The Bed You Make
Chapter 21, concluded
“We are finished.” The taller of the two housegirls spoke. She was a confident, pleasant-looking young woman of twenty-three. Mrs. Landsbury had her penciled in among her list of staff members displaying serious promise.
The second housegirl had achieved just the opposite. Short and plain, the young woman was regrettably outspoken. The admirable work ethic she displayed was cancelled out by her belief that she knew everything, a ‘fact' that she shared at the most inappropriate moments. “Shall we begin on the rest?” the young woman prompted.
“No. You may go.” Mrs. Landsbury did not offer up any praise for the job they'd just completed … nor did the two young women expect it. They'd learned early on that silence from the longtime housekeeper was their praise. It meant that no fault had been found with their performances.
Mrs. Landsbury gazed around her employer's suite. The two girls were already forgotten; she did not wait for them to leave the room before she began collecting Dara's toiletries from the bathroom.
‘The sheer foolishness of it all! ' she thought. The housekeeper indulged in a moment of exasperation. It was not an emotion she normally experienced regarding her employer. Today, however, she was sorely tempted to respectfully thump him on the head the way she would one of the green melons at the market.
Mrs. Landsbury clucked her tongue – at both her thoughts and at the newly married couple. It had taken everything within her earlier that afternoon not to shake her head impatiently when Master Stefan approached her with instructions to relocate the Mistress to the suite adjoining his. As though that insignificant amount of distance would put a halt to the developing relationship between them.
‘Sheer foolishness, I say!'
Expertly, the housekeeper swept up the contents of Dara's lingerie drawer. She transferred the delicate silken items to the new suite and placed them neatly in place. For several minutes Mrs. Landsbury debated internally as she cast a critical eye at the drawer of lingerie.
The longtime Cassadine housekeeper made her way briskly to the Master's suite. She pulled open one of Stefan's dresser drawers and withdrew a freshly hand-laundered silk pajama top. Mrs. Landsbury folded it neatly, carried it to Dara's new suite and laid it atop her lingerie.
‘Wiser heads must prevail.'
