I said no.

It was, I think, the most important word I said all afternoon — more important than anything I said after the glasses came off.

Because a housekeeper’s no is a costly thing.

In the fiction I was living, that single syllable risked everything: my position, my reference, my livelihood, spoken to a woman who held all of it and knew she held it.

And I said it not because I, Cornelia Thornbury, was in any danger, but because I wanted to see what she would do when the powerless refused her.

It is the truest test there is.

Anyone can be gracious to a person who obeys.

The character shows in the response to defiance — in whether a no from someone beneath you is met with a shrug, or a flicker of respect, or the cold need to make the refusal cost them everything.

I already suspected which it would be with Sabine.

But I wanted it on the record, in her own hand, so that my son would never have to take my word for it.