things that he pilfers. But Napoleon has no comprehension of their worth, what they mean to the nations he seizes them from. No appreciation. No understanding. They are just trinkets and baubles to him.”

He slams his fist down on the table. The cutlery clatters against the china. Lady Hamilton—a vision in deep midnight blue—presses her lips together in disapproval.

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