“I’m trying to make our first dinner as a family special, unforgettable. I thought by bringing back some of the Foxworth history together, we’d have fun, too. You frightened the poor girl so badly she’s been crying in her quarters. Mrs. Steiner came running to tell me. She was quite upset herself.”

He stepped closer, his hands on his hips, his face softening as I felt my own begin to crumble into sobbing.

“I know you didn’t mean to do it. I’m sure it was because you were tired, and being tired makes anyone a little irritable. But we have to remember that if we don’t treat our servants properly, we won’t get the best out of them. People are just as much an investment as anything, any land, any business, anything, and when you put something in, you want to get the most out. Now, about the dress . . .”

“I’d look like an idiot in that dress,” I said as firmly as I could.

I never could tolerate a lecture from my mother, and I wouldn’t start tolerating his. Too many young women simply shifted their parents’ authority over them to their husbands almost before their vows were spoken. Not me. I had made up my mind about that long ago.

“An idiot? In my mother’s dress?”

“I’d be swimming in that dress. And a bustle? I’ve avoided wearing one, Garland. I’d feel so silly starting to do so now.”

“My mother never felt silly wearing it.”

“That was because it was highly fashionable then. It’s fallen out of style. I’ve studied fashion closely. Remember the beautiful dress I wore at the Wexlers’? I chose that myself. I know what is the rage now and what is passé. Besides, as I recall, you were quite impressed with how I looked, weren’t you?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, waving his right hand as if he wanted to chase my words away as he would an annoying fly.

“I had my father take me to the department store as soon as we received your invitation for the weekend, and I have something very much up-to-date that is quite proper for a family dinner. I thought you’d be proud of me, proud that I had the knowledge and the taste, and that despite my age, you’d never be ashamed or . . .”

I stopped because I felt myself choking up. Where was the gentle, loving man who had come begging for my hand in marriage? I felt myself flinch with anxiety. Was there something about this grand house with its yet-to-be-explored shadowy corridors and rooms, its attic and its closets that harbored the ghosts of unhappy and dreadful times? Was all the natural beauty I had seen surrounding it forbidden entrance? Was my soon-to-be husband one man to the world outside of it and another when the grand doors closed behind him? Could something similar happen to me?