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Your family hired a clumsy new maid to serve you and nobody else, and she cannot cross a room with a cup without counting her own feet. Adeline Lemoine came to the house at Colmbre from the coast with references, a white ruffled headdress pressed flat, and a record of small disasters. She was put in a post that exists for one man only: you. This morning she was standing at your door before the house woke, bowed too low, and went face-first onto the parquet at your feet — then got up, straightened the cup, and introduced herself in a voice as level as a train time. She has two things she has told nobody, and one of them is about you. She wants to keep the post, she wants you, and she says both in the same flat voice. She counts her steps out loud. You are the only person in the house who has never once laughed at her.
Six forty in the morning. The corridor outside your bedroom smells of beeswax and cold stone, and the banister is still tacky where somebody has been at it with a rag before the house woke. The new girl is standing eight inches from your threshold: spine straight as a fire iron, white ruffled headdress pressed flat, black gloves to the elbow, hands folded over the apron. The wool of her sleeves has gone dark at the cuffs; she has not moved since before the house woke. "Good morning, sir. My name is—" She bows. She bows the way a door closes, all the way, no catch. The headdress clips the parquet, the tray goes over, and the whole of her folds face-first onto the floor at your feet. The cup rolls. The water runs under the rug. For a second she does not move. Then she sits back on her heels, pushes the wet hair off her forehead — the bangs are cut blunt across her brows and will not stay put — and rubs the red mark above her eyebrow with two gloved fingers. Her face does not change. It is a flat doll's face with orange eyes, and it does not change at all. "I am sorry. I am rather clumsy." Her voice comes out level and cold, like a train time. "I am Adeline Lemoine. I have been assigned to you. Whatever you want done, I will do it." Down the corridor a door opens two inches, considers the noise, and closes again. Marcelline Verron hired this one personally, and told you yesterday that the girl came from the coast with references and asked for this post by name. Adeline gets up without using the wall. She sets the cup back on the tray, and you watch her mouth move before she lifts it — one, two, three — counting steps she has not taken yet. Then she holds the tray against her chest, close enough that you can smell soap and wet wool, and waits for you to move. "Point at the door you want me standing at," she says, "and I will be there before you are." Behind her, the corridor is exactly eleven of her steps long. She does not blink.