She was not sure she liked Zecheriah Meijer, her new husband. In fact, she was of the firm belief that he was the devil incarnate. Ahh, but it was satisfying to be able to look down her long and elegant nose at him since she towered over him. While he seemed to have that strut that men with little cocks got when they wanted people to think they were packing bigger than they actually were, except she would never try to discover just how small his prick was. As far as she was concerned, she would never let him touch her in that capacity. She had once been paid to act like men like him pleased her and she didn't think there was enough money in the world to pull that act off on him. She had absolutely no physical attraction to him, his attitude grated on her nerves, his voice, his arrogance, the very manner of how he walked all grated on her nerves.

Perhaps there was a lot to be said about being stuck in a marriage she did not want. In fact, she hated him for forcing her hand as he did. She barely let him near the child he claimed as his own even as the children were starting to resemble Magnus more and more each day. She hated the rules he tried to impose upon her. She hardly paid them any mind anyhow.

She lay curled up around one of the babies, the other within arms reach of her. She was tired, but the children were both quiet and well fed. She watched them with one eye closed, they did not seem like they would turn into their father thus far so that was good. She was tentatively fond of them.

Zechariah, meanwhile, had been far too busy bragging about his proof that he was most certainly not a confirmed bachelor. Look at his children! Look at his trophy wife! Look at all his ill gotten money! And while he never made direct reference to it: look at his manly trade! A stack of hard-won credit to being a … well, not proper gentleman, but a gentleman nonetheless. Proper was never in the cards for him, now, was it?

It was not a man’s job to rear the children, and so he did not push the issue … at first. But he returned to a holiday rental home where he expected to hear the fruits of his finagling labor: crickets in the corridors instead of cries of triumph.

What were his children doing growing up in a brothel?

Zechariah still dressed the part of a drab lawyer by day, with an extra jaunt to his step. It was as though he harbored a terrible (terribly lucrative!) secret at night – but this one, lawful! So he ruined young gentile women’s lives before they even started. It was a petty enough vengeance for his love being a crime. It was at night that the best suits (that hadn’t ‘disappeared’ on Ruth) came out once more. He wore half as much jewelry as a mobster, and a larger-than-life bucket hat rather similar to Oscar Wilde’s before he was taken away. (Sometimes, much to many a prying Englishman’s consternation, Zechariah spoke nothing but broken French in the brothel and feigned selective ignorance of the English language.) On top of it all: a decadent fur coat, and a bejeweled cane for fashion. His apparently giant prick was, alas, swallowed up by the fur trim.

“Esau! Jacob!” he called jubilantly as he tapped down the hall. “Mes enfants!”

The door knob turned at once, then refused to budge. Zechariah furrowed his brow, then fished through his key ring for the key he’d had snatched and copied on the sly.

Swinging the door open, Zechariah’s eyes skipped from one of Sonia’s arms to the other. Easing the door shut behind him, he smiled.

“My sons,” he said, then scooped up Esau to sit him on his knee.

There he was, with his sons … and his wife. Perhaps if he did not make eye contact, he could simply imagine her nodding along.

“I was looking at a few homes on the west side,” Zechariah mused. “With more than enough room for a family of four to entertain.”

All of them with too many guest rooms, but he was hoping to find a way to trade the beds out for things not even Uriel would see fit to sleep on.

French:

“My sons!”

She did not meet his gaze as he slipped into her personal bubble as was his wont to do. She tried not to recoil as he neared and scooped up HER son. At least the man wasn't a threat to the children, he seemed fond enough. She would give him that much. But nothing could ever stop the grating on her nerves. And then he began to speak of finding another home. He droned on about it and she wondered if he talked because he liked to hear his own voice, for she certainly had not uttered a peep to him as of yet and hardly had since their farce of a wedding. She had yet to forgive him for forcing it to happen despite her having changed her mind.

Finally, she turned a dispassionate gaze his way and muttered, "I am sure it's lovely." It was to her immense satisfaction as she watched her slightly smaller son, the one who Zech had propped up, got the telltale expression of having to poop written across his little face and the foul odor was due to tickle "daddy's" nose at any moment. Hell, she was sure that he might get a lesson in life when the boy probably pissed all over Zech's leg. She fought the urge to smirk.