Miss Corvus remained silent. The malachite table was arrayed beside her, just as it had been on Effie’s last visit. The same tray sat upon it, holding a glass of water, a silver pitcher, and a brown bottle of patent medicine. Despite the evidence of the sickroom, Miss Corvus did appear to be improving in health. She sat taller in her green damask chair, her eyes alert and her face no longer waxen with illness.

“Surely, there’s no point in keeping secrets anymore,” Effie said. “I already know the worst of it.”

“You should never have known any of it at all,” Miss Corvus snapped back at last. “What good has it done you to learn these dreadful things?”

“It is undeniably painful,” Effie admitted. “But—”

“From the first, you’ve been determined to disobey me,” Miss Corvus interrupted. “Every chance I’ve given you to spread your wings, you have used the opportunity to fly backward rather than forward.”

“Learning about my past was the only way I could go forward,” Effie told her. “You of all people should understand. The past may not decide our future but it certainly informs it. If you knew about the life I had before—”

“I knew nothing,” Miss Corvus said tightly. “Only that you were emaciated and filthy, and moved as silently as a cat. Had I not turned around at the flower stall in that precise moment, I’d never have known you’d stolen my reticule. I’d never have known you at all.” She adjusted the neck of her dressing gown with uncharacteristically restless fingers. “As for that creature…the woman you insist on calling mother…had I any knowledge of what she’d done to you, I’d never have criticized your fear of heights. Perhaps I was wrong to do so in any case. I might have guessed—”

“No one could have guessed at such cruelty,” Nell declared from her place by the window. “That a mother should treat her child so! Any child. My heart breaks for you, Effie.”

“Your heart needn’t trouble itself on my account,” Effie said. “I wanted understanding, and now I have it.” It hurt her, yes. But she couldn’t regret the knowledge of it. There were only a few finer points on which she still needed clarification. She turned to Miss Corvus. “Did you pay her for me?”

Miss Corvus’s hand stilled at her throat. “I took you to her that day, intending to give her a piece of my mind. She had a rented bed in a communal room in the slum. The state of it. Of her.” Her lip curled with disdain. “I’d already founded the orphanage. The trustees and I anticipated choosing girls from the workhouse. But when I saw the conditions in which you’d been living, and when that woman offered you to me—”

Effie’s brows shot up. “She offered me to you?”