My baby suddenly would appear one day like some immaculate conception, a new Foxworth born out of the very air trapped in this mansion. The sperm had floated through the house and found me sleeping in one of the bedrooms, perhaps the Swan Room. Of course the house knew; it knew all the Foxworth secrets. It was whispering about me in every dark corner. I actually shuddered for a moment thinking about it having a throbbing heart, the walls pulsating and the ancestors growling in their portraits.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Dora asked. My thoughts surely made me look a fright.

“Yes, yes,” I said, and dabbed Garland’s mother’s perfume on my neck and between the tops of my breasts. Later, as he had promised, he would come to me, and he would be so pleased. Of course, now I realized that was why he had brought it here, another dark secret.

But there had to be some very good ones, too, didn’t there?

I rose. Dora stepped forward to brush something off my dress and then smiled. “I’ll straighten up your room, ma’am,” she said. “And be down to help with dinner.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She started to curtsy.

“Don’t do that,” I snapped. She looked confused. I smiled. “Some things just make me feel too old, and I’m not ready for that.” Thinking about things I had overheard my mother say about her pregnancy, I added, “And I will not permit my being a mother to age me a day more than I would anyway.”

She nodded. I thought she was fighting a smile. Did she know more than I did? Did she think I was being naive? Perhaps she liked my self-confidence, wishing that she had an iota of it herself. In the back of my mind, I harbored the thought that I might just help her achieve it. Despite her being older than I was, she was like a new project for me, a challenge, almost as if she was all the silly little girls who folded their legs under them and listened to my wisdom at my womanly talks.

“We’ve got to trust each other,” I said, reaching for her hand. “Even with our own secrets. That way, we can become more to each other than simply a servant and a mistress. Okay?” I asked.

Garland’s own words had come back to me. We needed to treat our servants like any other investment. I’d invest everything I could, everything I knew about being a woman, and in return, she would give me her loyalty.

Pleased, now she smiled and nodded. I thought she intended to curtsy again but saw the no in my eyes and stopped. I glanced at myself one more time in the mirror and then started for the door.