My gaze stopped at Dr. Thornhill, tall and confident with a look of deep-seated hostility—almost resentment—toward the lot of us. He glanced toward me for a flash as if by habit, assuring himself I was still there, then his attention shifted on.

At last the double doors opened, admitting a flood of daylight and dry chill, and a man of no great stature. I couldn’t even see him over the heads of the others lined up between me and the entrance. There was a formal-sounding welcome that echoed, and the men conversed for some moments while the doors were closed and latched against the November cold.

“How’d you manage it?” Clara whispered in the smallest voice beside me.

I turned on her with a look of incredulity. “Manage what?” Surely she didn’t mean—

“Bridget. How ever did you sneak her out?”

I glared. “Are you daft? I did no such thing.”

She cringed, eyes wide, which instantly deflated my anger.

I puffed out a breath. “Forgive me, Clara. These”—I jostled the cuffs on my wrist—“are the most unpleasant bracelets I’ve ever worn.”

She stifled a giggle behind her hand. “Oh but I’m sorry, Miss Vivienne. Sorry they did that to you.”

“Who else might have helped her? Did she ask for help?”

“I bet it was her.”

“Who? What do you mean?”

Clara’s face pinched. “Her, the ghost. Rose. There’s no one else who could have done it.”

My flesh was cold. “You can’t be serious.”

“Walls and bars don’t stop them, you know.”

“Why would Rose help Bridget, though?”

Before she could answer, Dr. Thornhill strode between the rows with his visitor, slicing through our whispered conversation. “These are our acute patients. I suggest you begin with them. The others are here for the duration, and they are quite beyond help.”

I flinched at the grim prognosis.

“Nonsense.” The visitor stepped into our row, and I glimpsed with utter shock the only face that could yank my mind from Bridget—Mr. Frederick Harford. He looked down the row and his focus came to rest on me with the slightest smile. “No one, Dr. Thornhill, is beyond help.”

I stared back at him, my flesh prickling as our gazes met and held, his lips tipping up just slightly more at the corners. I had sent for him, in a way, hadn’t I? What a lifetime ago that seemed. So many things had crowded the mystery of Rose from my mind, and I almost didn’t know what to do with his presence here, so very close and startling—and not what I needed just now.

“Well, then. I suppose you came prepared with your own instruments, so you may begin when you wish.”

“I have a rather rudimentary collection, but I was given to understand that a pianoforte exists here on the grounds. I had hoped I might avail myself of it.”