”This is our daughter.” The First Lady looked at the squirming bundle in her graying husband’s arms with pursed lips and sceptical eyes. Her husband of less than a year had been desperate for a child, and his insistent pushing every night had been proof enough of what he wanted. It had been what, six months? Surely he did not think that she was taking contraceptives, or that she was… barren. But the little girl in his arms proved otherwise. ”Really.” Came the dry, cracked response that sounded so very unlike the breathy, tepid voice that had been trademarked to Lady Comstock. “I highly doubt that it is my daughter, Zachary.” Anger flashed through the cerulean eyes of the Prophet, and Amelia did not flinch. She had seen that look often enough on her husband’s ageing face whenever someone had the misfortune to displease him, and never had it been directed at her, his bride. But though she loved him, Amelia was not a fool. She had not been pregnant, nor had she given birth. ”Explain how she is our daughter, Zachary… —Humour me.” “She was created of the Cloth. A gift from the Lord to compensate for your…” He did not finish his sentence. The visible hurt in Amelia’s features silenced the man who wrote speeches in his sleep and practised them in the bath. But though he had made her pious, she was not a half-wit, nor was her belief in miracles so strong as to accept such wild, wild claims. The child was not of her womb, but she certainly had Comstock’s look to her. Who was the mother?! Feeling a flash of rage bubble inside of her, the First Lady swallowed down the carefully constructed, soft and passive aggressive demeanour of a high-society pushover who lived to serve and please her husband as she surged forwards, gathering up what height she had. Never before had she looked at the Prophet with anything other than love, but disgust and hatred marred her gaze, and she saw that same loathing, though his was mixed with disappointment, in her husband’s cool eyes. “Get your bastard out of my house.”
