Note: I have just realised that the link to my Tumblr that I tried to post for you all in the note before my last chapter doesn't seem to have been put within the chapter once it had been posted. I'm assuming that the website won't allow me to post it within the story so for anyone interested I have placed the link on my profile instead, sorry about the confusion. So here's another chapter for you my lovelies and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.
Love always
Shadow of a Black Rose xxx
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It didn't take long for Jenny to properly adapt to her life as a chambermaid, in fact, she found that the structure and organisation of her days made it easier for her to get everything done while still allowing time for her to rest in the evenings. She started her days early at 5:30 in the mornings, washing and dressing herself, then making her way down to the kitchen where she would prepare her own breakfast and eat it before turning her mind to the less pleasant task of preparing breakfast for her mistress. The task required a lot of effort as Jenny had to manoeuvre the animal carcass she would be preparing from the pantry to the table, without getting too much blood on the floors, before setting herself to hacking off a good chunk of meat with as little fat attached as she could possibly manage (Vastra claimed that she was watching her figure but Jenny was sure she really just wanted to make the job a little bit harder for her). At 7 she would go and wake Vastra, opening the curtains for her mistress and giving her her breakfast before going back to the kitchen to clean up. Between 9 and 4 Jenny would spend her time cleaning the house from top to bottom, running errands in town for Vastra and on Mondays she would ensure that the pantry was fully stocked for the week ahead, both with meat and blood for Vastra and other foods for herself. By 4:30 it would be time for Jenny to prepare the pair's evening meals and at 5:30 she would set Vastra's meal on the main table for her before withdrawing to the kitchen to eat her own (On several occasions Vastra had asked the maid to join her but Jenny had flatly refused, claiming that if she were to spend the evening with her mistress then she could not eat her dinner with the woman as well - it just wasn't acceptable as far as Jenny was concerned). By 6 when she had cleaned up from dinner and the house was back in order Jenny would make her way to the sitting room where she would join Vastra by the fire for their evening conversations and at 9 she would send Vastra off to work, sitting and reading by the window at the front of the house until midnight when her mistress would return and immediately take herself off to bed.
One morning as she was preparing breakfast Jenny remembered her first morning in Paternoster Row when she had been utterly clueless as to what she had to do when preparing the meals. She recalled how she had cut right through one of the main arteries on the hare she had been deboning and the blood had covered her like a sprinkler, showering her in the sticky red substance until it was practically dripping from her hair and clothes. Having only one uniform at the time as Vastra had a dress maker working on a few spares Jenny had tried to clean the blood off of herself as well as she could before taking the breakfast tray up to her mistress' room and gently waking the reptile by lightly squeezing her shoulder and whispering that her breakfast was ready. Vastra had been groggy on first waking and to begin with she had hissed her disapproval at the early hour, that was until she opened her eyes and caught sight of her maid opening the curtains on the other side of the room.
"What on earth happened to you?" She had asked, pulling herself up in the bed with her pillows piled behind her, regarding Jenny as though she were her breakfast as opposed to the meat sat on the tray on the bedside table.
"The 'are an' I 'ad a disagreement" Jenny had joked, trying to make light of the situation, but Vastra didn't laugh. Only on turning back to her mistress had Jenny noticed the predatory gleam in the woman's eyes and instantly a knot seemed to twist itself in her stomach. She had almost forgotten how dangerous Vastra was but the look that she had given her that morning had solidified that exact point and Jenny had quickly excused herself from her mistress' room in order to change into something a little less blood soaked for fear of becoming Vastra's lunch herself.
Chuckling to herself at the memory Jenny finished preparing Vastra's meat (beef that morning, a little harder to manoeuvre around the kitchen as Jenny had learned the hard way) and poured sheep's blood into a glass. Thankfully since the first morning there had been no more incidents with the blood but for a week after the incident Jenny had been apprehensive when waking Vastra in the mornings. Something about the way she had looked at her the first morning had stuck in her head and she couldn't seem to shift the fear that had lodged itself in her mind. Jenny had been genuinely afraid that Vastra would kill her that day. She had avoided the woman from breakfast until dinner and as Vastra had insisted that Jenny sit with her in the evenings she had been careful not to let her eyes wonder too far from the Silurian for the whole night, just in case something did happen. After a week had passed and she was still alive, however, Jenny began to understand that it had probably been the blood that had caused her mistress to react in the way she did and that realistically she had nothing to fear.
It had been two months since Vastra had hired Jenny as her maid and in the time the two women had lived under the same roof it had become clear that they were growing to be close friends. To some extent it was a shock to both how close they had become but to Vastra it was something she had never expected to happen at all. When she had agreed to allow Jenny to stay on as her maid she hadn't been at all sure about how a human's presence in her home would sit with her; she had had mixed feelings from the beginning mostly involving a hatred of human kind and yet a worry for the girl's safety, however it had become apparent to her that the longer she spent with Jenny the more fond she was growing of the girl. There were little things that Jenny would do that were so human that Vastra couldn't help but find them endearing. Despite knowing how messy Vastra was when she ate the girl would go to a great deal of trouble ensuring that her breakfast tray was laid out neatly and adorned with a single flower in a tiny vase every morning without fail. She would often leave Vastra little notes around the house on days when there were things that the Silurian had to do that Jenny was afraid she would forget. Lately, Vastra had even noticed that once she was tucked up in bed Jenny would wait until she thought her mistress was asleep and then she would peek her head around the door of her bedroom just to check that everything was alright and that Vastra was in fact sleeping soundly as she was supposed to be. She found it sweet how much the girl seemed to care.
As Jenny entered Vastra's bedroom, the breakfast tray balanced between her hand and her right hip, she was careful to remain as quiet as she possibly could. Although she trusted Vastra not to harm her at all she had learned that the softer she was in waking her mistress the more pleasant Vastra's mood would be for the rest of the day. Gently the maid placed the breakfast tray on the bedside table to the right of the bed and gave it a last check to make sure it looked just right. Once she was satisfied she turned to the bed where a mound of quilts, blankets, pillows and cushions marked the whereabouts of Vastra's sleeping form. It was mid-December and Jenny had found that the best way to keep her mistress warm during the cold months was to keep a fire lit at all times and to wrap the woman in as many layers of material as she possibly could. The only drawback she had found, however, was currently lying in front of her. While Jenny could make a rough guess as to where her mistress was in the mound of bedding she could not see a single scale exposed to the rest of the room and it made it incredibly awkward when it came to waking the woman. The room was stuffy with a freshly lit fire that Jenny hoped would mean Vastra would not dislike her so much for waking her. Careful not to cause too much disturbance Jenny allowed herself to kneel on the edge of the bed and, leaning over the 'bedding mountain' as she had been calling it in her own mind, she slowly began to peel back the layers of sheets in search of Vastra. It took a good few minutes but just as she was beginning to think that there couldn't be any more layers to pull back she lifted a small cushion to reveal Vastra's sleeping face peeking out into the half-light of the room.
For a moment Jenny stayed knelt on the edge of the bed, watching as Vastra's lips moved ever so slightly with each breath she took and her eyelids twitched as though she were having an extremely vivid dream. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and Jenny had to suppress a giggle which threatened to burst free and wake the sleeping Silurian in a less than gentle way. The maid knew she shouldn't have been watching her employer sleep. Her job was to bring the breakfast tray up, wake her mistress and open the curtains, not to observe Vastra without her consent or knowledge. Despite knowing that she shouldn't though Jenny simply couldn't help herself. She saw this part of the morning as a rare opportunity. Not many human's ever got the chance to meet a creature like Vastra in their lives but Jenny was lucky enough to live with her. She was the only person who got to see her mistress in such a vulnerable state and, though she'd never admit to Vastra that she watched her as she slept for a few minutes every morning, in her heart she knew that it was one of her favourite parts of the day. For a creature as dangerous as Vastra she didn't half seem harmless when she was asleep.
After a few minutes interlude Jenny reached in through the quilts and blankets and squeezed Vastra's shoulder gently just as she had done every morning for the past two months. The Silurian stirred and made a soft growling sound in the back of her throat, wrinkling her nose in annoyance as her peaceful sleeping state was disrupted. Once again Jenny found herself having to stifle a giggle, this time for fear of seeming unprofessional as opposed to not wanting to wake Vastra.
"Miss," she whispered softly, trying to hide the grin that was slowly spreading across her face "it's mornin'. Time to wake up. I've got your breakfast all ready for you." Vastra was growling almost continuously as Jenny finished her sentence. She attempted to roll over and re-bury herself in the soft, warm sheets that surrounded her but it was no use, Jenny had clearly anticipated that move and as a precaution had cleared as much space around her mistress as she could without taking away too much of the heat that kept Vastra in an agreeable mood. Resigning herself to her fate Vastra cracked one eye open and peered up at the girl still perched above her.
"Why must you always wake me so early Jenny?" she whined sleepily, pouting a little in the hope that the maid would allow her a few more minutes sleep. "And why do you always take away my hopes of burying myself in my sheets again? You know how content I am in my little den." At that Jenny did giggle, rolling her eyes as she stood up and made her way over to the windows on the other side of the room.
"I only do what you instruct me to ma'am" she reminded Vastra as she opened the curtains, allowing a little more light to fill up the darkened room.
"Well perhaps I should instruct you otherwise in future." Jenny always found it highly amusing how Vastra would fight her own orders to wake up in the mornings. Although she knew that her mistress was fully aware that she couldn't just sleep the day away Vastra still enjoyed making a fuss about being pulled from her dream world that she loved so dearly.
"Don't make me drag you from that bed myself ma'am, we both know you'd be a lot 'appier getting up o' your own accord."
"Do we?" For a second Jenny's smile faltered. Vastra had never responded like that before. Usually when the maid quipped about dragging the lizard from her bed Vastra would make some witty remark about how entertaining it would be to see her try and then the pair would move on with their day. Why was this morning any different?
Still buried in the sheets Vastra's eyes opened wide and she wrestled a hand from her blanket cocoon in order to silence herself, pressing her fingers to her lips as hard as she could. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. Although she had grown close to her maid Vastra was entirely aware that what she had just said was laced with suggestion and the impropriety of it had cut through the air like a knife as the words had left her lips. Had Jenny noticed? Had she picked up on the suggestion behind Vastra's words? With the girl on the other side of the room it was almost impossible to tell but her silence did not fill the Silurian with hope.
This was getting out of hand. Vastra had thought that she was controlling her emotions well. She had thought that she had understood her feelings for the girl, that she saw her as a friend, a daughter of sorts that she was growing to love and wanted to protect. But what she had just said had not sounded motherly at all. Surely she couldn't be developing feelings for the girl. Of course they spent a fair amount of time together and since Jenny had begun to open up to her more Vastra's fondness had only grown towards her maid. They often joked with each other, finding that although there were some jokes that were separated in time their sense of humour was not so different. But had all of that led Vastra to believe that the girl could be more than just an employee or a friend to her?
Jenny was still silent. She didn't know what to make of Vastra's unusual response. Part of her wanted to question it, but another part wanted to flee from the room that second so that she could find space to think. What Vastra had said was almost flirtatious. There had certainly been something different to their usual jokes in the Silurian's words. But had Vastra meant it that way? It was plausible that Jenny could have misinterpreted her, or that perhaps Vastra had not understood the suggestion she had made. It was impossible to tell either way as her mistress was hidden from view, still buried in her bedding like a butterfly who had not yet emerged into the sunlight. A few times Jenny parted her lips to speak but words seemed to fail her. What could she say when she couldn't even decipher Vastra's intent. What could she say when she was unsure of how she felt about the suggestion? Did she want her mistress to have intended to be flirtatious? No. That was wrong. She couldn't possibly have wanted that. But then again...? In the end she opted for silence. She slowly began to walk back to the door but she stopped as she reached it, looking back over at the bed where Vastra was only just beginning to extract herself from her sheets.
"I 'ope you 'ave a pleasant day miss," she murmured a little uncertainly, "I'll see you later on." With that the girl scampered back to the kitchen to try and work through her confusion while scrubbing up blood stains from the floors.
Vastra sat for a long time trying to figure out why she had lost control of herself to such an extent that morning. She told herself that even if she was developing feelings for the girl she could not allow them to overwhelm her. Jenny had been teaching her about the society they lived in and how those in Victorian England viewed things including relationships. If she remembered rightly Vastra was sure she had mentioned something about people believing feelings between those of the same gender to be a sin against one of their gods. If that was the case then Jenny would certainly not return any feelings that she could hold for the girl. 'And besides,' she thought to herself as she sat in her bed pondering these thoughts, 'how could any human see me in any other way than as a monster?'