Morning broke over Wolthrope in a pall of gray, the sun a faint smear behind the factory chimneys belching bck plumes. Eleanor stood at the warped door, her breath misting as James adjusted his crutch, his redcoat swapped for a patched waistcoat scavenged from a ragman. “They’ll take me,” he said, his jaw set, though his eyes flickered with doubt. He’d heard of a clerk’s post at the Crown Office—pen and ink, not steel and blood—and hobbled off, leaving her to watch his uneven shadow vanish into the throng of borers and hawkers.

  She turned inward, the room dim despite the hour, its air thick with the sour tang of unwashed linen. Eldric sat by the hearth, rolling James’s wooden horse across the floor, his crooked legs spyed. “Papa’ll be grand, won’t he?” he asked, voice bright. Eleanor forced a nod, her smile a brittle mask as she swept the dust from cracked boards. Margaret muttered nonsense from her pallet, “Bread’s burning,” though no oven glowed, and Henry stared at the wall, his gnarled hands idle. Their minds slipped further each day, and she felt the weight of their care like a yoke.

  Hours dragged, marked by the distant cng of mill bells, until James returned, his limp heavier but his face alight. “I’ve got it, Nell,” he said, leaning against the jamb. “Six shillings a week—enough to keep us.” He grinned, a rare echo of the man who’d courted her with wildflowers. She kissed his scarred hand, tasting ink and sweat, and for a moment, hope fluttered—delicate, perilous—within her breast. Could this mend them? Could ink on parchment stitch their raveled lives?

  She lit the candle that night, its fme frail against the dark, and watched James trace Eldric’s name on a scrap of paper. “We’ll make it now,” he said, voice firm. But in her marrow, Eleanor felt a tremor—a whisper that this reprieve was but a cruel jest before the fall.