Fanny shook her head, taking the locket from him.

“No,” she said. “It’s a picture of our muv—mother.” She slid a thumbnail into the side of the locket and flicked it open. I bent forward to look, but the miniature inside was hard to see, shadowed as it was by Jamie’s body.

“May I?”

Fanny handed me the locket and I turned to hold it close to the candle. The woman inside had dark, softly curly hair like Fanny’s—and I thought I could make out a resemblance to Jane in the nose and set of the chin, though it wasn’t a particularly skillful rendering.

Behind me, I heard Jamie say, quite casually, “Frances, no man will ever take ye against your will, while I live.”

There was a startled silence, and I turned round to see Fanny staring up at him. He touched her hand, very gently.

“D’ye believe me, Frances?” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered, after a long moment, and all the tension left her body in a sigh like the east wind.

Jemmy leaned against me, head pressing my elbow, and I realized that I was just standing there, my eyes full of tears. I blotted them hastily on my sleeve and pressed the locket closed. Or tried to; it slipped in my fingers and I saw that there was a name inscribed inside it, opposite the miniature.

Faith, it said.

I COULDN’T GO to sleep. I’d given Fanny her tea, provided her with suitable cloths—not at all to my surprise, she already knew how to use them—and talked gently to her, careful not to raise any more of her personal ghosts.

When Fanny had come to us, Jamie and I had agreed that we wouldn’t try to question her about any of the bits of memory she dropped aloud—like the bad men on the ship and what had happened to Spotty the dog—unless she seemed to want to talk about them. I thought she would, sooner or later. Bree and Roger had agreed as well, though I could see how curious Brianna was.

Fanny had mentioned Jane now and then, offhandedly, but in a way designed—I thought—to keep a sense of her sister alive. Seeing her distress tonight, though … Jane was much closer to her than I’d thought. And now that I’d seen Jane’s face … I couldn’t forget it.

Knowing only what I did know about the girls’ lives in the brothel in Philadelphia was upsetting; I really hadn’t wanted to find out how they’d come there. I still didn’t … but I couldn’t keep the worm of speculation at bay; it had burrowed into my brain and was squirming busily through my thoughts, killing sleep.

Bad men on a ship. A dog thrown into the sea. A pet dog? A family—if Fanny and Jane had been with their parents on a ship that encountered pirates … or even a wicked captain, like Stephen Bonnet … I felt the hairs rise on my forearms at thought of him, but with remembered anger, not fear. Someone like him could easily have taken a look at the two lovely young girls and decided that their parents could be dispensed with.