“Let them see us,” he whispered just above her ear.
She was heated, her breasts heavy. It must be time for Phin to eat.
When Erasmus called out, the baby’s nurse entered the room and showed sufficient training by not reacting to the sight of husband and wife entangled on a desk chair at midday.
Amy’s cheeks grew hot as she thought of the staff gossiping about their marriage, and she kept her eyes downcast while Erasmus took possession of the baby.
And there he was, her son, their son, cradled in his father’s arms. He was less strange to her now. For months, she’d searched for some sign that he resembled that man, and found nothing. Now, she could see traces of her papa, and even imagined that she could see her husband’s smile on Phin’s face.
“He’s perfect,” said Erasmus, looking down at the baby in the crook of his arm.
He was right. The nurse had begun dressing Phineas in tiny sailor suits, with no swaddling. His limbs wiggled, flailing about so that he might someday grow as strong as his papa.
His papa. What a relief. This blameless child had the finest papa in all the land, and Amy couldn’t help but lower her head to his precious belly to feel the rise and fall of his breath. Her tears leaked onto his seersucker playsuit.
And then he yowled, demanding his afternoon tea.
Still sitting in her husband’s lap, Amy moved to take the baby from the room, but Erasmus stayed her yet again.
“Allow me,” he said, handing her the child and carefully undoing the buttons on the bodice of her day dress.
If her breasts had felt heavy before, that was nothing to the sensation now. Amy feared she might leak through her nursing corset.
When Erasmus parted the bodice, he moved aside to allow Amy to arrange herself and the baby so he could latch. At her sigh of relief at Phin’s first sucks, her husband held her closer.
“You’re beautiful like this,” he said, brushing a kiss on her forehead. “You’ve made something beautiful, and I’m so fortunate to be part of it.”
Amy wiped a tear away and buried her face in his waistcoat. “At this rate, I’ll run out of tears. You should say something to dry my eyes, husband.”
He stroked a hand up and down the curve of her waist.
“I can think of nothing quite like vengeance to stop tears,” he said. “I promise I will not speak of it again after this: what was that man’s name? The workhouse master?”
Amy’s eyes drifted to a painting on the wall of the study.
“His name is Mr. Felter,” she said.
“Felter. Thank you. He will be dead or infamous if I have anything to say about it. Preferably both. Depend on me to handle it.”
And she realized she did.
Sinking against her husband’s chest as their baby nursed, Amy loosened her grip on the secret that had forced her to run. And found that, in turn, it loosened its hold on her, just a little.
Michaelmas
Chapter 5
Michaelmas, 29 September 1883
London
“I won’t keep you from your roast goose,” said Erasmus, standing from his chair. “I simply wanted to thank you personally for your attention to this matter.”
The matter in question was the arrest, arraignment, trial, and execution of one Mr. Uriah Felter, formerly the Master at the Cowley Road Workhouse. Felter had been surprised, nay, shocked, to discover himself arrested and before the magistrate at the turn of July. The court convicted him of countless murders and the abuse of women under his so-called care at the summer assizes, and his feigned disbelief hardened to anger and rage.
The newspapers in London caught wind of his villainy, and they trumpeted each horrifying detail of the case alongside the eruption of Krakatoa and failed Fenian bomb plots. The whole thing ended within the walls of Oxford Gaol early in September. Mr. Felter, pinioned and hooded, dropped to his death on a Monday morning.
The crowds outside the prison shouted to see the execution and receive his body for abuse, but officials fulfilled all legal requirements. Erasmus Mangevileyn of Oxfordshire, formerly in the foreign service, oversaw the fulfillment of those requirements.
