Page 53 of A Contracted Spouse for the Prizefighter

“What type?” Clem asked in a dangerously low voice.

Felix clammed up and then shoved two forkfuls of pork pie into his mouth. Once he had furiously masticated them, he directed a baleful look across the table at his sister. “Well, at least you can resume your duties here,” he huffed. “We ran out of eggs this morning and I don’t have any clean collars.”

Clem turned to her. “My love am I to understand that you have been turning your hand to domestic duties instead of nurturing your own talent?” he demanded.

Dora met his gaze, before lowering her eyes demurely. “I do not deny it has been a struggle, Husband.”

Felix snorted wrathfully, but got no opportunity to expand on the theme, for Clem immediately assured her that never again would she turn her hand to such work. “You must hire someone at once,” he said cavalierly which made Felix turn quite purple.

“I shall write to Mrs. Cherwell forthwith,” Dora assured him, impulsively reaching across the table for his hand. Clem felt a little taken aback by the gesture, as she covered his with her own and squeezed it lightly before releasing him and returning to her plate.

Clem wasn’t sure he did not faintly blush. Why had she done that? Because he had mentioned her possessing talent or called her “my love”? He was uncomfortably aware he had only done both things to infuriate her brother.

Then he recalled how she had called him “dear” earlier and realized she was likely playing up to her brother as well. For some reason, that did not please him as it should. Luckily, Felix’s bleating soon distracted him from his conflicted feelings.

“And who is to bear the expense of such extravagance?” Felix demanded wrathfully.

“I will,” Clem retorted coolly. “My business is doing extremely well, unlike yours.” Fields looked like he would be fetched off by an apoplexy and Clem left it at that for now. There would be time enough later to demand a look at the accounts and start overhauling The Parthenon’s future.

After dinner, Clem requested a tour of the house and Dora obliged, leading him from room to room on all four levels. The ground floor mostly comprised of rooms he had already seen, a small cloakroom, the sizeable kitchen and scullery, and the gloomy dining room. In addition to these was a large and ostentatious front parlor.

This last was stuffed full of heavy dark furniture, a large pianoforte, a loudly ticking grandfather clock, four massive bookcases, and a set of stuffed birds under glass cloches. To his eye, none of the faded red couches looked particularly comfortable and the coal scuttle looked criminally empty next to the yawning fireplace. He could not see himself taking his leisure in there anytime soon.

The first floor was a little better. They viewed Dora’s bedroom first, which Clem thought had likely not changed since she was a girl. It contained a brass bedstead, the obligatory bookcase (so far Clem thought every room he had seen contained at least one), a large ugly wardrobe, and a small desk covered in writing implements.

An elaborate wooden theatre was displayed in pride of place before the window and sat upon a decoupage lacquered table. When she saw the direction of his gaze, she looked a little self-conscious. “I assure you I do not play with it anymore,” she had hastened to explain. “It has strictly sentimental value these days.”

Clem noticed a good deal of the cardboard players on sticks looked to be hand-drawn and painted, but he did not comment on this. He was just grateful she did not have a shelf full of creepy looking dolls.

She opened the door to the next bedroom which was filled with a lot more lace and frills but otherwise was not much different in its layout. The desk had a mirror and a hat form instead of pens and ink and was covered in glass bottles and brushes and was clearly used as a vanity unit. “Hetty’s room,” she said briefly over her shoulder before shutting it again. If anyone would have had a doll collection, he guessed it would have been the sister.

The next room was an informal sitting room which seemed a lot more inviting than the parlor downstairs. The blue chairs looked to have lost some of their stuffing, but the cushions were broad and plump and not stiffly formal. The wallpaper looked to be more suited to a bedroom with its sprigged floral pattern, but it had a cheerful and lived-in look which Clem appreciated after the stuffy-looking parlor.

“Do you all use this room?” he asked, looking around.

Dora shook her head. “Just Hetty and I. When we were younger the three of us used this room when Uncle was entertaining friends downstairs. When we got older, Felix was permitted to smoke and drink with them, so us girls used it as our withdrawing room. We would lie on the sofas and read in our dressing gowns with our hair unbound and generally not trouble to make ourselves respectable.”

Clem glanced at her hair but said nothing. Dora fell silent. After a moment she suggested tentatively, “I suppose now Hetty has flown the nest, we could repurpose it as our own private sitting room?”

Clem stirred. He liked that idea. Probably because Fields and Allsop were such abysmal company. “Good idea,” he muttered, throwing another speculative glance about the room. Dora looked pleased and led him to the last room on that floor, which was a sewing room.

“This is where I make all my creations,” she told him proudly.

The least said about that, Clem thought, the better, as he considered the bookcase stuffed full of outlandish patterns, the workboxes and dress forms, and the few bolts of drab-looking cloth stacked in one corner. “So, I see,” he said, when he noticed Dora’s expression of expectancy. For an instant, he thought she looked disappointed, then she lowered her eyes and led him out of the room and up the next flight of stairs.

This floor held her late uncle’s bedroom which probably had not altered much since his death, a large, tiled bathroom with a large free-standing tub and an extremely dusty study which he doubted very much that Fields even used.

“So, this is where your brother was going to raise a scold over your head,” Clem commented, looking at the large mahogany desk inlaid with green leather. It reminded him of another desk in another office, only this room did not contain a plaster of paris bust for him to smash or any portraits that he could see.

Dora laughed. “Felix likely thought it made him sound vastly dignified, but our uncle was never much of a disciplinarian.” The final room was her brother’s room which was crammed full of books. Sure enough, the desk next to the window was piled high with the things.

“I wonder how many of them are dirty,” Clem mused aloud, making Dora turn quite pink. She threw a reproachful glance at him and primmed up her mouth in a manner that made him want to abandon the house tour altogether, but she was already darting up the next flight of stairs to the third floor.

To Clem’s surprise, the third floor was not used, instead consisting of four dusty rooms filled with broken furniture, old theatrical costumes, and boxes and boxes of books and music. Seeing his reaction, Dora hastily explained, “We use this floor as storage really, as Harold lodges in the attic.”

“It seems a waste of good space,” Clem said with a frown, turning slowly around.

“I daresay, but it is simply another set of rooms to keep warm and clean with coal and domestics we cannot afford,” she explained.