“Thank you.” She took the basket from me and set it down, then stepped out and shut the door behind her. I heard Malcolm bump into the wall as he stumbled back. “Why are you really here?” she asked. We were cramped on the landing now, face to face in the darkness.

“Because I want to know why you’re hiding from the British. I need to know.”

“Miss Coates, why are. You. Here?”

She said the last two words separately, filling them both with power. Suddenly I became aware of my own blindness to the situation. No amount of explaining would put me—a highborn lady—in the position I was in now. To answer her question, I’d need to begin with the story of a girl who’d once been a wrecker in West End, who’d been living a lie for years and was now suffocating and utterly desperate to feel something true.

Mrs. Burgin sighed with impatience, her breath whispering past my cheek. “Go home, Miss Coates. Before you damage yourself beyond saving. You haven’t the slightest idea what you’re doing.”

“I do, Mrs. Burgin,” I insisted. “I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for you.” I felt pulled toward her strength. Intrigued by the mystery of her. Even her sharpness drew me in.

She looked past me. “And you? Are you here for answers, too?”

“I am here for Miss Coates,” Malcolm said.

Her gaze returned to me. “You both ought to have a higher regard for your lives. Come. Follow me.” She slipped between us and glided down the stairs, stopping at the bottom, where the light of the streetlamps found her. “You want answers, Miss Coates, but so do I—and I shall have mine first.”

We followed her without a word, venturing back into the streets.

Though she was even shorter than me, she walked quicker than a sandpiper. She took us north on Water Street—then north and still farther north. With the city blocks disappearing behind us, anticipation buzzed inside me. My lungs opened. My stride lengthened. The night’s sights, sounds, and smells sharpened. I felt like I was breathing through my own skin.

As we reached the outskirts of the city, we passed a field of makeshift shacks. Stray dogs pecked at dying cook fires. Men’s arguing voices rumbled to my ears. Like the Holy Ground to the west of us, I knew these were brothels and molly houses—brothels catering to men who favored men. Places where the orphaned and destitute often ended up. Where I might’ve ended up, if not for Miss Coates.

Leaving the field behind, we crept past a pair of snoring Hessian sentinels guarding a shipyard, where hulls curved into the sky like giants’ carcasses, and finally came to a ropewalk that stretched down to the East River.