As the Count unhooked her, Louise curtsied and then said in a low voice "Are we supposed to serve clad like this?"
"Yes, you will" he said sharply. "For now! You'll find your way when you get upstairs" And he opened the heavy door, letting them out.

The studded door closed behind them and they stepped up the staircase. Louise gazed at her companion. "Violet!? How on earth..."
"My father sent me here to...to work off a debt he has incurred -" she said, looking up at her taller friend. "he doesn't seem to have heeded all the tales of what the Count is up to in his free time!"
"He let the Prince hire you as a servant girl..? Ummm, he must have been hard up then"
"Isn't that the reason you came here too?"
"What? You think I went into his service on my own? Because I wanted to...had to...?" Louise giggled, the thought was so absurd.
"No, no...I mean, your father might have made you work here to get off..."
"We don't have those debts and he would never send me here. The Count just hunted me down when I was walking in the forest - I'd spent a few nights over at Anton's family in Vijnica, to see them and run a message to someone there for Father, and I was going home."
She swallowed. Nobody knows I'm here, she thought, except God and His saints. "It was..oh by all sacred spirits, it was awful. His hounds hunted me, ran after me, chased me into a bush...and then he made me run handcuffed after one of them, all the way here. You too?"
She nodded. "He picked me up in the village, and my father said I would be working here... and then I had to run all the way, chained like you - or even dragged along by those wolf-like hounds." Tears stood in her eyes. "Oh Lou...!"

Louise awkwardly put her chained hands around Violet as they slowly moved upwards in the staircase., holding her friend close.
"We'll have to do as he says, I think...for now...well, not anything, ummm...We're in this together - I wonder who the third one is, I just thought for a moment I had seen her before, but can't say just when. Apparently he would bed her tonight..."