Chapter 10 FORSTERING RELATIONSHIP
It was extremely disturbing to my spirit to be aware of what the girls might have been going through as maids for the Devereaux family.
And as Leah and one of the other girls washed my body with petal scrubs, I decided to lift up a conversation with them.
“Tell me, Leah, what is your story?”
Again, Leah paused and I could feel her grow nervous which she tried to hide by lingering out of touch to my skin.
She hesitated for a long while, carefully lowering her head to avoid eye contact with me.
The other girl she had been working with; Clara also pulled the same move as Leah.
Were they scared of something?
What possibly could be the problem?
Were they not allowed to speak to me on certain matters at all?
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of rules they had been tasked to follow to the very end.
Their instinctive reaction was probably an attempt made in order to deprive me of pushing the conversation any further as all I needed to know about them should end with their names.
They had thought that was enough information to give out about themselves and maintaining a friendly or cordial relationship with their master's soon-to-be wife was an act of insolence according to their job creed.
All they were charged with was loyalty, obedience and nothing more, so for the maids, it was difficult to engage as this was also their first time.
\-Vanessa was the first for them.
No one had been interested in whatever life they had lived for themselves and that was how things were expected to be until the day they would be discharged from their duties or perhaps the day of their death.
If these girls were not bold enough to reveal something more than their names to me, then they probably still feel unsafe around me which has inherently oppressed them with certain choice of words in tales for them.
I gently grabbed the scrub from Leah's quivering fingers. A light gasp of panic escaped her mouth as she watched me go the washing by myself.
“Please, let me do this.” She pleaded.
“My name is Vanessa. Vanessa Hudgens and my existence within the walls of this mansion is nothing more than a puppet plan orchestrated by the master of this house Santiano Rafael Devereaux.
I used to have an almost perfect life back in New York. The money, the luxury and the peace, everything I had tipped towards an ocean of perfection and I also was in love.
I was in love with a man whom I was ready to marry. I have no one left of my family to approve of him as my groom as I alone was the last branch in my family's tree.
Perhaps, this was the curse I bore as I had no one with the same blood heritage as me to give their blessings for my marriage and when the time came for what should have been a day of profound joy for me, all my expected fantasy flared up into smokes of impossibility.
It was at that moment that Santiano Rafael Devereaux showed up in my life, taking the very essence of happiness away from me.
The fate of my man, I do not know and perhaps all I am meant to believe was in his death and I have been brought to be a subject under your master and he has also asked me to be his bride.
A wife to him.
A monument of completion.
Hilarious, isn't it?” I foretold, cracking up into a maniacal laughter.
Leah was quiet, so were the other maids that I began to wonder how far my story had delved into their hearts, tugging at emotions surreal within them.
Perhaps, they all were feeling a little sorry for me and if that were true, my story had probably cleared the ocean of hesitation between us, allowing them to fall into a moment of bonding with me.
With her voice stretched but a little shaky, Leah spoke up, her fingers being twirled in a nervous twitch then she asked me a question.
It caught me by surprise that I could barely hold on to its weight enough to give her a response at once.
I was sure of my stand as regards her question.
But the puzzle I was trying to fix was why she was suddenly curious to know what my response would be.
“A- are you going to get married to him?” Leah had innocently asked, her young puppy eyes searching mine for a reply.
Was she expecting some positive response?
Or perhaps a negative one?
That, I couldn't quite tell.
The other girls gasped, afraid Leah's audacity in that conversation in the form of a question was becoming a little too daring for them to handle.
She was putting them all at a potential risk, but deep down, they all wanted to know what Vanessa's response would be.
Was she going to get married to their master?
This was their thought as they awaited Vanessa to let the words flow out of her lips.
What has my final decision had to do with them?
My hands fell to my side, the bath water warming them up the more as I contemplated the thought.
It was an obvious decision my mind has deployed as regards Leah's question. She repeated it once again and before I could declare the absurdity of Rafael's proposal.
Clara had spoken up and a wave of empathy settled around me, forcing my skin to give way for chilly goosebumps.
“Your marriage to the master will give us all a brand new life within these walls, it might as well grant us freedom.”
“What?”
“You are kind, my lady, very kind to us in the short time we have been together and since we have found favour in your sight, the burden upon us for being in this house will be lessened, giving us another reason to live.”
Her words had doused me in two choices which I had to make a pick from regardless.
To give these girls another reason to feel alive—
Or…
To be a selfish woman and hitch towards my own freedom from Rafael.