I stared at the woman’s slender back swathed in a too-large uniform. She turned her face, and in the sunlight her profile seemed softer—more vulnerable beneath the thin veneer of bitterness. How those gaslights changed the look of everything.

“You look exactly like the woman he left her for—red hair and all. She was telling Branson that once. I don’t suppose you are the other woman, are you? It would be uncanny—”

“Aye there, music lady, I need some more pins.” It was a female voice across the room, direct and loud but friendly around the edges. A wiry inmate named Bridget Hurley waved me toward the back, where clothesline was strung above our heads like webs.

I found the baskets of pins neatly stacked and brought her one. She took a few with a nod of thanks and jammed them down onto a few garments. “They’ll chew your ear right off now, won’t ’ey?” She nodded with a wry smile toward the women. “Thought you might do with a rescue.”

“It isn’t so bad. After the night shifts in this dreary place, their voices are like a symphony.”

One dark eyebrow shot up. “Wouldn’t pay to hear that sort o’ music. The song of the insane.”

“I don’t believe they all are. Clara, for instance.” I looked over at the woman in question, who was scrubbing grayish linens with a cheerful vigor. “I believe someone’s put her here because she discovered their secrets. She’s a terrible gossip, you know.” I thought of Rosamond, of the possibility that someone had put her away and she mightn’t even be mad, either. “Is such a thing possible?” I held my breath, looking away so as not to seem overly eager for her answer.

Bridget dropped a handful of pins on the table before me and paused, studying my face from a proximity no lady would have tolerated. “Irish, are yeh? Must be, with hair like that.” She was staring at me, and her eyes held as much sanity as Clara’s.

I touched my long red hair tucked back in a knot as I watched her fly through her work, those large dark eyes standing out against white skin. “My grandmother was Scottish.”

“Come along then and help me carry this.” She hoisted a basket of wet, wrung-out linens, and I grabbed one end, wicker digging into my arm as we moved toward the far corner just inside the open doorway to the fenced-in yard.

It was more tranquil here, cotton and linen softness without the steam pumping in one’s face and the clatter and bang of machines. I mopped my forehead with my sleeve and looked to Bridget, who’d already poured her abundance of energy back into digging through the sheets, then sweeping them up to pin.