For a moment her mouth ran dry as she contemplated what she was about to ask but nothing in Rose’s temperament in the years she’d known her suggested that she was especially prudish. Indeed her attitudes often shocked Ustinya, but that was going to work to her advantage today. It had to.
“Rose,” she said carefully, fidgeting from her armchair to another, slightly closer to the other woman. “Was yours a... happy marriage?”
Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.