Effie Ainsley

Effie Ainsley, a character in The Unexpected Heiress series, is Your Character's lady's maid. She is first seen in Chapter 1.

Appearance
Effie has red hair tied into a bun, brown eyes and light skin. She wears a maid's outfit with a white maid cap on her head.

Personality
Effie is sweet, friendly, and dedicated. Her dream is to go into nursing so that she can improve her station and support her family more financially, a goal Amelia encouraged her to pursue. Although her hours at Windcroft are too demanding for her to enroll in full-time training, she has been taking correspondence courses. By the end of Chapter 16, she has successfully finished her courses at the top of her class. With Lady Ashbourne's recommendation, she will be able to help at Windcroft Hospital, thereby quitting her job at Windcroft Manor. She plans to work to save enough money to attend nursing school.

The Unexpected Heiress

 * Chapter 1: Windcroft Manor
 * Chapter 2: Blood Relatives
 * Chapter 3: Lay of the Land
 * Chapter 4: Roses & Thorns
 * Chapter 5: Without a Trace
 * Chapter 6: A Sordid Affair
 * Chapter 7: Belle of the Ball
 * Chapter 9: The Cause
 * Chapter 10: Power Play
 * Chapter 11: Upper Echelon
 * Chapter 12: The Hunter and the Prey
 * Chapter 13: Raising the Stakes
 * Chapter 14: Buried Truths
 * Chapter 15: Reckoning
 * Chapter 16: The Bride

Amelia Hayes
When Amelia resided in Windcroft Manor, Effie was her lady's maid.

In Chapter 6, if you ask Effie to ask her childhood friend, Franny, about Amelia, Franny tells her that when Amelia stayed at Whittenby's household, she was quite the star. She went hunting with the men and outperformed some of them, much to their displeasure. Franny thinks Amelia had an admirer but she wasn't sure if Amelia reciprocated the feelings. A maid had found a note in Amelia's room and gave it to the head housekeeper, Mrs. Keener, who tried to intercept Amelia and her admirer at the stables, to catch them in the act. However, Amelia never showed up; only the male servant who wrote the note showed up. He hasn't been fired, and Franny doesn't know who it is exactly as Mrs. Keener won't divulge the information despite the rumors circulating.

Your Character
When you arrive at the Windcroft estate, Mrs. Watmore tells you that Effie has been assigned to be your lady's maid. When you talk with her, Effie confides to you that she feels suspicious of Amelia's death and promises to help you in your investigation. She tells you what she can about the Somerset family, about Mrs. Watmore and Mr. Barnes, and about Hugh Crawford. In Chapter 2, you can ask her to sneak into Francis's room while the rest of you are at dinner. If she does, she reports to you about her findings. In Chapter 4, if you do not eavesdrop on Francis, Effie tells you later that she found out Francis had been having Amelia's belongings tested, and her perfume bottle came back positive for poison.

Francis Somerset
Francis is Effie's employer. If you decide to eavesdrop on him in Chapter 4, you find out that he is investigating Amelia's death and asked Effie to retrieve items from Amelia's old room for testing. He asked Effie to wear gloves to avoid damaging the objects, but actually wanted her to wear gloves to protect herself in case poison was involved. He sent the objects to a person at Kingsbridge University laboratory to test. The poison mimics an entirely natural death, and could take several hours to spread, meaning that Amelia could have sprayed herself with perfume hours before she fell.

Trivia

 * She is shown on the cover of The Unexpected Heiress.
 * When you see her, you note her to be around your age, which makes her around 19 years old.