I have a feeling I know what it is, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Not ever.

Like a coward, I hide under my sheets, listening to the sound of Magdalena flitting through my room. The doors of the wardrobe creak open—the hinges will need oiling soon—and a rustle of heavy fabrics follows.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t keep him waiting.” Magdalena’s voice is not the least bit sympathetic.

I pull the sheet down just enough to glare at her. She’s holding a dress up, one suitable for daytime but still frillier then I would like. They’re all frillier than I would like. Delicate white lace spills from the sleeves. The deep yellow silk complements my complexion, or so I am told. In that moment, I hate that dress more than I have ever hated anything in my life.

“Now, will you get up or will I have to drag you from the bed like a petulant child?”

I mutter something unkind under my breath, not so quiet that she can’t hear it. Magdalena merely smiles in reply. But I do as she says, sliding out from between my nice, warm sheets like a convict on her way to the scaffold.

The water she pours into the copper basin at my vanity is nice and cool. I scrub at my face as Magdalena pulls my hair back into some semblance of respectability. Her deft fingers braid it into an elaborate style I would never be able to accomplish myself.

When she holds up the corset, I cringe.

“Must I?” Another futile question.

“You are a lady,” Magdalena reminds me. As if I need reminding.

With a sigh, I let her slip the corset over my head. I hold on to the bedposts as she pulls it tight. A bruise I don’t remember acquiring reminds me of its existence, eliciting a pained hiss from my lips. Magdalena loosens the corset, just a hair. That is all the sympathy I know I am going to get from her today.

Once my elaborate frock is on—the yellow does little to complement the bruise on my collarbone—Magdalena tsks as we both take in my reflection in the mirror. I meet her eyes in the mirror and quirk a single eyebrow up, daring her to comment on it. Her lips press into a hard, displeased line, but she keeps her thoughts to herself.

My father, I know, will be less inclined to do the same, and I like to conserve the amount of lies I am forced to tell in a single day. For the betterment of my immortal soul, of course. Nothing a few recitations of the Lord’s Prayer won’t fix. Such is the beauty of the confessional.