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I draw her forward until her forehead presses into my chest and I can feel the hitch of her breath against me, the way her composure finally gives up the fight. One arm comes around her shoulders, the other settling at her back. I keep her close enough that she needn’t hold herself upright.

“I dinnae think she can,” Ellen says against me, the words breaking apart as they come, raw and jagged. “He’ll notice. He’ll wonder why she’s never wi’ child, why nothin’ ever comes of it, and then—” She drags in a breath that catches halfway. “And if he does, I’m afraid he’ll decide it’s another reason to punish her.”

Her hands fist briefly in my coat, and I feel the tremor that runs through her as she tries—and fails—to pull herself back together.

“Or maybe,” she adds, her voice turning bitter and ugly, “maybe he’ll do us all a favour and drink himself to death. Choke on his own vomit in some filthy room and leave the world quieter for it.”

The words are vicious, unladylike, unforgivable by any standard that has never protected a woman like Aileen. I won’t pretend I hadn’t thought the same thing.

I tighten my hold and let her cry without apology or restraint, hoping my grip tells her that there’s nothing wrong with her grief or her anger.

There’s only one thing wrong in this situation, and it’s that sorry excuse of a man.

Holding her here, feeling the way her body trembles as if she’s learned the shape of fear too well, makes something settle with the same awful clarity as everything else today.

This is where her mistrust comes from. Not caution born of pride or stubbornness, but knowledge she carries in her bones of what marriage becomes when the world turns a blind eye. What the world asks women to endure, forgives men for, but calls it sacred even when it isn’t safe. She knows, in a way men rarely have to know, what happens when a woman is bound to the wrong man.

And I can’t fault her for it.

Not when she’s standing here, mourning a life that could so easily have been her own if fortune had leaned the wrong way.

“We’re gatherin’ what your ma needs,” Ellen says at last, easing back enough to get the words out clearly. “Quietly. Róisín and I. So no one notices.”

She lets out a thin, furious breath.

“I cannae fault Aileen,” Ellen whispers. “Not for a moment. And I’m so angry I’m half plannin’ a murder, but there’s nothin’ I can do.”

I know this kind of helplessness; the urge to act, only to be met by the knowledge that the world keeps turning while someone suffers. The fury of seeing what’s wrong, and being powerless to set it right.

She takes a few shaky breaths and gathers herself again, as she always does, pressing the hurt down into something practical. I loosen my hold slowly, giving her the space to step back without feeling cast off.

She does, then swipes angrily at her cheeks with the heel of her hand and straightens her shoulders as though composure were something she could reclaim by force.

She doesn’t look at me right away.

“She—your ma—asked us to gather everything,” Ellen repeats, clearing her throat. “There’s more than one trip’s worth, so I should probably get on with it.”

Her words ought to end the moment and send her back to the work, but the injustice of it sits too heavy between us. I can’t let her go yet.

“There should be a hand that reaches her before she has to beg for a drink that’ll spare her a life further bound to him. If I had the power to do more,” I add, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said all day, “I’d use it.”

Ellen looks at me then with a steadiness that’s almost frightening. Her eyes are wet, but she is not fragile. She’s steel with a crack in it. The sight of her near wrecks me—so brave, so furious, so heartbreakingly lovely I can scarcely bear it.

“I dinnae say this lightly,” she mutters, “but I hope the drink takes him before he takes her.”

The words still don’t shock me.

“I hope it takes him, so Aileen can have a new life. One where she’s no’ afraid and sleeps without dread. Maybe one where she finds true love.”

True love.

The phrase should sound foolish here, yet the moment Ellen says them, they don’t sound foolish at all.

Not romance in the storybook sense. Love as shelter, as steadiness, as the simple mercy of being safe with someone.

I wish to be the proof such a thing can exist. I want it so sharply it aches. I wish for her to look at me and know, without doubt, that there are men who don’t turn from their marriage vows.

I want to show her there’s a kind of love that doesn’t bruise, bargain, or demand a woman become smaller to be kept. I want to tell her outright, right here in this corridor with grief pressing in on every side, that I’d spend my life proving it to her if she’d let me.