“The next Viscount of Carroway has just started setting his attentions upon Vanessa!” Auntie Frances hissed. “And now she is off in your place with his crippled brother, instead of with him!”
A cold, dull anger grew in Dora’s stomach. Elias had once called Albert a cripple in front of her, but the word had not had such nasty connotations when he had said it. The way that her aunt said the word, it sounded dirty and shameful.
“Mr Lowe became as he is while protecting the rest of us off in France,” Dora told her. She said it with perfect evenness, though she would have preferred otherwise. “He is a very good and charitable man. And if Vanessa did wish to marry him instead of his brother, I believe that he would treat her very well.”
A crack sounded in Dora’s ears. Her vision faltered. It took her a moment to realise that her aunt had struck her across the face. She blinked a few times, reaching up to press her palm against her cheek. The pain felt numb and distant—but the emotion behind the gesture dug more deeply into her, clenching itself slowly around her heart.
“Neither of you girls have thought for a single moment about me, from the moment we first set foot in London,” Auntie Frances cried, with her face all red and miserable. “You have no conception of what is at stake for me. If Lord Lockheed should die before me, his title will pass, and I will have only a pitiful income to my name! I shall be forced to survive on the generosity of my daughter’s husband. Where will I live, Dora? Surely not with some physician! Perhaps that life will suffice for you, but you are barely a person at all!”
Dora did not react. It had occurred to her that she did not need to react. Rather, she could sit there like the doll that she was, and let the awful moment wash over her without consequence.
She turned her eyes to the window of the carriage, thinking of Auntie Frances among the workhouses, tending to the children. It was such a dramatically unlikely vision that Dora managed a faint smile over it.
“—incapable even of paying attention for a single moment!” Auntie Frances raged. “It is no wonder Mr Lowe has yet to offer for you, you puppet!”
He will not offer, Dora thought. The idea satisfied her somewhat in the face of Auntie Frances’ fury, but it also felt hollow and tired. No one will offer.
Their carriage came to a stop outside of the countess’ residence. Auntie Frances was forced to calm herself somewhat, though her body still trembled as she wrenched Dora from the carriage.
“I do not wish to see your face today,” Auntie Frances told her, as they swept through the door into Hayworth House. “Do not let me see you once until the ball, Dora, I warn you!”
Dora did not respond to this. But inwardly, she thought: That will be no problem. I do not wish to see you either.
Dora spent the rest of the day inside her bedroom, with the treatise open in front of her. Though the treatise was short, it was also exceptionally dense—it had many strange words which she assumed to be technical terms for magical things. Thankfully, Albert’s partial translation had given Dora references for some of these words already; she left the remainder untranslated, with guesses from the surrounding context.
The majority of the treatise seemed to be a compilation of curses from different eras, along with their supposed cures. Dora understood very little of the content—but she did see a reference to a sleeping curse, which she supposed must have been the main thing to catch Elias’ interest. She spent extra time on this section, to be sure that it was painstakingly accurate. Unfortunately, the cure to that particular curse was true love’s kiss, and Dora greatly suspected that such a cure was both very rare and not at all applicable to orphaned children.
The work was mentally taxing, which was just as well; it prevented Dora from dwelling on her aunt’s words. The pile of ugliness at the bottom of her mind was bigger than it had ever been before, pressing dangerously at the surface of her consciousness. Dora knew it was becoming a problem—but she continued to ignore it mostly because she did not know what else to do with it. She could not sob on her pillow as Vanessa might have done, and there was no one about to whom she might turn for comfort—and so she continued her translation, vaguely aware the entire time of the sickness that pressed for her attention.
Dora had gotten through about three quarters of the treatise when she heard a commotion downstairs. She padded over to the door, creaking it open to peer down the hallway. Voices filtered up towards her.
“—quite all right, Mr Lowe,” Miss Jennings was saying breathlessly. “A little bruise will not put me in a sickbed.”
“You should hold a cool cloth against it, at least,” Albert told her, with obvious worry in his voice. “You’re not still bleeding?”
Dora headed out from her room, forgetting for the moment her aunt’s order to stay out of sight. As she reached the stairs, she saw that Albert, Vanessa, and Miss Jennings had returned—but Miss Jennings was leaning slightly on Vanessa’s arm, and there was a slowly-darkening purple bruise along her right eye. Albert had a deeply concerned look on his face, and Vanessa seemed to be in a similar fright.
“Please, won’t you sit down?” Vanessa asked Miss Jennings. “I will see if we can get you some tea.”
“What on earth happened?” Dora asked from the top of the stairs.
Vanessa glanced up at Dora sharply. Her expression turned even more distressed. “Oh, Dora,” she said. “I... it’s too terrible, I’m sorry.
