I’d thought it had been that awful nurse—what was her name? Duff or something. I’d thought she’d put me up to this, leaving the note and arranging the music, but it must have been him. He knew now that I knew. Somehow.

I glanced back to his face, craggy and shadowed, with new eyes. “You cannot keep me here.”

He clutched his bag, rising from the chair and looking me over. “The law says I can.”

No laws would bind me, though. Not this time. Slipping from his grasp was all that mattered now.

14

How sad it is that these great gentlemen should believe what anyone tells them and do not choose to judge for themselves! But it is always so.

~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Humblest of apologies, dear Byron. I cringed as I ripped the page from the back of his book of poems in the now-empty dayroom. My heart pounded with anticipation. After four days, my head had begun righting itself. I remembered everything, and I had my reasoning back.

I’d been handed over to slop duty with the amiable Lew Wiggins once again. It had been his idea, he’d told me, and it was a good one. Then when we were alone, he’d suggested I write a letter. “I’ll even deliver it myself,” he’d offered, and relief had poured through me.

I hastily scrawled two notes in the empty room as fast as my hand could scratch out the words and dropped the pen on the blotter. I tucked the notes into the frayed belt of my asylum gown—the blue gown of the acute ward—and hurried on with a steadying breath.

I caught up to Lew in the first corridor, where he was emptying pots into his rusty cart. “I have them.” I kept my voice low.

“Wait till my hands are clean. Help me finish.”

I nodded and bent to scrub the first chamber pot, instinctively holding my breath. I watched the boy work, agile and good-spirited. “You deserve so much more, Lew Wiggins.”

He popped up beside an unmade bed. “Who’s to say any of us deserves anything? I got a full belly and dry bed. A man can’t ask for much more.”

“Won’t you let me take you away from here? Someone will be coming for me, and I can take you along—help you find better work.”

He straightened, fisting his back with both hands. “I don’t ask nothing to make a few deliveries, miss. You don’t owe me nothing.”

“But life can be so much better than this, and I can help you. Please, won’t you let me?”

“Who’m I delivering to?”

“I may have to go and kidnap you then, if you’ll truly be that stubborn.”

Fear flashed in his eyes.