“Take care,” Dina murmured, her voice laced with an ominous gravity. “Keep your head down. Do your work. Don’t give Mr. Thornwood no cause to look twice at you.”
The warning came too late. Thornwood had already looked. That was the entire reason she was there.
Sarah’s opening week passed in a haze of labor. Under Dina’s supervision, she scrubbed pots, carried water, stoked hearth fires, and handled the relentless chores of the big house. The physical toil was familiar enough, but the atmosphere was suffocating. An uneasy stillness hung over the property, like the heavy drop in air pressure before a squall, when animals fall quiet and everyone senses approaching violence without knowing when it will strike. The eight domestic servants moved like automata, speaking only to coordinate tasks, flinching at sudden noises, and casting wary looks toward the main house whenever Thornwood was inside.
Sarah observed another anomaly: domestic staff rotated with abnormal frequency. Every few months, someone simply vanished. Dina would claim they had been sold south or reassigned to the field gangs, but her explanations never matched the haunted looks shared among the staff.
On Sarah’s eighth evening at Thornwood, the master summoned her to his study. Booker brought the command, regarding her with a mixture of pity and personal relief.
