Rosalind knew she was not alone. Another person resided in the room close to hers, a flesh and blood person, and she wanted to know who he was.

The previous night's events found her standing before her mirror, looking at herself as though she was looking at a stranger. "Who are you?" She narrowed her eyes. She had known no other lady who dared linger on the threshold of another person's private moment. Not any friend. Not any relation. Neither Clairie nor any other maid which had passed through the Hershel home had ever spoken of the sounds that came with any private affair. But Rosalind knew.

The mirror rippled before her as it pulled her into a recollection of barely a year ago. A violent snowstorm had ripped the roof clear off one of the stables of the Hershel home, terrorizing the two mares inside to the point where the one suffered such a shock, Julian had to put her out of her mistery.

The next day, four handymen were brought in to help with the repairs, the carpenter, Mihai Moldovan and his three sons.

The moment Rosalind saw the youngest son, Stefan, she knew he was brought to her by the storm. While his kin were fair and blond, resembling a flock of albino crows, Stefan's skin was golden, his eyes were black like tar and his hair was red as flames.

As the older Moldovan men fixed the destruction caused by the heavy winds and snowfall, Rosalind would sneak off with Stefan and steal precious moments.

She recalled their boots crunching against the snow as they ran, hand in hand, towards a cluster of wild apple and oak trees. The apple trees bore fruit once every two years; small, hard apples in an unpleasant faded red.

Rosalind led Stefan to a crooked oak tree whose trunk bowed down to earth and created a seat for them to sit. The pair knew that their time together was limited. When the ceiling of the stable was fixed they would return to their own corners of Transylvania, her as the lady of Hershel Place whose hand would one day belong to a wealthy man, and he as the carpenter's son who was worthy of no more than love from a tavern wench.

When Rosalind's hand slid into the waistband of Stefan's trousers, he had made the same sounds as the one's she heard the night before; soft, pleading cries which turned into loud, needing moans of delight.

She thought of the way his breath felt against her skin when he parted her lacy collar to kiss the spot where shoulder meets neck. She remembered the way his breath hitched as he came on her hand, soft and warm.

Rosalind blinked away the memory and turned away from the mirror. Her thoughts swiftly returning to the man in the room not too far from hers. "What you did was calls for confession," she scolded herself, "but the wolf said God cannot be found in this home. So, if God is absent here, do sins inside these stone walls counts?"

She thought of what Agnes had told her the night she asked if the lord lived alone. "The lord has no other guest."

"Dear sweet maid," Rosalind said to herself, "perhaps he is not a guest but a permanent resident then. A little detail you purposely omitted?" She picked up a pillow and hugged it close, her mind spun with possibilities. A brother? A cousin? A son? Would he be as grotesque as Lord Caspian?

"Another monster to roam the halls." The pillow fell onto the floor when Rosalind let go. She stepped over it and walked to the wardrobe. Pulling the doors open she looked right at the blue dress. "I will ask Agnes again and see what sort of lies she tells me this time."

When Agnes arrived to assist Rosalind with her gown, she found the young woman sitting by the fireplace, reading one of the books from the library. The crimson cover was stamped in gold, though Agnes had not been schooled as women like Rosalind were, she knew how to read and write well enough. When Rosalind brought the book to her chest, Agnes clearly saw the title. The Art of Dying. The maid recognized the book as one which surely must belong to Lord Caspian as Lady Calla would have never read anything baring a horrid title as such. Any book Agnes had ever seen Calla read had a blue cover, never red.

Pausing at the entrance of Rosalind's room, Agnes scrunched her brows and tutted at the young woman's choice of literature.

"Good maid," Rosalind stood ignoring Agnes' sour face. "Allow me to read you a passage."

Agnes did not desire to be read to especially not from a book whose title did nothing but fill her with impending doom. "If you please, I would rather you-"

But Rosalind cut the old woman off and began to recite, "From my grave to wander I am impelled for I long to find the severed link. To attain the bride I have lost and the lifeblood of her soul to drink."

Agnes brought her hands together and whispered a prayer into her fist.

"Do you fear death, Agnes?" Rosalind asked.

Agnes' gaze rose to meet Rosalind's. "No," she replied in all honesty. "What I fear has nothing to do with the," severing her clasp, she gestured to the book, "art of dying."

"You know how to read. I knew you were no simple maid." Rosalind set the book down, open to the passage she has just read. "No one wants to die," she said flatly. So close to the fire, Rosalind smelt the wood chips burning. Ashes rising in the atmosphere left a bitterness in her throat.

"I beg to differ, my lady," Agnes said. "Some do. It is simply the way one dies that causes fear."

Agnes watched Rosalind head to the blue dress hanging on the wardrobe. The scent of ashes followed the young woman like a perfume.

"I do not want him to kill me," Rosalind uttered. Her hand rose to the gown. "But I tempt him. I tell him he is a monster. I demand he state his name and show me his face. I take and he..." Rosalind's lashes touched for much longer than a blink as she faltered.

"Does he give, my lady?" Agnes asked softly.

Rosalind nodded. "When I first arrived, I believed he would be doing all the taking, I all the giving. I felt like his prisoner but now I'm not sure how I feel. He's shown me..." her words trailed off as she began to undo the buttons on the dress to keep herself occupied. "I am not certain what it is I want to say. It is not kindness, it is certainly not anything akin to that. But he has acted like a lord, as a lord should."

It did not surprise the handmaid that Caspian was treating Rosalind well, after all, she was the spitting image of Lady Calla. If one woman could tame a beast, why could not a second? Moving to Rosalind's side, Agnes looked up at her. "How does that make you feel?"

"Not so afraid anymore."

"Brave?"

Rosalind fingered the blue material. "You had once told me I was. But no. Not brave. Stupid perhaps. I should be terrified still. That is what logic states."

Agnes helped Rosalind out of her dress and into the blue gown. As the soft material glided over Rosalind's arms and body, she longed to be held.

In silence, Agnes did up the buttons and fluffed the hem out around Rosalind's legs. In the mirror, the raven haired woman saw the same face that had entered the manor a week ago, but something inside her was changing for better or worse.

"If I am all but living in denial and the lord does kill me before I am to leave, promise me you will not bury me in the forest of the Borgo."

When Rosalind spoke, Agnes tisked and grit her teeth. "You will walk out of here, my lady."

"Will the lord's other guest walk out of here, as well?"

Agnes clasped her hands in front of her. "The lord has no other guests, my lady." Though she had to lie again, the curious look on Rosalind's face told Agnes the young woman did not believe her at all this time.

"Then who lives in the room a few doors away from mine?"

Agnes cleared her throat. "The lord does."

"No." Rosalind thrust out her hand and pointed in the opposite direction. "That way. In the room with the violin."

Agnes shook her head, her mouth opening yet the only voice coming out was a stutter of sounds.

"The room with the white wolf's hide on the bed. I saw the fireplace, the embers burned bright. Someone lives there."

Agnes' lips pursed together tight. She looked at Rosalind as a nursemaid looks at a child she is about to scold. "My lady, you were not to enter any other room."

"I am left on my own all day to amuse myself until dinner with a lord who has yet to sit and dine with me. It is like I have been dropped in a labyrinth and someone is telling me to find my way out, yet there is no way out. There are whispers in the walls and monsters in the halls. I spend my days worried, frightened, bored. You told me not to go outside, you told me not to explore. I am to be here a month and I do not know if the devil is lurking behind one of these doors waiting to grind my bones into dust. I hear things. I see things." Rosalind brought her hands to her face. Everything was piling upon her and she felt as though she was going to collapse as her father's stable had last year.

"I beg of you to remain in your room or if you prefer head to the library to pass your time, but not with books like the one you are reading. The red covers are his. Never read the books with the red covers for the devil has scribed them, that I am certain of. Blue, my lady. The books bound in blue leather are for young ladies your age. Now come," Agnes gently pried Rosalind's hands off her face, "you will be late for dinner."

Agnes hurried Rosalind out of the room but just as her foot stepped out of the door, Rosalind spoke. "A white wolf in the forest spoke to me."

Agnes froze. Her eyes darted to the hallway. She pulled Rosalind back inside and closed the door quietly behind them. "A wolf?" The colour drained from the handmaid's face. Her hand remained on Rosalind's arm. "My lady, you must have been hallucinating. Wolves do not speak."

"He told me there was no God here. That we are all damned."

Agnes did not let go of the young woman, fearing if she did, Caspian would pull Rosalind into an abyss of hell. His hell.

Rosalind looked at Agnes and whispered, "Tell me again I am hallucinating, good maid, when I have clearly seen proof of a talking wolf and of another resident."

"I implore you," Agnes leaned to Rosalind and whispered, "do not go looking for things you should not. Let what is simply be. The wolf and the other inhabitant are real but I beg of you to stay away. This is not a matter a gentle lady like you should entertain. You will be here a few more weeks, spend those weeks reading. I will bring you something to sew if you wish. Some knitting perhaps."

Rosalind saw the look of concern on Agnes' face, a worry that a mother has over a child, and that touched Rosalind's heart. "Dear maid, you would have made someone a wonderful mother. The lord has made me a captive in his home, he will not keep me captive in my room, as well. If he does not want me exiting my chamber then tell him to come and nail my door shut."

Agnes knew there was a delicate line upon which Rosalind was walking on. One careless step and she would fall. Agnes looked at the young woman and wondered if there was any possibility instead of falling, she would fly. Dear God, give her strength, Agnes prayed, and allow her to leave this mad-home unscathed.