“You should have done a great many things, Your Grace.”
He reached for the baby a second time. Lady Rose tensed, but did not turn away, instead allowing Lizzie to gurgle and blink up at Felix, batting his finger with a tiny fist.
“I want what’s best for her,” he breathed.
Lady Rose shook her head. “You want what’s best for yourself. That is why you’re here.”
He could have claimed otherwise, but the words would have rung false even to his own ears. Outside the window, the first hesitant flakes of snow began to fall. Felix turned back to Lady Rose and caught her eye.
“You cannot expect to keep her here,” he said. “This convent is no place for a child—they have no interest in illegitimate Greycliffs.”
“And you do?”
“I’m interested in paying for past mistakes.”
Rose studied him. “You want to take her with you? To your home, where she’ll grow up never knowing that someone loved her enough to fight?—”
Felix interrupted, softly. “Would you rather she grew up here? Among the pious and the pitiless, believing herself to be an accident? My house is not without its ghosts, but it at least offers a name, a roof, and belonging.”
The words hung between them heavily.
Lady Rose looked down at Lizzie, and Felix did the same. The baby had somehow fallen asleep, her lips parted, one chubby hand wrapped in the coarse wool of Rose’s habit.
When Lady Rose finally spoke again, her voice was quiet. “What will you tell her? When she’s old enough to ask.”
Felix said nothing for a long while. Then, he sighed. “Whatever I must, I suppose.”
Lady Rose did not answer. She lingered a moment longer, staring at the snow through the warped glass. Then, her gaze landed on the desk drawer where the Mother Superior had stashed her new purse of gold, and her lips curled in a small, knowing sneer.
“So that’s how it’s done,” she whispered. “One sack of coins and suddenly the world is at your feet.”
Felix rolled his shoulders. He was losing his patience. He had come to St. Clement’s to handle a particular purpose, and now, he was ready to be gone from this wretched place. “Let’s get this over with. Hand her here.”
Lady Rose tightened her arms around Lizzie. “No.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.” She planted her feet shoulder’s width apart, a swordsman’s stance, and held the baby like a shield between them.
“You have no right,” he said. “That child is mine, and a claim lodged by you would never hold up in a court of law.”
“What are you insinuating?” she sneered.
Felix took a step forward. “Lady Rose. You forget yourself.”
“And you forget what you did. Or rather, what you failed to do.”
The baby woke up and began to fret. Felix reached out, one hand open to offer an exchange.
This time, Lady Rose fully recoiled.
“You are not going to take this child to a house where nobody cares about her,” she said and lifted Lizzie from her shoulder, tucking the baby into the basket on the desk, as if to say: come and take her if you dare.
Felix tamped down his anger. “What do you think will happen if you keep her here? Just look at the calluses on your hands. Do you want this child to become an overworked novice like you?”
Lady Rose didn’t deign to respond, instead producing a letter from within the folds of her habit.
“Look at this,” she said.
