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“Very little,” Reina had admitted.

“Most of them,” the clerk had told her, “whether employed in a grand house or a humble one, are ill-treated and quite unhappy. They’re made to work at all hours for low pay. They’re usually hungry. No evenings off, and never a moment of privacy. That’s why everyone’s looking for work in a shop or factory. The wages are better, with overtime pay, and after six o’clock their time is their own. It allows them at least some small chance of rising in the world.”

“I would absolutely guarantee generous wages and reasonable hours—”

But the clerk had started shaking his head before she’d even finished the question. “It’s still a job no one wants.”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the scrabble of industrious rodents from somewhere overhead.

It might have been foolish to buy Westbrook House so impulsively. No, it definitely had been foolish. But she didn’t care. The moment she had learned it had been put up for auction, she’d known it was meant for her.

She had first seen the Georgian house, with all its windows boarded shut, on one of her childhood rambles through the neighborhood. It had the slumped shoulders of a wallflower at a dance, dressed in a sheath of dead ivy like brown lace.

Reina had slipped through the wrought-iron fencing and sat for a while on the front steps, pretending she was part of a family who lived there, playing hide-and-seek with her brothers and sisters. Soon they would be called in to dinner, she and the other Westbrook children, where they would sit at a long table set with porcelain and silver. No one was ever lonely in that safe, happy home. No one was an outsider.

Now, after all these years, Westbrook House was hers. But turning the house into what it was meant to be would require a great deal of time and money. Not to mention enough newspapers to sink a barge.

Reina went to the writing table, picked up the Chronicle, and searched for sections that she could use for cleaning. Definitely keep the parliamentary reports. Also foreign news, arts and literature. But she could do without the back pages, which were nothing but birth, marriage, and death announcements, listings of goods for sale and—wait—what was this?

“Blast,” Reina muttered as she reached the end of the advertisement.

It was a charity for paroled prisoners.

The sentiment was echoed by a metallic clatter coming from the kitchen on the lower ground floor, followed by an infuriated shout. “Arse!”

A grin came to Reina’s lips. Recently she had persuaded June, who had been living in Hampshire with her mother and stepfather, to come and stay with her in London as a live-in cook. June was taking evening classes at the London Cookery School and intended to start her own tearoom someday.

Reina’s gaze returned to the newspaper.

Criminal men and women released on license . . .

She tried to recall what she’d read about the judicial early-discharge system. Prisoners who earned release for good behavior were issued a ticket-of-leave and allowed to live in the Metropolitan District as long as they found proper employment and stayed out of trouble. No doubt some kind of police supervision was involved. Still . . . hiring people straight out of prison was a risk.

On the other hand . . .

Anyone who’d ever read a crime report or a Dickens novel understood how easy it was for people to fall to ruin. Bad luck, ill health, a mistake, an accident, could instantly turn someone’s comfortable life into a desperate fight for survival. And although London liked to think of itself as charity-minded, it could never quite hide its lurking contempt for the poor.

These paroled prisoners had paid their debt to society. Surely, they didn’t want to be sent back to prison and would do their best not to run afoul of the law again, especially if they found a good situation with decent pay.

Why shouldn’t she be the one to offer them that situation? She understood what it was like to be underestimated and unable to prove herself. Now she was in a position to give someone else a chance. A new start.

Pondering the idea, Reina went down to the lower ground floor and found June in the kitchen at the large soapstone sink. The tang of vinegar mingled with the smell of scorched sugar from a recent caramel attempt gone wrong.

As usual, June was busy. Although she liked to accomplish long lists of things every day, her pleasure in each completed task was only fleeting. To June, accomplishments were like sugared almonds: They never satisfied the palate but somehow compelled one to keep crunching in an endless search for a satiety that never arrived.

The exuberant mass of her brown hair had been pulled to the top of her head, where a few curls danced like butterfly antennae as she scrubbed. Although June was small and slight of build, she could tirelessly whisk a bowl of cream into firm white clouds or heft a thick-walled iron stew pot from the stove to the table as if it were weightless.

Reina drew closer, watching her friend expertly clean knife blades with a cork dipped in abrasive powder. “Do you need help?”

“No, almost done.”

“When you have a moment to spare, I want to show you something.”

“What is it?” June asked, drying her hands.

Reina handed her the newspaper. “Read the advertisement.”

Her friend scrutinized the page. “Dr. Geo’s Beautifying Freckle Wash?”