Glancing back at the speck of Hurstwell, then at the guarded gate, I prayed and stepped forward boldly to knock on the door. Footsteps crunched somewhere in the open yard behind me. Frantic, I knocked again. A voice came from inside. “Is someone there?”

“It’s me, Vivienne Mourdant. Let me in.”

“Good gracious!” The door opened and there he stood, his bearded face gruff but welcoming. “Come in, come in.”

I stumbled over the threshold and stood shaking before him. My teeth chattered and words poured out of my nervous brain. “It’s time this comes to an end, Canon Harford. Whatever your intentions were for manipulating me into this place, it has gone far enough. You said so yourself, so now you must end it and get me out.”

He blinked at me for a moment. “I assume you’ve found her, then?”

“Who? Wait, you know about—”

“Rose. Yes.” He waved me toward a three-legged stool before the fire. “That was the reason you were meant to come, of course. The reason he arranged all of this.”

“He?” I stiffened, feeling the controlling power of my father even now. Somehow he’d managed to chart my course for me yet again. “He set all this up?”

“Well, he sort of . . . urged you toward the asylum through different circumstances. Then when it seemed you might quit, he made it a little harder for you to leave. I’m certain he never meant to leave you in there for long.” He shook his head. “I had no hand in entrapping you here, I assure you.”

“Exactly where do you fit into this little scheme?”

“Well, he merely suggested that I invite you to accompany me as pianist to perform my clinical trials—introduce you to Hurstwell and the patients—and hopefully one day, to her. It was all his idea when he heard of my research. And I admit, I was keen to locate Rose too.”

Surprise coursed through me. “How are you connected to Rose?”

“Oh, I’m not, I’m afraid. Not yet, anyway, but I’d like to be.” He fell onto a larger chair with a long exhale. “It has been many years since I’ve heard her play, but I’ve never before encountered such a rare gift. For a brief time, she stunned the world. She was something of a child prodigy, but then she vanished. To this place, apparently. He truly wanted you to rescue her, of course. It was his deepest wish to see her play again.”

I stared. “If he wanted me to find her so badly, why didn’t he simply tell me about her when he was alive? Bring me to the asylum himself? He never breathed a word of this woman—not in my entire life.”

Harford shook his head. “If he’d merely told you about her, some patient in a lunatic asylum, how might you have reacted?”