Chapter Text
It was not the girl’s fault.
Hadn’t he sought her out, demanded her company after his failure at Jim Carter’s trial? Could he have not fetched his own supper? His own rum? Was it not late? Still, he called for her…needed her near. Why? And what were they going to do now?
The questions had plagued him all morning.
For two years hateful tongues wagged with salacious and vicious gossip. Demelza was a brazen hussy, a kitchen maid who refused to know her own place. He, a philanderer like his father, a rogue and a scoundrel - anything and everything but a gentleman. The idle chatter ebbed and flowed like the tides around Cornwall, and sometimes it was impossible not to feel their spray.
He had often wondered if Demelza heard the same talk - the sweeping generalizations and wild speculations about their so-called brazen antics. He had hoped, for her sake, that she had been spared the ignorance of the idle rumors. She had never asked for his help, after all…and because he had assisted her, her very character had been called into question.
To learn that she had known what people said about them…and yet she chose to continue on at Nampara, cheerfully doing her work, never betraying any sense of mortification, still treating him with every ounce of respect said a lot about her strength of character - and he had to admit, he admired her for it.
It shouldn’t have mattered to him , one way or the other. No one was immune from gossip, least of all an impoverished country squire like himself. His name had been linked with the likes of Ruth Teague and Joan Pascoe, women he wouldn’t have looked at twice…but with Demelza it was different. It was mean, it was cruel, and until last night, wholly unfounded.
So what if he galloped all over the countryside with her in tandem? He had but the one horse and Truro was too far for the girl to walk. Perhaps he could have hired a wagon, but every cent he had was going into re-opening his mine and fixing up Nampara. After hiring a farmhand and a kitchen maid, he could hardly afford such a luxury.
Perhaps the purchase of her fine cloak was a bit much, but she had never once had one. He had intended on buying her a coarse wool cloak, plain and ordinary. Her delight upon seeing that particular cloak in the shop, replete with its scarlet lining, however, had him thinking otherwise. Yes, people would gawk at so fine a gift for a kitchen maid, but she was so much more than that to him.
She was Demelza.
To explain what that meant was impossible, especially to those who saw nothing but scandal in their association. He was fond of her, that was true enough, but that fondness was the very thing that kept her virtue wholly intact. He cared about her too much to use her ill. This was a girl who had been cruelly beaten and misused all of her life. This was a girl who made the lonely days at Nampara bearable with her songs and her smiles. This was a girl who, without knowing him, had entrusted herself to his care. With such trust offered so freely, he did everything in his power to be worthy of it.
He was well aware, upon taking her in, that people would talk. For most men of his station, it was expected that they take up with a mistress…or dally around with the help. Most men of his class didn’t marry for love and affection, after all - they married for wealth, for security, for elevation. Whoring and gambling were acceptable vices among fashionable men, even if the upper classes pretended to be affronted by them.
He, however, didn’t take to whoring like most men of his station. After his one turn with the woman Margaret not long after his return to Cornwall, he felt none the better for it. Disgusted at himself, he swore off engaging in lust for lust's sake and threw himself into a more productive past-time - work. His home, his mine - both gave him more than enough to distract.
Every day he worked himself to exhaustion, read late into the night with drink and went to bed. It was a routine that suited his needs and his lonely, miserable life. That routine, however, had made him utterly predictable and lonely.
He wasn’t sure when, but at some point Demelza began creeping into that lonely, predictable world of his, brightening up darkened corners with her laugh, her smile and her penchant for flowers. Little by little she began to anticipate his needs, his wants, his appetites - knew the days when he would prefer an ale to rum at dinner or a brandy to wine in the evening.
While Demelza’s position in his household was strictly that of a servant, he began to seek her out almost as a friend, a confidant, someone with whom he could discuss his concerns and hardships without fear of judgment and ridicule. Verity used to be that for him, his patient and kind cousin, but her duties at Trenwith had kept her from visiting him at Nampara; nor could he easily go to Trenwith without reopening the wound that was Elizabeth.
Demelza, therefore, became, by default, a faithful companion in those dull evening hours. Someone who came to know him sometimes better than he knew himself. With her, he didn’t have to put on airs and graces. With her, he was sure of an understanding heart and compassionate ear.
He might have saved her from a life of abuse and abject poverty, but it was she who gave him reason to smile every day. Whether it was impressing him with her superior work ethic or making observations with her quick wit, she was as fresh and as welcome as a spring rain, replete with the flowers she left in her wake. The deafening quiet that had accompanied the isolation of Nampara was now everyday filled with the lilt of her voice, her songs drifting into the windows and across the fields and meadows.
She had blossomed during her years at Nampara -rising from a scrappy street urchin to an accomplished and skilled housekeeper. Once given the opportunity to learn, she thrived…and in her, Ross saw the very proof of what a bit of goodwill and kindness could do for someone of her class. He admired her, trusted her, was immensely proud of her…which was why hearing her name besmirched by viscous, ignorant tongues angered him to the point of blind fury. She was innocence itself and he would never …until last night - he did .
Upset and angry over the injustice of Jim’s sentencing, he found himself at the Red Lion, hoping to drown his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle. Margaret sought to add her particular form of consolation to his efforts, but he rejected the notion immediately. Lying with her would only add to his misery.
He despised his class, despised the way they lived, despised that they took pleasure in idleness and dissipation while good, hard-working people suffered from want and starvation. His eyes took them in, these men in their finery, toasting their good fortunes while Jim and so many other young lads like him, rotted away in prison leaving wives and children unsupported and destitute.
Disgusted, he rode away, longing for the solitude of his home. There, he could brood in peace, there he could think of what was to be done for Jim’s family, there he could fool himself into thinking that he might make a difference.
His foot had barely crossed the threshold when he called out to her. He might have told Margaret that no one could console him out of his misery, yet he entered his home with no other thought but being consoled by Demelza. She, being of that class, would be just as outraged over the injustice as he was. She would understand his current misery and not chide him for it. She wouldn’t laugh at him for his concern. She would look at him with those bright, sea-green eyes and give him a reason to hope.
He found himself annoyed that she wasn’t anxiously awaiting for his return, hoping for news. He called her again, a little more forcefully. Surely, she was just as concerned as he was over the boy’s fate?
He settled himself in front of the fireplace, his thoughts dark and tormented, as he heard her quietly make her way into the room. Her tread was unusually light, her typical curiosity absent, for not a word did she utter as she crept in and around the room. He imagined she would ask him about the trial, or at least make an observation of his dark mood, but she did not…and never had he wanted her conversation more.
“Jim Carter got two years,” he began, hoping that would be enough to encourage her.
“I feared it might be worse,” came her reply.
He wanted to tell her how inhumane the prisons were, how even the strongest and ablest of men were reduced to skin and bones in a matter of months, but he was too sickened by the thought to dwell. “I doubt he’ll survive,” he said instead.
“You did all you could,” Demelza tried to assure him, but he was less certain. He had been impudent and insulting, self-righteous and demanding when groveling and compliments were the order of the day. Those judges weren’t interested in distributing actual justice, not when they had an air of self-importance to maintain.
“I made the mistake of trying to teach them their business. A schoolboy error and Jim paid dearly for it,” he admitted to her, but she was not near him. In fact, he distinctly heard her moving away and he couldn’t understand it. She, who had offered him her best wishes before he rode away, was now seemingly uninterested in listening to all that Jim had endured.
He turned to her in annoyance, frustrated that she, who understood him so well, could not see he was in misery. When his eyes fell upon her, however, confusion and then anger replaced every other thought.
It was nothing for Jud and Prudie to take liberties with his things. How often had he come home to find his liquor cabinet raided, his best cloak thrown over Judd’s drunken shoulders. Did they not even take up residence in his bed, turn his home into a literal pig sty in his absence?
To see Demelza guilty of the same offense? To see her, his most trusted companion, fligged up in his mother’s dress was a hard blow at a difficult time. Is this what she did in his absence? Rifle through his things? Was she truly no better than Jud and Prudie? Had he been completely deceived by her?
He lashed out, angry and frustrated, but upon seeing her cry, he found he could not bear it. He urged her to ignore his outburst, to understand that his had been a hellish day, hoped she wouldn’t take him up on his threat and return to her father..and suddenly he was struck with the idea of losing her.
Demelza, the girl who, for the past few years, had breathed hope back into his life and home - gone because his temper had gotten the best of him.
He couldn’t say what it was that possessed him - but no sooner had he urged her to disregard his stinging rebuke then he was drinking her in like a man starved for water in a desert. His lips crashed against hers, bruising and wanting in a way he hadn’t kissed anyone since Elizabeth. When he did come back to his senses, it was with the stark reminder that she was his maid and he her master and while other men might take liberties, he would not.
He sought to reestablish the distance between them to remind her and himself that her sojourn at his home had been one that had been done as a kindness, not for lasciviousness. A fire, however, had been ignited…and it was not so easy to quench. He had all but resolved to seek her out, give in to the rumors and the expectations when she came to him, quiet, willing…his for the taking.
He should’ve dismissed her again - that would have been the right and noble thing to do - but he found that her presence at the time was precisely what he wanted and needed. He lost himself in her; his sorrows, his miseries smothered in swaths of soft, inviting skin. In the dim light of morning, however, with the intoxication of her kisses and caresses long past, he began to see that in giving in to temptation, exercising his so-called liberties as master of his household, he had become the very thing he despised.
He had used her, used her to satisfy his lust and that made him no better than his father, his uncle and his elderly dissolute neighbor, Hugh Bodrugan. He tried to console himself as he lay there, staring at the ceiling, that theirs had been a mutual pairing, that he hadn’t forced himself onto her, but it fell shallow. She had been entrusted into his care and in a moment of passion, he forgot himself.
How were they going to go on now?
Could he continue to breathe life into the rumors and take her repeatedly to his bed until he tired of her? Or would he have the wherewithal to resist debauching his young charge further? Perhaps they should go on and pretend as if nothing had happened…but in treating her thus, Ross knew, he’d be no better than any other men of his class after they tumbled their own servant girls.
Complicating the matter was that his affection, his fondness for Demelza was real. She had become a part of his life, filling every day with the sunshine of her smile. She had undeniably roused something in him, lit up some dark, forgotten place in his heart and mind, but whether it was a need for human connection or something deeper, he could not say.
Demelza was now both a friend and a stranger to him. Whatever she had been before - an abused street urchin, dressed in filthy rags - was gone forever. In her place, an accomplished and charming young woman now stood…but where that woman was now was anyone’s guess. She had slipped away before dawn, had disappeared into the morning mist, no doubt mulling over the same questions as he.
What were they going to do now?