"No, thank you, I've already eaten." She smiled as Eleanor closed the door and then she took a deep breath.
She was in…at long last.
*
A tall woman, with long dark hair and blue eyes, twenty-two-year old Teresa was dressed in the required gingham, short sleeved, French style uniform. It was blue with trim on the sleeves that matched her white half apron. Her first glimpse of the Connellys was a brief one. Mathew hurried his wife out the door and climbed into the back of the limo beside her. They didn't say where they were going and Teresa didn't ask.
Once they were gone, she took her time becoming familiar with the place. Oddly, the furnishings and the decor in the eight-bedroom, ten-bathroom house clearly had not been updated for at least twenty years. Most of the rooms hadn't seen much use either. Yet, there was plenty of work to keep a small staff busy and then some.
Teresa decided to ignore the other rooms for now, made the beds in the separate bedrooms the Connellys apparently occupied, and located several places to hide…should the need arise.
When the Connellys came home later that afternoon, Teresa was in the dining room dusting the tall china cupboard. Laura immediately headed for the liquor cabinet in the living room to make herself a drink, while Mathew watched. Neither of them seemed to care who might be listening, so Teresa moved a little closer to the arched doorway between the two rooms.
Mathew glared at his wife. "She told me she called you. What did you tell her, Laura?" A little too thin for his height, Mathew's tailored, dark blue suit fit him well enough. He was an unusually handsome man with slightly graying sideburns. His dark hair was fashionably short, and he had intense blue eyes.
"I told her the same thing I told all the others," Laura answered.
It was obvious Laura had once been quite a beauty, but the alcohol she consumed over the years made her face puffy and her cheeks red. Even so, she still had a girlish figure, dark hair, pretty blue eyes, and a nice smile - although her smile was disingenuous just now.
"Laura, I need to know exactly what you said."
"Why? Is she the one you truly love these days?" She finished pouring her drink, took a long swallow, and then headed up the mahogany staircase.
Mathew soon followed. "I don't love her, but I do need her."
Drink in hand, Laura stopped halfway up and turned around to face him. "I can't imagine what for. Darling, don't you have someplace to go? Why don't you just run along? You know you want to."