Dora watched this with a peculiar feeling in her chest. Everything had begun to feel very dizzy and uncertain, ever since she’d swallowed down that fragment of confusing anger. But it occurred to her as she watched Elias tuck the little girl into bed that she had been furiously wishing that someone might come along and put the girl somewhere nicer, at least. And now, Dora thought, someone had.
There was an unmistakable look of grief and frustration on the Lord Sorcier’s face as he looked down at that bed. Dora felt a dull pain in her heart as she watched him.
“What can I do?” Dora asked, before she could think better of it.
Elias glanced her way. The fire in his eyes was now tired and subdued, but he considered her question regardless. “I must take a bit to prepare,” he said. “But she does not look terribly comfortable. You might help Mrs Dun clean her up and find her something less filthy to wear while I am busy.”
Elias left the room, and it was then only Dora, Mrs Dun, and Miss Jennings crowded into the small space.
“The gentleman could have at least taken the time to make introductions,” Miss Jennings murmured, with a crinkle of her nose.
“Do not call him a gentleman,” Dora told her automatically. “He really does not like it.”
Mrs Dun smiled at Dora as she said the words. The matronly woman inclined her head towards them both. “I am Mrs Martha Dun,” she told them. “I run this house on behalf of the charitable ladies’ board. It is normally an orphanage, but the Lord Sorcier had need of a place to isolate these patients. Since he supplies such a sizeable portion of our funds, I did not see the harm in obliging him.”
Dora blinked. “He has never mentioned anything of the sort before,” she said. For some reason, the revelation mixed that pain in her heart with a strange, fluttery feeling. Albert did say that Elias hates admitting to charitable impulses, she thought.
Mrs Dun‘s smile turned wry. “That does not surprise me in the least,” was all that she said.
Dora introduced herself and Miss Jennings to Mrs Dun. At that point, they turned themselves to the task of cleaning up the sleeping girl—who, in lieu of another name, Dora decided to call Jane. The task might have been unwieldy with only one or two of them, but three was just enough to make much lighter work of it. The workhouse had not been clean at all, and from the way that Mrs Dun handled Jane’s old clothes, Dora suspected that the woman might intend to burn them whole. They wiped the little girl down and put her into a simple, clean cotton shift instead.
Jane’s straw-like hair was such a matted mess when they got down to it that Mrs Dun sighed and declared that they would have to cut the bulk of it off. At this point, poor Miss Jennings was beginning to visibly flag—she had been doing so much running about at the workhouse that now her hands had started to tremble. Dora took pity on the poor woman, who had been told after all that she was merely to be a chaperone today, and asked if Mrs Dun might take Miss Jennings down for some tea. “I have my own scissors,” Dora told them both. “I keep them quite sharp, for reasons of my own. I can see to Jane’s hair.”
Miss Jennings accepted this suggestion with great relief, and the two of them descended the stairs, leaving Dora alone with the girl. She pulled free the scissors that Vanessa had given her so long ago, and began to cut away at the worst of the tangles.
Elias knocked politely at the door partway through, and Dora called him inside. As he came to stand behind her, she felt his gaze keen upon her back.
“What are you feeling, Dora?” Elias asked quietly. “Have you thought on it?”
Dora blinked down at the scissors in her hand. “It’s quite a mess,” she said softly. “Back in the workhouse, there was a moment where... I was so deeply furious. The kind with a long tail, Elias. It is still making me nauseous. If I were normal, I think that I might want to yell at someone, or cry. But those things don’t come naturally to me, and they do not give me any relief.”
Silence fell between them. Dora felt a knot in her throat, and she tried to swallow it down. “I was very relieved when you brought her here,” she said. “But I am still frustrated. Why are the workhouses like that? I thought they were a matter of charity.”
A hand came down on Dora’s shoulder and squeezed. “This place is a matter of charity,” Elias said. “The workhouses are a matter of sweeping undesirable things from sight.”
Tears pricked at Dora’s eyes—but they were only the surface of that very deep well of misery that lingered inside her. “That George Ricks man,” she said. “I think he really hated all those people he takes care of. It was like he didn’t even see them. I didn’t know that it was possible to be so callous.”
Elias tugged Dora gently around to face him. He slid his arm around her shoulders entirely, and Dora found herself pressed against his chest, much as Jane had been before. He was very warm, up close, and he had the sweet scent of myrrh on his clothing, beneath the hint of tobacco smoke from earlier.
Dora could not remember ever having been so sick with anger before. But she had been sad or tired sometimes, and Vanessa often held her when this was the case, until her lantern warmth could banish those dull feelings. There was a lantern warmth to Elias too, Dora realised now. It was hotter, and not as soft as Vanessa’s, but it was somehow even more comforting because of that. Dora knew that he was angry too, and it relieved her
