“I didn’t want to leave,” Constance said. “I did not want to go with Quinn when he showed up that morning. I still have no idea how he found me. I worried for you so when I left, worried for all of you.” She hadn’t had the luxury of worrying only for them, though. “You received my letter?”

“You addressed it to the housekeeper, and she kindly let me have it. I was not in a position to reply.”

Constance let that admission pass unremarked, for now. “And after I left, then what?”

“We managed. You taught us much. When Soames kept us apart, when he pitted us against one another with his false friendship and fleeting approval, we all suffered. When I shoved a book under Miss Sophie’s door, when I saved some of my bread to pass along to Alexander at prayers, when I slipped Miss Helen a deck of cards so she could play solitaire, we all benefited. I bought the place, you know.”

Rothhaven was tall and strong now, also confident in a way a man who’d been spared that hell could never be. Even Quinn didn’t have quite this much…what? Awareness of self? Self-possession? Gravitas? Whatever it was, Constance wanted to paint it.

“You bought that awful, nasty…you bought it?”

“When Nathaniel found me, taking ownership of my prison was one of the objectives that motivated me to leave, to learn to live in the world again, albeit a world nearly as circumscribed as a hospital. In that larger world, the letters I sent reached their destinations. I had coin and influence, even without leaving the Hall. My very signature had power.”

He relished that power now, and Constance was glad he had it. “What did you do with the hospital?”

“Eventually, I closed it. With the exception of Miss Sophie, we weren’t mad, and she was certainly not violent.”

“She was violently convinced Napoleon had married her during the Peace of Amiens.”

“And that he was coming for her any day. Where is the harm in such a fantasy? She’s living with a niece now, writing letters almost daily to the deposed emperor. He writes back sometimes, courtesy of the local curate’s epistolary talents. For Miss Sophie, the Corsican has not yet gone to his heavenly reward.”

“That is…marvelous.” Brilliant, in fact. “And Mr. Alexander?” A shy, slight fellow also given to the falling sickness.

“In Leeds, teaching maths at a boys’ school run by Quakers.”

“Perfect. Miss Helen?” She’d been such a sad, quiet young lady. Even at meals, she’d had an air of alone-ness.

“Married to Alexander. I gave her my violin, and she became very proficient. She teaches music at the same school. They have a pair of boys, both rambunctious, both saddled with the middle name Robert.”