Alice turned just as the man reached out to touch her cousin. She could see the way he looked at Lory. It made her feel sick. Alice was lost, but she wouldn't allow the same thing to happen to her cousin. And certainly not through such a rude stranger who couldn't keep his hands to himself! Someone had to help her.

Her own sorrows were forgotten for the moment. She rushed forward. "Don't touch my cousin!" There was some power in having nothing to lose.

Young man. She hated young men, for different reasons than she hated old men, for different reasons than she hated middle aged men. As soon as drawers dropped? God’s shame wept, for Eve was the second draft. There was nothing left to love about a man once he’d shown himself both to God’s daylight and Lory’s night.

Especially Lory’s night.

Lory laughed as though he’d said the funniest thing in the world – but the laugh shot up two startled octaves when an unexpected ‘savior’ launched into view.

“Alice! Please!” she called out, aghast.

Oh no. How much did she see?

“It’s not-”

The man held his arms up, though waved a hand dismissively at Lory when she tried to speak.

“Is your sister for sale, too?”

Lory blanched.

For a second Alice looked as though she had been slapped in the face as she processed the words and their meaning. Then she understood. How dared he imply such a thing about Lory!? About her!? Her anger about man's shamelessness added to the silent anger that had been building up over the past few weeks. People had suggested plenty of indecent things about her, both in Whitby and in Castleton.

"How dare ye speak to us like that! Leave or I'll... or I'll tell the police that yer makin' indecent proposals!"

Rather than afraid, the man just looked amused. Smug.

“Sorry, girls,” he said unapologetically, then looked to Lory. “See you later … Ruby.”

One of their neighbors’ boats had gone under with a full net of fish, once. Lory had been cleaning nets with the soon-to-be widow. She remembered her face, slack-jawed and ashen. Her hands had kept moving with the relentless forward trod of a clock, even as everything else seemed to freeze in time above them.

Lory closed her mouth, because she knew what it looked like to gape.

Faces passed, blurred into colors.

“Alice,” she said monotonously. “That’s-”

How we eat.

She clenched her hands, ran fingers over her hair (but don’t pull, someone might notice the bald spots). Wrenched her shoulders back with a scream that didn’t pass her lungs. Clutched her arms and let out a sharp breath through teeth, unclear whether it was a laugh or sob.

“Thank you for your bravery, Alice.”

It wasn’t her fault.

What she’d give to pretend it was.

Alice was relieved that the man left them alone, but his final words still rang in her ears. She turned to her cousin. Lory's face did not put her at ease. She looked mortified. And when she spoke it sounded unnatural. This was not the confident older cousin she knew, the girl who always seemed to know how to handle situations. Why hadn't she done anything to stop that horrible man? Her tongue was as sharp as any fisherlass's if it needed to be.

She already knew why.

Alice put a hand on her cousin's back. "He was awful," she tried to comfort the other girl.

Awful as the situation was, for the time being, she felt like a person again.

"Lory... what 'e said... It's not true, is it? You wouldn't... wouldn't do that, would ye?"

Lory was stiff against her arm. She smiled at Alice’s attempt to comfort, but it was a pulled in resignation rather than the softening of relief.

Then came the dreaded question. Lory crossed her arms, leaned back against Alice. Stared heavenward.

Gulls cackled. Merchants hollered. Sunset approached.

“We’re happier this way, Alice.”

Her voice was hollow. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Alice or herself more.

She had half expected it. Yet she had hoped her cousin would deny it. Now, being faced with someone possibly even more miserable than herself, she was close to bursting into tears all over. She put an arm around Lory, not caring about anyone watching. There had been too much crying and hugging and arguing already not to draw attention, but all she cared about now was comforting Lory.

"Oh Lory. Why? Yer worth more than some coin, don't ye know? And ye could end up like me."

So much for comforting.

End up like her. End up like her. What did she think Lory thought she was doing? Trying to lock down some good-for-nothing boy whose promises came and went with the waves? Her lips pulled back in a close-mouthed sneer.

“Alice.” She spat her name like a profanity, this time. “If I marry a man, it’s to inherit – and fast. You believed in a boy, and look where that got you! Don’t you want more than life as some man’s property?”

Lory might as well have struck her. And she would have preferred it, for Lory's words and their poison cut deeper. Aye, she was a man's property now. She and her unborn child. And Tobias, though much older than herself, didn't look as if he was about to fall over and die any given moment. The rest of her life was his now and she knew it. But to hear it so explicitly from her cousin's mouth still knocked the breath out of her.

She glanced at the cart, so as not to have to look at Lory. Her fingers wrapped around a turnip. She spoke quietly: "I only meant that ye could end up pregnant with no one to claim t' bairn, and then ye won't 'ave a choice. A man can pick you." And she'd have to be grateful for it too.

[[CW: Abortion mention.]]

Immediately, guilt washed over her. How embarrassing was it to have to live with the entire course of her life changing because Alice thought standing up would work?

What was worse: the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced. Her life was better than Alice’s. Her life could get snuffed out any one of these given nights, but at least it was her life. The money was better, too. Hers.

She crouched beside Alice, head turned away from her but voice conspiratorially low.

“Or,” she ventured, letting a couple pass before continuing on, “if the prophylactic faild, I could have skipped town for a few months, said I was serving, left them to a better life than ours at a church and come on back.”

Which was a lot more involved than swallowing some ‘famous female pills’, but … she didn’t want Alice to know she’d do something like that.