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Dora freezes, fork halfway to her mouth. The congealing butter drips from it, makes a tinny tap-tap on her plate.

“No, Uncle. Where did you see it last?”

“Hmph. My coat pocket. The black one with the satin seam? It was there the other day, I’m sure of it.”

Dora is glad she wears a high neck which hides the telltale blush at her throat. She gives a tiny shake of her head that could mean anything at all. Hezekiah worries his inner cheek. Dora completes the trajectory of her fork.

It will not occur to her uncle that she is responsible for the purse’s disappearance, Dora thinks, not when she has always left well enough alone in the past. It would be easy to misplace, whether she had a hand in it or not. And he deserves to lose it, does he not?

Dora chews thoughtfully, navigates a brittle bone between an incisor and her tongue.

Her sketches of the vase are not finished by any stretch of the imagination. She only got as far as copying the first scene—Zeus and the fire—before her fingers began to ache, her spectacles to pinch. To ensure she has enough inspiration for her jewelry designs Dora knows that she must sneak down into the basement again and more than once, no doubt, in order to finish the copy before Hezekiah catches her—or worse—moves it. Will she have time, too, to explore the rest of the basement, examine in detail those straw-filled crates?

Dora kneads her lower lip with her teeth, taps her fork with her fingernail. Perhaps...

“Uncle?”

“Mm?”

“Would you mind if I went out for a few hours?”

“Out?” Her uncle’s voice is over-sharp. He rolls the second egg across the table with his left hand and its shell splinters under the pressure. “Why?”

Dora does not want to be seen to plead, but a taint of the plaintive slips its way in nonetheless.

“To sketch. It is so dark and dreary in here, I should like to escape it for a spell.”

“Wouldn’t we all.” Hezekiah stares at her a long moment before resuming work on the egg. “I suppose I can spare you. Lottie may mind the shop.”

She hears the words he does not speak—I want you out of the way—and her fingers tighten on the cutlery. “Thank you, Uncle.”

Dora is surprised how calm she sounds. Inside her heart is clenching like a fist.

Chapter Fifteen

The bindery business card presses deeply into her palm as Dora crosses the muddy cobbles of Russel Street, looking for number six in the gloom. By the time she finds it—right at the far end where the road curves at a sharp angle onto Drury Lane—her skirt hem is thickly spattered with muck.

She stops to assess the building. Despite its location (shops down narrow side streets are invariably of a questionable sort), it is strangely elegant. Dora can see that the paintwork is smooth and relatively fresh—red brick with black fascias, gold lettering that actually fits the board. For a moment she thinks of the Blake shopfront. It too, upon a time, had looked much like this. Cared for. A great deal of money has been spent on this business and its quality seems woefully out of place; its decoration belongs to trades situated on Fleet Street or the Strand, not here in the wastrel roads of Covent Garden where whores and pickpockets are as common as fleas.

Dora tucks the business card back into her reticule, takes a firmer hold of her sketchbook. She did not expect to see him so soon, if at all, but they may well be of use to each other; Mr. Lawrence’s obvious ability to recognize a forgery shows that he must therefore, in turn, recognize pieces of worth. Her own knowledge is limited to childhood memory but he... well, he brings scholarly experience with him. It is this experience she needs.

She pushes the door open. Inside it is lit with a warmth that smells of leather and a subtle hint of honey. The counters gleam mahogany and the same black and gold detailing can be seen throughout. A striking Indian carpet runs the length of the shop. On one wall stands a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with beautiful books, their calf-skin spines shining richly in the candlelight. A magnificently spiky plant sits grandly in a pot next to the main counter and beyond it, glass cabinets stand full of prints and intricately detailed frontispieces.

Dora can do nothing else but stare. She has never been inside a bindery before, and she is not sure she has ever seen anything quite so lovely. Mr. Clements’ shop... Well, she will always love the flash of white diamond, the deep forest of emerald, the midnight blue of cut sapphire, but this is a beauty quite apart from it, something opulent, ornate. Dora is still staring wide-eyed when a dark-skinned man she had not noticed steps from behind one of the glass counters, a small stack of books held in his arms.

“Can I help you, miss?”

His voice is smooth, warm, carrying on it the lilt of an accent she cannot place.

“Oh, I...” Dora trails off, feels now unaccountably embarrassed. “This shop is so...” She smiles shyly. “It is...”

The man—tall, his face heavily lined, wearing a neatly coiled but plain gray wig—dips his head. “I thank you, miss. We take great pride here at Ashmole’s.”

“You are Mr. Ashmole?”

He blinks. “The overseer, Mr. Fingle.”

“I see,” Dora says, though she does not.