She was. I was blessed with a healthy child, but I hardly wanted her in the cold too long.

“We’ll take the trains,” I said. “It will be warmer.”

Grace’s eyes lit. She liked the underground trains, though they continued to make me nervous.

We entered the station at the end of Ludgate Hill, and I bought the tickets. Grace hurried along the platform, towing me after her, and we stepped onto the train just before it pulled away.

The train ran into a tunnel, but before I could become too anxious, we emerged to the light of day on Farringdon Road.

I disliked this part of London—Clerkenwell—its streets and lanes made dark by a pall of smoke. Because of the cold weather, even more chimneys exuded smoke these days, coating us all in soot and turning the air to a smelly fug. Houses in this area were homes to working-class families, many of whom labored at the nearby brewery, which also emitted its share of smoke.

I led Grace along Charles Street, which crossed Hatton Garden and turned onto Leather Lane, lively with a market this morning, offering plenty of wares that might hold my interest any other time.

We hurried past the market stalls and made for a tiny artery called Baldwin’s Gardens, which led past St. Alban’s Church and a school opposite. A more salubrious route, I thought, than taking Grace past the brewery or near Coldbath Fields, a prison that lay too near the Foundling Hospital. A number of indigent men and women lingered near St. Alban’s, and I tugged Grace close as we passed.

At the end of Baldwin’s Gardens lay Gray’s Inn Road, and there I turned north. The fine squares of the men of law at Gray’s Inn lined the street, shutting us out from whatever parks and greens they enjoyed behind their high walls.

I knew my way around these streets from the almost-daily walk I’d done when I’d been with child, my feet carrying me again and again to the place I feared I’d have to leave my baby.

Grace trotted by my side, gazing with interest at a part of London she’d never seen. “Where are we going, Mum?”

“To Brunswick Square,” I said, not slowing. I decided she’d know soon enough, so I confessed. “To the Foundling Hospital.”

“Why are we going there?”

“Mr. McAdam asked me to.”

I did not want to tell her about the missing children, not yet. I was not certain how much it would upset her.

Grace seemed to see nothing sinister in visiting the Hospital, however. I kept a tight hold on her hand as we turned on Guilford Street, and slowed our steps before the gates and long courtyard to the massive gray building that had haunted me for the longest year of my life.