Chapter 5
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.
With the villain now resting in an unmarked pauper’s grave, Erasmus could return home to the Abbey. But first he needed to thank the man he had consulted from afar.
Behind the fine desk, Hugh Carnifex, Earl Carnifex, stood to see his friend off.
“I’m pleased to hear that justice has been served. That man troubled my wife and daughter, too, you know,” said Carnifex.
Erasmus’s breath exited his lungs.
“Not like that,” said Hugh, holding out a hand to reassure his old comrade. “It was a nasty bit of business, all the same.”
“My wife expressed fear for the inhabitants of the workhouse. You’re certain there will be food and shelter for them, even outside the workhouses?” asked Erasmus.
Hugh Carnifex’s silver temples seemed to glow in the electrical light of his office, showing how fine he’d look on a coin or paper bill. His eyes took on a hazy focus; the future spread before him, his hand moving every piece on the board.
“It has long been my personal project to close these damned workhouses and give the poor a different kind of help. I won’t lie, my wife has encouraged my thinking along those lines and reminds me not to trade one hell for another.
But we must start now. I’ve a plan: a few men I trust will take in some inhabitants, as you have. ”
“You’re marrying off the women of the workhouse?” asked Erasmus, shocked at the scheme. It sounded like something monarchs would have proposed centuries ago in the colonies, not Britain in the age of steam-powered railroads!
Carnifex waved his concerns aside. “I’m no pimp or matchmaker,” he reassured. “These are men I know and respect, who have burdens of their own. The women will perform necessary paid labor. A mutual aid. Any deviations from the strictest propriety will not be tolerated.”
Erasmus found he believed the earl and nodded in agreement.
“Will you stay for the Michaelmas feast? We’re subdued these days because my wife has only just been safely delivered of another daughter, but we’d be happy for company,” said Carnifex.
“Congratulations to the proud parents,” said Erasmus, shaking the man’s hand.
Fatherhood suited him well; he had a look of ease and satisfaction that had previously eluded him.
“But I must return at last to the Abbey. I’ve been away pursuing justice for so long. My children will hardly recognize me.”
“You’ve prepared gifts?” asked Carnifex, shuffling some papers on his desk.
“Positively loaded down with them,” replied Erasmus.
“Then you’d best be off. The trains wait for no man!”
***
When Erasmus came up the drive to the Abbey in the carriage he’d hired rather than coordinating to have his own sent at short notice, he was relieved to see signs that the home farm had carried on in his absence.
Wheat was cut and stacked; there was evidence that the barley harvest was underway; the cattle had been moved closer to the farmyard as the grasses further afield withered.
He found he was nervous. To have been gone so long, so early in his marriage and the life of the baby, was unfortunate. Unfortunate and necessary.
As the carriage wheels slowed to a stop, Erasmus recalled the sound of the trapdoor opening below that terrible man’s feet, leading to his drop to death. And just as efficiently, Erasmus closed the vault on those memories, determined to let the past lie with the dead.
It was when he stepped down and took possession of his bag and packages that he heard something strange.
“Papa!”
To his astonishment, his reserved Thea barreled down the drive, her shoe buckles undone in her haste to see him.
“Is everything well, sweetheart?” he asked, concerned that something had gone wrong during his absence.
He scooped her up and studied her face. She had a more elaborate braid in her hair, and the lace on her dress seemed new.
“You’re home in time!” she cried excitedly, wiggling in his arms. “I hoped you would be! Amy tried to tell me you were busy, but I said you’d make it. Mrs. Laidlaw made Michaelmas bannock. You couldn’t miss it, could you?”
Erasmus looked at his bubbling child, so clearly thriving under the influence of his young wife.
He bore up manfully, but his heart somehow ached with a strange sense of future nostalgia, knowing that he’d always remember this greeting in the drive and the wonderful discovery that his daughter flourished even without him and their Greek and Latin lessons.
“There she is,” said Thea, nodding to the entry of the Abbey.
Amy had just exited the front doors, Phineas on her hip.
The baby looked delightfully pudgy, and even his mama had a becoming bloom and fullness about her cheeks.
His heart did something creative in his chest, and he found himself unable to lift an arm in greeting.
He’d need to see a physician about that.
“You’re just in time for supper,” she called from the door, a shy smile breaking over her face as he approached. “You should have let me know you were coming. I’d have sent the carriage and asked Mrs. Laidlaw to make enough. You can share my plate.”
“We made enough for you,” confided Thea. “Amy said that if we did, maybe you’d come home.”
His blasted ticker was going to kill him before he saw 40 at this rate. Amy stepped aside to let him in the house, but Erasmus detoured slightly to drop a kiss on her cheek. Just a brief peck, the sort of thing elderly aunts did to wiggly children. But if that were so, why did his neck feel hot?
Dinner was cozy and abundant. Thea wished to stay up late to celebrate her papa’s return, and by the time she drooped and allowed him to carry her up to the nursery, where her governess would take over, he too felt tired.
Erasmus had his sights set firmly on the plush mattress he’d missed all these months when he approached his bedroom.
But when he entered, something was strange.
“I’ve removed Phin’s basket from the bed. He’s getting to be a big boy now, and he sleeps for much of the night. Your staff helped me make a nursery for him next door,” Amy said, carefully opening the door to a connecting storage room where Erasmus could see the baby’s crib.
His son was old enough for a crib. He had the urge to shed a tear.
And then Erasmus realized the implications for his sleeping arrangements. That mattress, once separated into two by the baby’s basket, was now one marital bed.
He remembered being an untried lad with his first woman, and his throat was dry. Amy drifted from Phin’s nursery, softly closing the door.
She wore a nightgown, much as she always had, but suddenly, it resembled the stuff of fantasy. Perhaps he was tired from traveling, but her breasts and hips seemed hugged by the fabric. Was it sheer over her nipples? God help him if he let his gaze roam over that dark thatch between her thighs.
“Is this alright?” she asked, gesturing to the marital arrangement of their bed. “I could always—”
“I want you here with me,” he blurted.
“And I want you here with me,” she said, her chin held high. My, she was a brave girl, his wife. His blood roiled at the knowledge that she wanted him in her bed. Their bed. Did this mean that she wished to enjoy all the comforts of marriage?
Erasmus tugged at his boots, then socks. “So we’re clear, Mrs. Mangevileyn: when you say you want me in your bed…”
Amy lifted a trembling hand to the buttons on her nightgown. She opened the first one. “I mean that in every sense, Mr. Mangevileyn.”
He watched her unbutton further. All the while, he pulled off his own coat, waistcoat, and shirtsleeves until he stood with just his braces and trousers on.
Finally, she lifted the gown over her head with marvelous efficiency. Revealing her nude body to him for the first time.
He took in her dips and curves, cataloging the look of her skin in the lamplight of their bedroom. The placket on his trousers seemed stuck shut, and he cursed his tailor for potentially trapping him in Purgatory while his bride awaited his attentions.
And then it opened — at last — and he was free to wash. This time, for the first time, he didn’t duck behind a screen. Erasmus stood naked in the center of their bedroom, washing his travel-worn body before his wife.
He soaped his armpits, then brought his hands to his cock, which was now hard under his wife’s avid gaze. Erasmus took his time washing his sack, drawing back the foreskin of his cock to clean and rinse himself, and finally, running a hand over his manhood.
Her eyes were there, on his firm shaft. She scurried to the side of the bed.
“I’ll help you draw back the counterpane. We wouldn’t want it to get messy,” he said.
“Messy?” she asked faintly. Erasmus came behind Amy and reached around to aid in folding it away.
She turned in his arms. “I have a request.”
He stepped closer and felt her breasts touch his chest. He couldn’t look down, or he’d surely explode. His cock was bobbing somewhere around her hip, and the tip occasionally rested on her skin. Was this heaven or some hellish torture?
“What’s that?” he asked hoarsely. He’d give her anything at this moment. State secrets would drip from his mouth like honey should she but ask. It was a dangerous feeling.
“Not from behind,” she said.
Not from…he realized what she meant, and what inspired the request. It took everything in his power not to wrap her in an embrace and sob over his wife’s past pain.
Instead, he nodded. “We’ll face each other.”
She responded in kind.
“If I might…” he placed his hands at her side and touched his wife’s waist for the first time. She curved in at the sides with a small swell where she’d carried Phineas. He rested his hand there tentatively, wanting to touch the strength, to love that place specifically.
“Oh, but it’s…” she said, looking down at where he cradled her stomach.
“Do you dislike it?”
“No,” she said, easing down to sit upon the bed as if her legs too felt weak.
Erasmus took her hand and examined the skin that had once been broken, scarred, and rough. It was now smooth, with white lines where she’d healed. He kissed every mark.
“You’ve been using the salve while I was away?” he asked, continuing to make love to those delicate fingers he’d sell his soul to feel on his heated skin.
“I have,” she said softly. “I’ve been healing while you were away.”