A woman’s body is an amazing thing. Arthur had always known that. They were beautiful in their complexity, and elegant, and welcoming and kind. This led Arthur to believe that Miriam was not a woman.

What else she could be, he did not know, but she certainly was not a woman. She was simple and ugly and cold, all of those things true for her appearances and ever layer of her soul. On a normal day, Arthur tolerated women, the occasional times they had tried uselessly to seduce him. This time, it was something he swallowed down like poison.

At least she had not touched him again, not further than his wrists. At least she had not assaulted him again.

And she wouldn’t ever again. Not to Arthur or anyone.

This was for Malachi. He had come to England for Malachi, because he loved Malachi, because Malachi wanted him to kill Miriam.

But there was a selfish part of him that would take pleasure in ending her life.

“You struggle to breathe in the corset, do you not?”

Delicately, Arthurs hands trailed up the corset, just barely touching her chest with his fingertips and smoothing his hands out over her shoulder. Traced the lines of her collar bones until his fingers met under her neck.

“Keep it on. I might need help.”

A second passed - maybe hesitation, maybe allowing Miriam to hear the words and understand them - before Arthur’s grip came right under the woman’s jaw. The force send her stumbling back onto her vanity, but the noise is produced did not phase him.

Doctor Arthur Adams, the character put on for Miriam, was gone. Now, green eyes stared furiously at Miriam as she was choked, a sharp and determined curl to his lips.

He squeezed her neck tighter and tighter still, not wanting to give Miriam the privilege of expanding her lungs - not yet, anyway. Not until she was unconscious and at his mercy.