“It’s no wonder you hear music,” said Clara. “After living so long in such beauty, who’d ever want to go without it?”

I smiled at her and she returned it. How odd that here, of all places, I should find like-minded souls, yet it was the only place in all of England protected from the influence of society’s disapproval. It was too bad, really, that I had to turn down that Harford man’s offer to bring light into these dark asylums after I escaped. There was something precious here that I couldn’t bear to walk completely away from . . . yet I wasn’t sure I could ever return.

“Well, I for one would give my last farthing to hear you play a single song.” The voice came from behind me, and I spun.

“Bridget!”

I stood and hugged her, and she stiffened, patted my back with awkward movements. She received my thanks with her good-natured shrug and a smile as she squeezed in between Clara and me. Her responses to all my questions were vague answers, her natural spark dimmed by that day in solitary.

“Why risk yourself to help me, Bridget?”

“We’re friends now, aren’t we?” So simple, so honest, so very Bridget. I’d gotten the chance to see her once more, but leaving her behind still felt like a betrayal.

Before I knew it, the most warm, inviting display of colors stretched across the sky just outside the barred windows of the dayroom as the nurses turned up the gaslights. My heart pounded hard enough to give me away beneath the ugly gown that I’d soon be able to burn in my lovely oaken hearth at home. Until then, though, I was a jumble of nerves.

When no one watched me, I reached deftly under the bench where I’d hidden the packet of knife and matches. My fingers spidered along under the lip of the wood, searching, but they found nothing. Chest tightening, I double-checked my location on the bench and stretched out a bit farther, and my roving fingertips met with, not the packet, but paper.

I picked it out of the lip and held it scrunched in my fist until I was certain no one watched. Then with eyes up to keep guard, I smoothed it out on my palm and glanced down. It was a scrap torn off a yellowed Haydn piece. Just a few words were scrawled in the familiar spidery writing from that mysterious note I hadn’t dreamed up after all.

I never escaped.

You won’t either.