“I doubt it very much,” Alva said, a weary droopiness around her shoulders. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and reminding himself that no amount of railing at the sky was going to help Rose de Boer. It took some doing—the piece in the New York Tribune three years prior exposing the horrific practices of the Bloomingdale asylum and resulting in the release of at least a dozen unjustly imprisoned inmates had been brought fresh to the front of his mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My outrage got the better of me. I shouldn’t be placing it onto you.” Especially given what he knew about her own past. Atrocities were not new to Alva Webster.

“There’s no need to apologize,” she replied, crisply straightening her hat and walking to the curb to hail a cab. “Your outrage is entirely reasonable, and I don’t observe you placing it on me.”

A cab pulled over, and after giving the driver the address and climbing in Alva let out a little huff of air. “You should be horrified, Sam. That I am not is, perhaps, only because I have seen so many similar crimes committed before.” She laid her hand over his. “Be outraged. Maybe it can change something.” He heard what she didn’t say: if someone had been outraged for her, maybe she wouldn’t have lived through the horror she did.

The cab lurched into traffic, beginning the long drive from the throngs of downtown Manhattan to the upper wilds of Bloomingdale.

She removed her hand, leaving an imprint of warmth behind. He stared at his own a moment longer, turning the new evidence over in his mind.

Mary Rose de Boer had been transferred to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum immediately after its 1821 opening. The clerk at the desk had informed them, reluctantly at first, and then eagerly once Alva had casually mentioned who Sam was, that almost all the hospital patients labeled “insane” had been transferred to the new facility.

Mrs. Kay had described a sensitive, easily frightened child. Sam imagined this described children as a general population—certainly he’d never met the exception. To put a person of that description in an asylum, to close her up and forget about the key …

The pieces were beginning to come together. He could feel them sliding into place, feel the satisfaction of a puzzle solving itself even through his disgust.

“We’re here,” Alva said quietly, looking out the window as the cab came to a stop. He handed her out of the carriage and looked at the now-infamous building.

The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum was a pleasant three-story manor house, set in meticulously sculpted grounds. The wide drive split in two and curved around the building, creating a pretty, snow-covered garden island. A passerby could be forgiven for thinking it a charming country hotel or the home of somebody terribly wealthy and important.