The flowers were, she thought, the exact colour of her eyes.
Auntie Frances turned towards Dora with wide eyes. “This is spite!” she quavered. “The magician has some unreasonable grudge against this family! I cannot think what we have done to deserve such ire!”
Dora knitted her brow in bemusement. “I hardly think that he would send such lovely flowers out of spite, Auntie Frances,” she said. “Though... since I did taunt him on the matter of flowers, I can see his perverse nature leading him to send them now.” Inwardly, Dora began to suspect the flowers as a sort of apology for the delay of her cure, but she did not say this aloud.
“He does his best to thwart your attachment to his so-called friend at every turn,” Auntie Frances moaned, as though she hadn’t heard a word. “What a horrible, nasty man! He cannot intend to marry you, so why would he press this suit of his, except to embarrass us all?”
Dora glanced down at that. She knew, of course, that Elias had only taken up the silly matter of courting her in order to protect both Dora and Albert from the old hens’ designs. But to hear it said aloud—that he could not possibly intend to marry her—left a hollow sort of feeling inside her.
Why should the truth distress me? Dora wondered. I was pleased to have an excuse not to marry, this Season. That Elias continues the charade is generous of him, given how frantically busy he currently is.
“Nevertheless,” Dora told her aunt, “it is not good to throw away magical gifts.” Dora said this mainly because she saw that Auntie Frances was considering the flowers with the utmost distaste, and the idea of losing them bothered Dora greatly. “Please do not fan his spite, Auntie Frances. He is very busy, and it must at some point disappear if we do not antagonize him further.”
Auntie Frances sighed heavily and shook her head at the butler. “Oh!” she said. “Go put them somewhere out of sight! My nerves cannot bear the sight of them any longer.”
Her aunt departed the front entry with haste—but Dora hurried towards the butler as she exited. “I will put them away,” she assured him.
Dora took the flowers up to her room and placed them on the dresser, above the drawer where she’d hidden the mirror. They were truly very pretty, she thought—though they must have been only a moment’s work for someone of the Lord Sorcier’s prodigious talent. Dora found herself staring at them for longer than she ought. Eventually, her eyes caught upon a calling card, nestled among the flowers. She tugged it free and looked down at it.
Lord Elias Wilder, the card said, in messy cursive handwriting. And though the name was no surprise, Dora felt warm and vaguely confused while looking down at it. The name was ever-so-slightly crooked, and she found herself wondering whether Elias had written the card with his own hand. It seemed the sort of thing that he would do. Auntie Frances probably would have considered it another insult, but Dora’s mind lingered pleasantly on the idea for some reason.
Imagine, said a small voice at the back of her mind, if only these flowers were meant sincerely.
It was a bewildering thought. Dora was not sure just where it had come from. She had never been exceptionally fond of flowers, nor dreamed of having them sent to her. But these flowers were very agreeable to her, and it was particularly strange to wish that they were hers even at the same time that she already owned them.
I have far more important matters to attend to than flowers, Dora reminded herself, much as she had reminded Vanessa.
She forced herself to abandon her useless staring upon them, and left them on the dresser behind her.
Chapter 10
Albert must have talked with Elias—because he showed up for Dora the next few days running, much to the hens’ delight. Albert was not terribly pleased to give them reason to hope for wedding bells, but both he and Dora were cognisant of their short deadline, and so he bore their excitement with classic English stoicism. He brought Dora to each of the workhouses where they’d found cases of the plague before, so that they might question the inmates.
Dora had held some stray hope that perhaps the Cleveland Street Workhouse was some nightmarish exception, and that the other workhouses would be better—but she was soon forced to discard this notion. The other workhouses were equally awful in their own ways, all cramped and miserable and full of illness. The inmates of these workhouses were not all set to the task of unwinding hemp rope; some were out in the yards breaking rocks, while many of the women and children were fervently engaged in spinning and sewing, their exhaustion plain upon their faces.
Though Miss Jennings was of course forced to come along, she was an unexpected boon to the whole endeavour—Dora was only so good at holding children’s attention, but the ex-governess had a way of snapping them into well-mannered behaviour as Dora asked them questions. Afterward, Dora was positive she’d seen the woman slipping treats to the most obedient children for their troubles.
There was certainly a general uneasiness surrounding the plague—and plenty of speculation about its origins. Dora swiftly began to realise that there was more guessing and superstition available than hard facts.
