He doubled Ines’s salary and never told her why in so many words.

On Thursday of that week, he asked Rosamund to come to the study.

She came in the way she had come into that room a hundred times, with her hands folded, and stood.

“Sit down, please.”

She sat on the edge of the chair.

“I’m eliminating your position,” he said.

Her face did something he would remember with shame for a long time: it didn’t change at all.

She had been braced for it since Tuesday.