Alice had imagined that if her husband would enter, she'd just look at him victoriously. It didn't matter what he would do. She had regained some power. Even if it was the power to do something that enraged him.

But that was not what happened. Indeed she did turn, but she barely managed to put her chin up in defiance. Her eyes didn't show it. They were fixed on what she could see of him behind Mr. Meijer, much like a startled animal might freeze and stare at a hunter.

Tobias had never been the type for fighting, but his knuckles were itching for contact with the stranger's face. How dared he behave like that, with Tobias' wife, under Tobias's own roof, and then make such a flippant remark.

"Get out!" he ordered.

Hashem. Hashem! His heart was racing, like a rabbit chased by a fox. Its ungainly leaps felt like they might successfully make their way up his throat and out his mouth.

He had just set her up to have a husband who wanted her dead, and he had succeeded. It was everything he thought he hoped for.

How did he take it back?

“If something happens to her, I know the constable.”

How long for Mr. Benjamin to miss his paychecks if this fellow killed him there and then? Oh, God.

[CW: reference to domestic violence]

Alice's eyes darted up at Mr. Meijer. Was he helping her?

Would Tobias harm her? She feared it. He had grabbed her to restrain her or put her in her room, but he hadn't hit her before. She wasn't so sure he wouldn't now. He could if he wanted to. She was miles from friends and family with no money or belongings of her own, invisible and irrelevant. The law that Mr. Meijer appealed to might give women in his circles protection. The only thing the law had ever given her lot was the back of its hand.

Still, she shifted ever so lightly, to be hidden completely behind him.

"And if you don't get of my property now, I'll have the constable arrest your for trespassing! Get out!" Tobias retorted. "Just get out!"

Zechariah glanced back at Alice. She looked how he felt.

He took a tentative step forward, toward both the door Mr. Appleton had come from … and the man himself. Then, a step to the side, still keeping him in his sight. He half-circled around him like he was a wild boar.

There was another glance toward Alice when his back was finally to the exit.

Alice felt something inside of her clutch tight as the man slowly walked away, clearing the space between her and her husband. She met his eyes when he was at the exit, begging, fearful, ashamed. But she was on her own now. Her hands clenched the edges of the piano seat. Then she turned to her husband, suddenly with rage, pushing her chin forward and meeting his eyes defiantly. If he would hurt her, she might as well be ready to fight back.

Tobias was not a confident man, less so after this fresh humiliation, but he was livid enough to stare the man down as he passed. Then he looked at Alice, her defiant look only adding to the anger. He strode over, grabbed her arm and pulled her up. "And you! Haven't you learned, acting like some common whore?!"

He had not stepped out yet, but he wished he had. This was not his life. Not his wife, nor his lover, nor his funeral.

Tobias turned on her. Zechariah swallowed.

He grabbed her.

“Get- off her.”

The words stuck in his throat, but once they were out, he clenched his own fists.

“You married a pregnant woman young enough to be your daughter.”

Alice's defiance melted like snow as Tobias approached. She didn't fight back when he pulled her up, but automatically put her free arm in front of her face to shield herself from a potential blow.

And then Mr. Meijer spoke. She hadn't let herself be moved by his insults but had played the game as hard as she could. And while her husband had shouted and pulled her up she hadn't cried. She had merely braced herself. But when he mentioned the age difference, she suddenly broke down in tears, as if those words had suddenly reminded her vividly of how much like a lost child she felt and how she had in fact been wronged and hurt.