Ten minutes later I was standing beside Richard at the fringes of the room, screened by the fronds of a tropical parlor plant, relaying the entire conversation to him in whispered tones. “What is it about me that makes that man believe I’d willingly go to an asylum? Heavens above!”

He laughed, eyes sparkling. “At least he isn’t suggesting you go as a patient.”

I cringed, highly aware once again of my connection to the asylum—the one I still kept from him. One I didn’t fully understand myself.

“So what did you say to him? It wouldn’t surprise me to hear you’d agreed to one or two visits.”

I blew out a breath. “For what purpose? To perform for a band of hopeless inmates?” I stopped the indelicate flow of thoughts, but Richard was eyeing me, openly judging my words. “Oh, leave off. You know as well as I and the rest of England that madness is a disease without a cure. What good would it do to play music for them? They’re broken in a way no one can truly fix.” I’d been arguing this point with myself in the privacy of my bedchamber for weeks now, every time I thought about that mysterious ward . . . or met her smiling eyes in that sketch. “I don’t give myself over to futile tasks, you know.”

He shrugged. “The Vivienne Mourdant I know always seemed drawn to the helpless and needy, even to the point of endangering herself. Much to my chagrin at times.”

I looked at this man with new appreciation, feeling warmly known by him. “You’re right, that is true.” Perhaps he wouldn’t be shocked by my secret plans for the future. “Richard, you mentioned changes in my life. The plans I had. I do want to aid the helpless and needy, it’s true.” I swallowed, growing brave. “But not those in asylums. People who actually can be helped—people with a future.”

“Oh?”

I’d spent months—no, years—preparing for this, planning and arranging things in my mind, waiting for the opportunity. Only in the weeks after Father’s death had I begun to put anything on paper, to consider my wild scheme a possibility and to let myself dream of it.

Make today count. That had become my motto, the thought I woke with every morning, and I could scarcely wait to see how it would play out.