“You’ve attended to other women guests here at Foxworth since October, haven’t you?” I asked.

For a moment, she looked like she was going to choke on the answer.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m quite aware of the fact that I’m not Mr. Garland’s first woman friend.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

I thought about it for a moment. “Were any of them permitted to sleep in the Swan Room?”

Her whole body seemed to freeze.

“Don’t be surprised I know about it. Surely you’re aware that I was here at Foxworth.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mr. Foxworth showed me the Swan Room. Haven’t you seen it?”

She shook her head. I thought she would start trembling and run out.

“But you know about it?”

“Yes, ma’am. My aunt told me. She had to prepare it after . . . I mean . . .”

I quickly smiled. “That’s quite all right, Dora. It’s nice for me to know that Mr. Foxworth shows that room only to someone for whom he has some regard. Maybe after the wedding, I’ll show it to you myself. I might even sleep in it occasionally, since no one else ever will.”

She nodded, looking grateful and astonished.

“Let’s go finish my preparations for dinner,” I said.

After I had put on my dress, she brushed my hair. I looked at the perfume on the vanity table and realized it was not there before I had taken my bath.

“Did you bring this?” I asked, holding up the small bottle.

“No, ma’am.”

“Well . . . perhaps your aunt.”

“Oh no, ma’am. She is very busy working with Mrs. Wilson on dinner preparations and looking after your mother’s needs.”

I smelled it. It was interesting but not exactly appealing.

“Have you seen this anywhere in the house?” I looked at her in the vanity mirror.

Why was it that some of my questions put such fear in her eyes?

“Have you?” I demanded forcefully. I was growing tired of all this hesitation. Either she was my personal assistant or she wasn’t. She would come to know things about me that I didn’t want shared; the same had to be true for her.

“Yes, ma’am. I believe that is from Mr. Foxworth’s mother’s possessions. His parents’ bedrooms are unchanged from how they were before they passed. The brushes still have his mother’s hair in them. There is even a scarf on the floor where his mother dropped it years ago.”

“And no one will pick it up?”

“No, ma’am.”

I thought a moment. “Did you say ‘bedrooms’?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, Mr. Foxworth’s mother slept in a separate room from her husband?”

She stared at me, probably wondering why I knew so little about the Foxworth family and Foxworth Hall.

“I don’t really know all that much about the Foxworths, either,” she said, trying to sound more like an equal. We were suddenly resembling roommates in some boarding school, whispering about the other girls. “No one asks questions about them in this house.”