#rosemando

The youngest Gonzales son had his arms folded over his chest, characteristic pout on his face. “Bring me some soup.”

“What?”

He chose to look at the hem of his sleeve instead of at her. “Soup. In a bowl. Bring it to my room. I’m working late and it’s cold and rainy and I’m hungry.” And he was gone.

Rosemary frowned. Even with no one else around, he kept up the facade instead of just saying, “Meet me in my chambers.” It was well-past midnight, and she was, for once, not in the mood to play games. But if he didn’t get what he wanted, he’d make a fuss, public or private, to get back at her for it.

She’d make him soup, but she was having some too.

Rosemary never worked in the kitchens, but she was a passable cook. She began enough broth for two small bowls – or one large bowl, if anyone came in to ask what she was doing. She tossed in some carrots and spices, spooning in a few meatballs she nicked from the next morning’s prep. It was what she could find and make quickly; no time to simmer a stock for hours.

She hated carrying food trays up to his room; there were so many stairs and the dishes rattled with every step. It sounded like an alarm in the silent mansion, and Rosemary grimaced, half-afraid she would wake the ghosts that haunted the estate.

It was after two in the morning when Rosemary reached Fernando’s door. She awkwardly balanced the tray on one arm as she knocked lightly. He called for her to come in, rather than getting the door for her, and she scowled for a moment before fumbling with the ornate doorknob and opening the door.

Fernando was sitting at his desk, papers more scattered than usual. He was in his stained dressing gown, his favorite one, chewing on a pencil. He waved her over. As she passed by the open window, cold air and the sound of pouring rain crept over her. She set his bowl and napkin to his right, so he wouldn’t bump it with his left elbow while writing. “You forgot the spoon,” he muttered.

“No I didn’t, stupid,” she said, dropping it into the bowl with a small splash.

Fernando scowled when a few droplets pattered onto his paperwork. “Clumsy.”

“Ungrateful.” Rosemary crossed the room to the chaise, sitting with her own bowl. “What could you possibly have to do that’s important enough to be up so late?” The soup was pretty darn good, if she thought so herself.

“None of your business,” he said, not looking up. Rosemary shrugged and continued eating her soup. Fernando hadn’t touched his yet. As her spoon clinked in the bowl over and over, Fernando finally turned in his chair. “What are you even still doing here?”

He was in a bad mood. That lightened her spirits a little. “I’m hungry, too,” she said.

“This is my food, not yours.”

She shrugged one shoulder and ate another few spoonfuls. “I’m not gorging myself on it. I even gave you all the meatballs,” she lied.

Fernando turned back to his desk, muttering that she was impossible, which is what he usually did when he was too tired or too frazzled to continue the back-and-forth.

Rosemary did try to eat her soup a little quieter, savoring it. She ate the same thing often enough, but with day-old or simply much cheaper ingredients. Goosebumps raised on her skin under her dirty black dress as the wind blew the rain into the room in the lightest mist. 

Finally, she stood behind him again, hovering over his chair. “Does your maid have to feed you your soup?” she offered.

He reddened. “Shut up,” he spluttered, moving the soup closer to himself. “I’ll eat it when I’m ready. Maybe I don’t want an audience, you know?”

“I can’t imagine all this…” She really did not understand what any of the papers were about. “All this important work can’t wait until after you’ve had breakfast. Didn’t you want to go to bed?”

He huffed and wouldn’t make eye contact. “I never said that. I said I wanted soup. And you were the first servant I ran into.” He did glance at her from the corner of his eye. “Why are you up so late, anyway? What is so important that you had to be up doing?”

Rosemary’s ears warmed. “Cleaning the napkin you’re currently using,” she said, and she took the tray and her dishes, turning to leave the room.

Her hand was on the knob when she heard him say, “Wait, wait.”

She didn’t turn. “Are you going to tell me what your work is?”

He was silent for a moment. “No. Maybe just… Maybe some company, since I’m up.”

There it was. Like always. At the last second, when he’d lost and she was leaving. He couldn’t keep his pride up for as long as she could. She thought about turning around. She thought about his heat and closeness. She thought about sleeping in the nice bed, in the room that didn’t leak.

Right now he’s rolled away from her, facing the window, as he always sleeps, snoring into his pillow. It’s early morning and through the open window she can hear the city slowly coming to life beyond the courtyard. The birds are just beginning to chirp as cold gray light falls over his bedroom.

Rosemary always (well, almost always) maintains a cool, collected, superior air when they’re alone, and with the younger, newer maids that she bosses around. She’s still an outsider among the rest of the staff; even being here for ten years she’s made no friends and had no real promotions to better positions around the estate – except for in his bedroom.

But now he’s asleep, somewhere far away, and her mind is also racing to other places. To the castle in her mind where she’s the queen, where men and maids fall at her feet with fear and respect. Where everyone can see how strong she is, how clever and beautiful. The royalty she knows she truly is.

She keeps her mind in that castle to ignore her hands shaking with the anxiety of her true worthlessness in this world that her body is stuck in. Folding his laundry always steadies her hands when the dissonance is too much, but queens don’t fold laundry. Maids do. Servants do. But so do wives, sometimes.

She slips out of the bed, her bare feet protected from the cold stone floor by lush oriental rugs. The morning air raises goosebumps on her bare skin and she kneels in front of his basket of laundry. He’s dug through it like a wild pig looking for truffles because she refused to put it away since he was so rude to her earlier this morning when she brought it up.

Rosemary pushes her long golden hair back over her shoulders, shivering as it tickles her back. She begins to fold the laundry. Maybe, sometimes, in her castle, she would have a husband as her king, and maybe, sometimes, she would fold his shirts, just to touch what her lover has worn. 

As Fernando continues to snore and grumble in his sleep, Rosemary quietly puts the folded laundry away in his wardrobe and dresses herself. She takes the basket of dirty clothes down to the washroom where the newer girls with red, sore hands will wash as she used to. She slips a pair of his silk shorts into her apron pocket as she drops the basket in its place to be washed next. A sort of trophy.

More and more, he let her speak to him. Not when anyone could see for God’s sake, but on these frequent occasions when she lingered. Nothing she said was interesting or intelligent or really worth listening to, but the strange lilt of her voice was hypnotic, deliberate. Fernando was intrigued by this servant and her audacity. 

He had no idea how long she’d been at the estate; who even knew? Or how old she was. Or her name. 

And asking her name was below him. Knowing her name was below him. 

Today she was lingering longer than normal, and she was toeing a line that he didn’t appreciate. She stood over his desk where he sat, peering at his papers as he hastily shoveled them into a pile, his hands pressed over them. She peered through his fingers.

“How do you even know I can read?” she offered, quirking a brow, and Fernando huffed.

“How do I know you can’t?” he shot back pathetically. “Anyway! Nothing I do is any of your business!”

“Some things are,” she said, drifting from his shoulder to the open window. “What you had for dinner last night, for example. Saffron is quite hard to remove from silk, you know. Or,” she grinned. “What passes for silk.”

“Get away from there!” he snitted, storming over and pulling the curtains closed. “Someone will see you. And my shirts are silk, you simpleton.”

She laughed, and the sound chilled him. “Yes, Master Fernando. Whatever you say.”

Her disrespect wafted thickly in the air, and Fernando’s cheeks flushed with offense. “I can tell when you’re being false,” he accused, as if she had made any attempt to sound sincere. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it up, holding her hand, red and cracked from years of washing, between them.

Fernando had never been tall. His brothers were on the short side but Fernando was always not-so-affectionately called the runt of the family. This maid was nearly his height. She was slight and pale, and at first he used to think a strong wind would blow her over, but even now she was showing strength in those sea-blue eyes.

“Of course you can,” she retorted with a dangerous smile. Like when his mother’s cat ate her canary. “You’re always false, with everyone.”

“Shut up,” he sniffed, tightening his grip on her wrist. “What do you know about anything? You’re a servant.”

She didn’t make any move to free her wrist. She seemed to lean in, just a little. “The servants see everything, Master Fernando,” she whispered. “You share your family gossip and forget we’re in the room. Your family sneaks in and out of doors, and we see it. We see your conflicts and troubles and affairs, while you parade them around in front of us as if we were furniture.”

Fernando spluttered a response, and now the maid did twist her arm from his grasp. He let her. “What do you want from me, woman?”

“A taste,” she said.

He snorted. “A taste. Of what?”

Now she took the last step between them, her fingers trailing dangerously along the hem of the heavy curtain. “Of your world,” she answered, and her face was very close to his.

He should have slapped her silly. He should have sent her away with harsh words and a threat to her employment. He should have put her on extra shifts for her insubordination. But instead, he let a servant kiss him.

She was not hesitant, she was not asking permission. Her fingers twisted hard in his shirt collar, holding him close, exploring. He grunted and moved back, but she followed, turning her head to better access his mouth – which was not obeying his orders to stop kissing her back.

Fernando wasn’t sure where he was, lightheaded and shocked, and, some part of him was not displeased. She tasted warm and salty, and he let her push her tongue into his mouth. His hands found her hair, taking fists of gold curls, but she didn’t whimper. 

He didn’t know how long this encounter lasted, but eventually she bit his tongue. He yelped and wrenched her away with one fistful of blonde hair, and she stumbled back. She used the sleeve at her wrist to dry her lips, and she looked like a wolf that had just made a kill. Fernando tasted the tin of blood in his mouth, and he shivered.

“You little bitch,” he hissed, but he didn’t raise his hand. He scrubbed away the taste of her from his lips. 

“Takes one to know one,” she whispered, pinching the shell of his ear as she walked by.

She didn’t seem concerned about being disciplined one bit, and that made Fernando more angry. “Never come into my room again,” he spat as she headed for the door. “Or it’ll be the last thing you ever do in this house.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, adjusting the red ribbon at the back of her head. Pale, curly strands hung around her face, and she didn’t tidy them. “I believe I’ve already done more than I’m allowed. Fire me now, and you’ll never have to put up with me again.”

Fernando stammered, but the order never crossed his lips. 

“I’ll see you the next time you eat paella like a drunk animal, then.”

“You’re–”

But she laughed. “Your family has a lot of dirty laundry, Master Fernando,” she said. “You don’t think you’re the only one without any, do you?” And she was gone.

“‘Cause no one comes here,” he sniffed, looking down his nose at her.

She rolled her eyes. No, not in this house, they didn’t. Rosemary wasn’t exactly a scholar herself; she knew how to read and write well enough, but she wouldn’t admit that most of the books in this library were beyond her skill level. 

“Besides,” he was saying, adjusting his collar. “You can’t be seen coming to my room so much. Especially since your little network of spying servants is always about.”

Rosemary found a mirror across the room, hanging over a low table covered with dusty vases and such. She fussed with her curls, watching him in the mirror as much as she was looking at herself. This lighting didn’t compliment her, and the long, low, gray bars of light coming through the high windows cast an unflattering pattern on Fernando as well.

“I always bring you your laundry,” she said, brushing aside a stray hair from her eyes. “I have for two years now.”

“You just shouldn’t overstay your welcome,” Fernando said, and when she glanced at his reflection, he was looking up out the window. “If someone catches us, it would be inconvenient.”

Rosemary scoffed. “For me,” she said. “You would be embarrassed at the worst. I’m the one who would be on the streets.”

It snowed in England of course, but much less so since she ended up in Spain. She didn’t realize how much she missed it.

She’s off now, having been dismissed for the day. So she bundles herself in what layers she has, including the scarf that Ms. Applefield knit for her a decade ago. It feels like a lifetime since the orphanage. Rosemary isn’t sure if she misses it or hates the fact that she was ever there. Really though, was it worse than this? Being a servant to rich assholes, playing this psycho-sexual game with the family’s youngest son. At least at the orphanage she felt mostly happy. But she had friends then.

Now she just has Master Fernando. She only calls him that in front of others, of course; she would choke on her own tongue if she had to refer to him that way in their private communion. In fact, she’s trying to work it out so he calls her “mistress”, but she’s still working on that fun little bit.

Rosemary hates it when she thinks about him while off-duty. She steals a bottle of white wine and slips out into the cold mountain air. It’s snowing thick and fluffy, but there’s no wind, and the snow falls silently to the ground, accumulating. It crunches under her boots and she walks nearly to the treeline.

“Stealing again, huh?”

Ugh. 

Rosemary turns, regarding Fernando. “I’m off-duty.”

“You’re stealing wine.”

She grasps for a hold in the cliffside of their delicate dance. “What are you planning to do? Get me fired? Whipped?”

“Don’t get me excited.” He strode up to her, all false confidence as he almost lost his balance in the deep snow. “If you don’t want me to tell, you should share it with me.”

Rosemary snorted. “You can get better wine than this with a flick of your wrist.”

Fernando closed his hand around the neck of the bottle, giving a slight tug. “I can get whatever I want.”

“And what might that be? A wife?” she jeers, and his freckled cheeks flare red.

“I can have any woman I want,” he spits.

“And yet here you are,” she smiles, dark blue eyes sparkling. She blinks snowflakes from her lashes. “Drink with me?”

“Too gauche.”

She sniffs and shrugs, pulling the bottle away as she turns from him. “Then go away. Master,” she adds, her voice thick with sarcasm.

Fernando grabs her shoulder, not gently. “You won’t speak to me that way.”

And she knows he’s ready to yield. His last pathetic protests against a stronger opponent. “Of course, Master Fernando,” she coos, voice thick and false. “Won’t you join me?”

Soon they’re sitting on a fallen log, taking turns from the bottle. The wine is cold, but their thighs are pressing together and they both feel plenty warm. Snow fills the air, thick and heavy, but they don’t move from their makeshift bench.

“Play ‘never have I ever’?” Rosemary offers.

“No.”

“Hm.” She crosses her legs to keep her thighs warm, inching her hip against his. “Well, ‘truth or dare’?”

“No.”

“Spill secrets?”

“What do you want, woman?” Fernando nearly shouts. The few birds around them fall silent, making the scene impossibly quieter.

Rosemary takes a few sips from the bottle. Her cheeks and chest feel warm and her blood rushes. They have drunk almost all of it in a half hour. “You’re the one who followed me out here.”

“I have to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, you can’t help yourself, can you?” she shoots back. “Creep.”

“Bitch.”

Neither can deny the other’s insults, so they trade the bottle back and forth a few times. “What do you want from me?” she finally says, breaking the silence.

It’s still so quiet. Rosemary didn’t realize how utterly silent winter could be. Out here in the mountains, away from society… He doesn’t answer her, so she continues talking, the wine coloring her speech. “You know, we’re practically in the wilderness. We’re just two animals out here, with the other animals.”

“What, the bears and the winter birds?” he scoffs.

“Yeah,” she says, and shoves the bottle at him. “Not much different”

He takes several long gulps, grimacing at the tannin spilling over his tongue. “Plenty different. I’m a superior specimen to you.”

Rosemary can’t help it. What’s left of her facade falls and she laughs out loud, her voice echoing in the silence. She leans closer to him. “No,” she coos, cradling his chin in her fingers. His freckled cheeks darken as she strokes his jawline. “We both know I’m the superior specimen between us.”

She kisses him hard, and he grunts in protest as he always does. It’s futile; he doesn’t mean it, it’s just his pride getting nicely bruised. He tastes like bitter, dry wine, and she pushes her tongue into his mouth. He pretends he doesn’t like it. That’s their dance, like the thick snowflakes falling to crown their hair.

He pretends he doesn't like it, but then his arms come up around her, the empty bottle dropped to the snow at their feet. She grabs his scarf, and he takes a fistful of her golden hair, angling her head to better access her mouth. She lets him; she always lets him feel like he’s in charge for a few moments. 

Rosemary pushes her master to the ground, snow clouding up around them as they lie against each other. Fernando accepts her gesture, moaning pathetically as she pins his expensive leather gloved hand to the ground. She is being a bit too bold, out where anyone could see, but who else is out here? Who even cares what they do? Only the two of them.

Finally he pushes her aside into the snow. Rosemary falls on her side, glowering at him.

“How dare you?” he snaps, way too late. “Know your place!”

Rosemary grins at him like a cat who’s just eaten the canary. “I do.”

“Shut up!” He stumbles to his feet, drunker than he thought. “If you freeze out here, no one will bury you.” He starts to trample away.

“When you’re buried, no one will mourn you,” she shoots back.

Fernando whips around. His face is red, his eyes glazed. “You’re worthless,” he spits.

Rosemary ignores the truth of his retort and says, “You’re useless.”

His face turns a new color that Rosemary doesn’t have a name for, and he calls her something vicious before storming off. He walks like a newborn foal, unsteady in the thick snow, his blood heavy with alcohol.