2
“Welcome home, Mr. Huntington,” the young housemaid said.
The master of the house paused on his way up the stairs. He looked around at the young woman standing off to the side, her cream-colored maid’s uniform crisp and pressed.
“Well, hello, Rita,” Mr. Huntington replied, and then he smiled.
Rita melted. That smile of his had a way of erasing all the pain and the anger. David was so handsome. So tall and broad-shouldered. And that smile of his . . . with his bright white teeth and full lips and dimples in his cheeks . . . Rita wanted to cry.
“I’m glad you’ve come back,” she managed to say, her throat tight with emotion.
Mr. Huntington took a step closer to her. “Are you, Rita? Are you truly?”
She nodded, dropping her eyes to the floor. She couldn’t meet his gaze.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he told her. “I hope we can be good friends.”
“Of course,” Rita told him.
David lifted her chin with his hand so that she had to look at him.
“You were very special to me at a very difficult time, Rita,” he told her. “I hope you realize how special you were, and how I’ll always treasure our times together.”
She nodded.
“But you do understand that now things will have to be different,” David said.
“Of course,” Rita answered.
“My wife . . . she’s, well, she’s not used to all the fuss we make around here. You know, with the dinner parties and the horse shows and the servants in and out of her room. She didn’t grow up with a staff of people in her house. So she’ll need friends here, friends who can help her get used to the way we live.” He paused. “I hope you’ll be a friend to her, Rita.”
“Of course,” she told him.
“Thank you, Rita.” He smiled again and moved away from here.
But she was lying.
She wasn’t going to be a friend to his wife.
Rita hated the new Mrs. Huntington. Just as she’d hated the old Mrs. Huntington.
She watched David climb the stairs. Pulling her eyes away from him, Rita headed back toward the kitchen. Mrs. Hoffman was probably lurking around as usual, ready to reprimand her. Mrs. Hoffman didn’t like the staff fraternizing with Mr. Huntington.
If she only knew.
Rita figured that the domineering head housekeeper probably suspected that she’d had an affair with David. Very little ever got past Mrs. Hoffman.
He loves me still, Rita thought. He couldn’t say it, but I could see it in his eyes.
Once again she felt his rough hands on her breasts, his hot lips on her neck . . .
Lost in her memories, Rita wandered into the kitchen. The place was a vast cavern of shiny chrome and marble, with three ovens and five sinks and a refrigerator large enough to store rations for an army. Rita didn’t notice the tall black woman standing at the marble countertop and staring at her from across the room.
“I saw you talking to him again.”
Rita looked up. The tall woman spoke in a heavy Haitian accent, and the sound of her lyrical voice startled Rita out of her reverie.
“So what?” Rita snapped. “I just welcomed him home.”
The Haitian woman folded her arms across her chest. “You can’t fool Variola. I know what went on between you two.”
Rita smiled. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot that you’re a witch.”
The Haitian woman shook her head. “I can see things. And that way is not safe for you, Margarita Cansino.”
“I appreciate the warning, Variola,” Rita told her, gathering the dishes to set the table for dinner. “But I think I can take care of myself.”
“Audra thought that, too.”
Rita just laughed. “What does Audra have to do with any of this?’
“She was one of his favorites as well.”
Rita spun at her, nearly dropping the dishes from her hands. “That’s a lie! That’s ridiculous gossip spread by people who don’t know what they’re talking about! David barely knew who Audra was!”
Variola just shrugged. She returned to what she had been doing when Rita came into the room, chopping green peppers. “Just heed my advice,” she told Rita again. “I don’t like to see trouble in this house.”
The young housemaid made no further reply. No one was going to tell her what to do. Not Variola. Not Mrs. Hoffman. And certainly not that silly little wife David had just brought home.
Rita carried the dishes out to the dining room.
Friends! David wanted her to be friends with his wife! Rita laughed.
She’d show the new Mrs. Huntington just how good a friend she could be.