Chapter 6: The Debt and the Sale (Part 6)
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Leather-bound books, some with gold lettering faded by time. Wooden ladders that glided along rails. A large antique globe near the window (closed, of course). Dark leather armchairs and a reading table with a green glass lamp. The smell of old paper and ink was so strong that Emma felt like closing her eyes and simply breathing it in.
“Fifteen,” she whispered, already defeated. “Don’t fall in love with the library. Failed on the first day. Congratulations, Emma.”
She didn’t touch a single book. She merely walked between the shelves, her fingers hovering inches away from the spines as she read titles in Latin, French, Old English, and Portuguese from centuries past. There were entire sections devoted to history, philosophy, and poetry. And a lower shelf, almost hidden away, held nineteenth-century novels. Emma smiled to herself.
“At least the vampire has good literary taste,” she murmured. Then she mentally corrected herself. “Sixteen: stop calling him a vampire in my head. That’s not helping.”
She left the library before the temptation to pull out a volume became too strong. The corridor seemed a little less oppressive now. Or perhaps she was simply getting used to the silence.
Farther along, she found a formal dining room with a table that could easily seat twenty people. High-backed chairs, porcelain dishes displayed in glass cabinets, silver candelabras. Everything immaculate. Everything so perfect it seemed lifeless. Emma imagined herself serving dinner at that table and nearly laughed. She could barely fry an egg without burning the edges, and here she was, expected to serve meals on china that looked as though it had survived the Napoleonic Wars.
“Seventeen: don’t break anything that shines. Especially if it’s made of silver.
“Eighteen: don’t imagine Mr. Ross sitting at the head of the table, watching me with that ‘interesting’ expression. That’s weird. And dangerous. And… interesting.”
She shook her head as if she could physically shake the thought away.
Time passed without her noticing. The light filtering through the gaps in the curtains grew more orange, then gradually dimmed. Emma returned to her room when the shadows had begun to stretch a little too far. She switched on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in a warm, cozy glow, and sat down on the bed again.
Her mental list was now long enough to qualify as an internal rulebook.
She went over it aloud, counting on her fingers once more:
“One: don’t yell at the house.
“Two: don’t open forbidden curtains.
“Three: don’t make noise after ten.
“Four: don’t ask the boss’s real age.
“Five: don’t call him a vampire out loud.
“Six: don’t test the rules on the first day.
“Seven: don’t talk to portraits.
“Eight: don’t calculate anyone’s age.
“Nine: don’t get lost in the library… too late.
“Ten: don’t starve out of pride.
“Eleven: don’t open the forbidden cabinet.
“Twelve: don’t get used to good food.
“Thirteen: don’t overanalyze the initials.
“Fourteen: don’t laugh alone in a room with an echo.
“Fifteen: accept that I’ve already failed the library rule.
“Sixteen: stop with the vampire theory.
“Seventeen: don’t break anything shiny.
“Eighteen: don’t imagine the boss watching me.
“Nineteen: don’t write in my diary that he’s annoyingly handsome.
“Twenty: remind myself every day that it’s only five years.”
Emma looked at the window. Outside, the forest was already dark. The mansion seemed to have swallowed the rest of the world.
She lay down on top of the quilt, still fully dressed, and closed her eyes for a moment. The exhaustion of the day—the discovery of the debt, the signing, the journey, the encounter in the entrance hall, the exploration—weighed heavily on her shoulders. But beneath the fatigue was something stronger: the same stubborn determination that had made her sign the contract without crying in front of the lawyer.
“I can do this,” she whispered to the ornate ceiling. “I’ll clean, I’ll organize, I’ll obey the ridiculous rules. And in the end, I’ll leave. With my sanity intact. Maybe with a few good stories to tell. And owing nothing to anyone.”
Upstairs, somewhere on the second floor, a door closed softly. The sound was so faint that Emma almost convinced herself she had imagined it.
She smiled to herself in the bright, spotless room, far too nice for a “contract maid.”
The mansion was oppressive.
The silence was heavy.
The boss was a walking mystery in a black shirt.
But Emma Craven had a list.
And lists, she knew, were the best weapon for anyone who had no intention of losing their way.
Tomorrow, Mrs. Whitmore would arrive at seven.
Tomorrow, the routine would truly begin.
Tomorrow, she would find out whether she could make it through an entire day without breaking any rules—or at least without breaking the important ones.
For now, however, she simply lay there, listening to the ancient silence of the house and mentally composing item twenty-one on her list:
“Twenty-one: don’t admit, even under torture, that a small part of me is already far too curious for my own good.”
She decided that item twenty-one would remain in her head.
Some things were too dangerous even for the diary.
Outside, night finally settled over Ross Manor.
And Emma Craven, determined, nervous, and already a little more prepared than she cared to admit, closed her eyes and let exhaustion overcome her—at least until dawn.