Chapter One

“It’s a disaster,” Hannah said. “Plain and simple. We’re DOOMED.”

“You’re the only thing standing between us and Miss Birch,” Hannah’s twin, Henrietta, confirmed. “Once you’re gone, we’re dead ducks.” Hetty drew a dramatic finger across her throat, dropped her head sideways, stuck out her tongue, and crossed her eyes. Miranda Wentworth choked back a sob. “Surely not doomed,” she said with a wobbly smile, as she met the gazes of the two seventeen-year-olds sitting to the left of her on the hard dining room bench. But things were going to be bad. The headmistress at the Chicago Institute for

Orphaned Children, Miss Iris

Birch, had promised as much.

Miranda and her five siblings had snuck into the dining room after lights out to sit on plank benches at a plank table set on a frigid brick floor. The whale oil lantern in the center of the table created sinister shadows that turned their features into gargoyle faces. Miranda could see the two younger boys shivering on the bench across from her, huddled under the thin, gray wool blankets they’d taken from their beds.

“The subject of this meeting is Miranda’s imminent departure from the Institute,” sixteen-year-old Josephine announced from her seat beside Nicholas, the elder of the two boys.

Miranda shivered, and not just from the cold. The thought of leaving her sisters and brothers behind when she was forced to leave the orphanage on her eighteenth birthday was terrifying.

The six Wentworth children had been orphaned three years ago in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which had burned for three days, destroying most of the business district, including their father’s bank.

It had also burned down their three-story mansion and killed their father and mother. Their wealth had gone up in flames, along with their home. Destitute and homeless, their uncle, Stephen Wentworth, had decided the best place for them was an orphanage.

Miranda had begged Uncle Stephen to let them live with him, but his home had also burned down. There was no “home” where they could all be together. So the Wentworth children had ended up at the Institute. Uncle Stephen had promised they would all be together again as soon as he could rebuild.

But that day had never come.

Repeated pleas for rescue from the cruelty of Miss Birch had gone unanswered. Letters to Uncle Stephen’s last known address had come back unopened. There was no way of knowing what had happened to him.

Then, a year ago, Josie had read an article in the business section of the Daily Herald announcing that Mr. Stephen Wentworth was opening a new bank. It appeared Uncle Stephen was not only alive and well, but that he was rich enough to open a bank!

Miranda had immediately written to their uncle at the bank’s address, asking why he hadn’t come to get them as he’d promised. That letter had resulted in a visit from Uncle Stephen.

Miranda flushed every time she remembered that meeting. Uncle Stephen had told her he felt ill equipped to be a surrogate parent. They would have to stay where they were. Furthermore, she was not to con tact him again. It wasn’t his fault they were orphans. He wasn’t the one who’d wanted a large family, his brother had. And it wasn’t his fault their father hadn’t kept his funds somewhere safe, so his fortune wouldn’t have gone up in flames.

Miranda had been shocked at her uncle’s harsh words and devastated by his unwillingness to help them escape Miss Birch. When her father was alive, Uncle Stephen’s behavior had always been friendly. Obviously, appearances could be deceiving.

Ever since that day, Miranda had felt all the responsibility of being the eldest. Though the twins were only a year younger, they were flighty and silly in a way Miranda never had been. After the fire she’d been determined to rescue her siblings from the orphanage. But three years, four months, and two days later, here they still were. Not only that, but tomorrow she would be leaving Hannah, Henrietta, Josephine, Nicholas, and Harrison behind while she escaped the tyrant who’d made their lives at the Institute so miserable.

Once she was gone, her younger siblings would be at the mercy of the stern headmistress. No, stern was too kind a word. Cruel. That was the word for Miss Iris Birch.

“Do you have to leave, Miranda?” Nick asked plaintively.

“I must,” Miranda croaked, her throat swollen with emotion. “I have no choice.”

Four-year-old Harry crawled under the dining table and climbed into her lap. As his arms tightened around her neck he begged, “Please don’t leave, Miranda.”

Harry was small for his age, barely more than skin and bones and always sick with a cold that never seemed to go away. Miranda wiped his nose with a handkerchief she always kept with her for that purpose and pulled him close to comfort him.

“DOOMED,” Hannah repeated, melodramatically placing the back of her hand across her forehead.

Miranda felt the urge to console her siblings, but the situation was likely to be every bit as bad as they feared.

“There is another option.”

Every eye at the long pine dining table turned to Josie. She peered back at them through spectacles perched on the bridge of her freckled nose. Josie always had her head in a library book, and she was, without a doubt, the most educated—and practical—of them all because of it.

“What is it, Josie?” Miranda asked. “I’m willing to consider anything.”

“Here.” Josie unfolded a worn advertising page of the Chicago Daily Herald on the table in front of Miranda. She pointed a grimy finger at an advertisement circled in lead pencil.

Everyone leaned close as Miranda read:

“WIFE WANTED: Must love children, cook, sew and do laundry. Reply to Mr. Jacob Creed, General Delivery, San Antonio, Texas.”

Miranda tried not to appear as crestfallen as she felt when she looked up and met Josie’s owl-eyed gaze. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t see how this is going to help.”

“We’re DOOMED,” Hannah muttered.

“Forever and ever,” Hetty agreed with her twin. “Or at least for the next year, until we turn eighteen.” “What about me?” Nick said. “I’m only ten. I’ve got eight more years of this hellhole to survive.” “Nicholas Jackson Wentworth!” Miranda scolded in a hushed voice. “Watch your language in front of the baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Harry protested. “I’m four. And I don’t want to stay here. Miss Birch is mean. Take me with you, Miranda, please!”

“I can’t, Harry.” Miranda’s heart ached with the pain of leaving them all behind. “You’re safer here. All of you,” she said, meeting the stark gazes of her siblings around the table.

“Can’t we at least try to make it on our own, Miranda?” Hannah asked.

“It’s the middle of February,” Miranda replied in a voice made harsh by the agony she was feeling inside. “I can only count on a single bed in a boarding house and a job in a kitchen. I don’t have any way to take care of you. Any of you.” She tenderly brushed

Harry’s white-blond hair away from his forehead.

On their own, they’d freeze to death or starve and be dead in a week. Or maybe two.