Indwelled by God, lamp for his flame to light a sin-dark world.

I jumped when a key rattled in the main door, metal scraping keyhole, and it swung open on oiled hinges. I exhaled at the sight of Dr. Turner standing there with a shriveled, aged man on his arm. They closed the door and slowly moved forward, the unknown man shuffling along the tile in stocking feet, craning his neck to look up at me. They were dwarfed in the grand room, these two men.

“How did you even know I’d—”

“Where else would you go?” He smiled down at me when they’d neared. “Tonight of all nights. I did check to make certain, before bringing him down.” Mitchell stopped before me with a small bow, indicating the man beside him. “I’d like to introduce Mr. John Michelson of South Leeds. Lately, of the men’s ward of Hurstwell.”

“Oh.” I straightened, hand to my throat. Michelson. Anna’s John Michelson? “A pleasure, Mr. Michelson.”

They shuffled together to the visitor chair, where the man sank into the formal thing with his ratty asylum-issued garments and puffed out a rattling sigh. “It’s a long way here.”

“But hopefully worth the trip,” Mitchell said.

“Indeed. Any word on my girl is worth a trip anywhere.”

“Mr. Michelson here was brought in from the same workhouse as our Anna. I knew I recognized the name when I read it in her file. It seems they’d fallen into debt and landed here after the workhouse.”

Yet the man seemed as healthy in mind as the doctor himself. “He’s . . . a patient here?”

He shrugged, lowering his voice to keep the older man from hearing. “When they cannot care for themselves at the workhouse, the parish sees fit to send them here. Feeble bodies are the equivalent of feeble minds, don’t you know.”

“Hmm.” I swiveled on the stool to face the watery brown eyes of the man now wilted on the chair beside me. What striking dark hair the man possessed. “You are Anna’s husband, then.”

A little light cracked through his features. “Annika. Her name is Annika Freidl, and she was the finest dancer this side of the channel. Nothing short of miraculous.”

His hands trembled in his lap, and I placed my fingers over his. I felt the warmth, just as I had when his wife had done the same for me.

He looked at me, softening. There was a deep knowing in that gaze, a depth of sorrow as one who’d seen and lived much.

“You’ve been through a great deal together, haven’t you?”