His smile is small and unreadable.
He tries the quail.
That night, long after the guests are gone and the halls are quiet again, Lena knocks once on my door.
I glance over, and she steps inside, a stack of clean towels pressed to her chest.
She sets the towels down on the sideboard and lingers, arms crossed, gaze fixed just above my head.
There's no preamble, no "Sorry to disturb," no performance of duty.
She is here because she wants to be, or at least because she has something to deliver that cannot be left at the door.
She crosses to the window, close enough that I can smell her hair—cypress and the faint salt of her own skin.
She stares out at the grounds, her face composed, but her hands betray her.
She worries the seam of her sleeve, thumb running back and forth in a rhythm that is not quite nervous and not quite calm.
"Long night?" she asks, voice low.
"They all are," I say.
She nods, the ghost of a smile flattening her lips.
"You're lucky. Most people don't sleep at all their first month here."
"I'm not most people."
This time, she does smile.
She leans against the jamb, folding her arms tighter, and looks past me to the moonlit path leading down to the orchard.
"There's something you want to know," I say, not a question.
She hesitates.
The silence swells, not awkward but charged, like the pause before a dropped glass hits tile.
"I saw you," she says, finally.
I wait, exhaling smoke through my nose.
"In the service corridor."
"And?"
"I didn't see anything I wasn't meant to."
She shifts weight to her left foot.
"But if someone else had?—"
"They didn't."
She considers this.
"Good."
