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.”

“This house is built on a foundation of secrets,” I muttered.

She didn’t nod. She looked like she was holding her breath to keep herself from having any reaction. It was clear to me, however, that she thought I was right. What was even clearer was the thought that secrets here were born almost daily. After all, if I was honest about it, I’d have to admit that I was probably the latest in a long line. I was carrying the heir whose existence had to be kept hidden for a while. I almost laughed aloud when I envisioned Garland bringing his mother’s ugly clothes to me with the excuse that they would be better than any fashionable maternity clothes. Why, if I was cooperative and wore those clothes, we could hide my pregnancy until I gave birth.