“I mean no threat, Lew. But life outside of this place can be grander than you know. I mean to prove it to you, whether you let me or not. They cannot threaten you into staying, no matter how afraid you are.”

He moved away and knelt to grab another pot. The contents sloshed into his wheelbarrow, then he went to work scrubbing. “I’ve a sister.” He spit out the words without a glance my direction. “They’re not always good to her, and I’m all she’s got left.”

“She’s a nurse here?”

“Patient.”

That single word realigned everything. “I see. Tell me about her, Lew.”

He sighed, bending to place a clean pot in place of the one he’d picked up. “Her name’s Violet, and she’s just as pretty as her name. Like a flower, she is, but they won’t treat her that way, you know. They don’t see the point in her stayin’ alive, stuck in a chair like she is, with her mind ’alf gone. They don’t know what a gem she is.” His face shadowed as he spoke of her. “Or how fine she used to be, before she got sick and disappeared into herself.”

I shuddered. “Oh, Lew.”

“She never left me, even when me ma did for days at a time. She’d sit and croon over me, kissing me and tucking me in. I can’t leave her.”

“No, I see that. You cannot leave Hurstwell.” I handed him another clean chamber pot, and he placed it under the next bed.

“So where am I delivering?”

Right, the letters. “It’s only two. The first one goes to a Mr. Marcel Beauchene of Lowergate, the other to Richard Cartwright of Devon House. Can you remember that? Richard Cartwright.”

He gave a nod and paused to wash his hands in the basin. “Beauchene, Cartwright.”

I’d only intended to write to Marcel, but the man fairly pulsed with the erratic strains of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp Minor—volatile, surprising, with periods of dramatic trills offset by low, heavy notes I knew to avoid. He’d been nearly heroic in his protection of me throughout my childhood, but whenever I did anything unreasonable—such as finding myself institutionalized under a false name—well, he was quick to wash his hands of the situation. Even if he had been the one set on me continuing here in the first place. I’d never been able to predict the man’s actions, so I included a letter to Richard as well, instructing him to ask for Cora Fletcher as soon as possible.

I wiped my hands on an old rag when we were done and extracted the letters, holding them out. He reached for them, but I snatched them back. “You’ll truly deliver them?” It was quite a trip from the asylum. It was a big request . . . and my only chance.