Work Text:
Jane had been the girl-of-all-work at 221 Baker Street for nearly five years when she caught the gentlemen (her gentlemen) kissing on the stair. She had seen them before, once or twice, just breaking apart as she came around a corner or sharing a quick peck in the garden when they didn't know she could see them from the upstairs window. She had known, of course, that they were more than friends and colleagues. She had known it almost from the moment that the nature of their association had changed, but she would never have embarrassed or frightened them intentionally. Still, when she exited their sitting room and saw Mr. Holmes pressing Dr. Watson to the stairwell wall and kissing him most desperately, she merely stood there, gaping like a fish, while the door behind her finished the trajectory she had already set it upon. She turned to catch the door before it swung shut behind her, but it was too late. The gentlemen sprang apart at the sound of the latch catching. It was their turn to stare at her.
“Jane.” It was Mr. Holmes who broke the shocked silence.
She did the only thing she could do – she fled further up the stairs.
Jane sat on the top step, first silently berating herself in very colorful terms for her carelessness, then making up her mind what she would say to the gentlemen (her gentlemen). Dr. Watson appeared on the landing.
“Jane, I’m sorry for this... unpleasantness. Please come down. We need to speak to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jane stood and straightened her apron and her cap. She needed to remain calm. She didn’t want to be turned out of Baker Street, even with an excellent letter of recommendation. She set her face into a servant’s mask of impassivity and opened the door to their rooms.
Mr. Holmes stood behind the table and Dr. Watson was next to the fire. Jane stood a few paces into the room, on her familiar spot at the edge of the carpet – the spot where she always stood when receiving her instructions. She clasped her hands in front of her and waited.
“Jane,” began Mr. Holmes, “I cannot apologize enough for the shock and dismay that we must have caused you. I know you to have a good mind, Jane, so I won’t insult you by attempting to explain away what you just saw. Please don’t be frightened. I understand that you will want to be away from such unnatural goings-on, and I am prepared --”
“Please, sir. Begging your pardon for interrupting, but I have long been aware of the goings-on, as you put it, sir. They don’t bother me in the slightest. I am only sorry that I have alarmed you and Dr. Watson. I have no intention of ever breathing a word of this, sirs. You have my word on it.”
“But surely,” said Dr. Watson, “you don’t wish to remain in a house where such acts of, of... indecency occur?”
“Indecency? You know what work my mother did, and you know the wretchedness of the place where she did that work, sirs. There was no one in that place to protect me from seeing the cruelty and depravity with which people treat each other. Good men... sharing... is not indecent compared to that. I can’t see how it is indecent at all, sirs.”
“This is a rather remarkable attitude, Jane,” said Mr. Holmes. “The law, both God’s and man’s would disagree with you.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t believe God will not forgive me, nor you neither, sir, when He forgives murderers and worse. If He even thinks it is so bad. And you gentlemen know what man’s law is and how fair it is. It punishes the poor and weak more often than it helps them and the ones with money and titles can do as they please.” Jane paused, scowling a bit at the floor.
Then she lifted her chin and looked straight at Mr. Holmes. “You are a good man, sir.” She looked at Watson. “And you too, Doctor. You haven’t harmed anyone that I know of, no one who didn’t deserve it, anyway. And you’ve done a great deal of good. What you are to each other is nobody’s business. Your secrets are as safe with me as my own. I will never say anything against you.”
“Thank you, Jane.” Mr. Holmes looked at the same spot on the floor that Jane had. “I am grateful... and touched by your loyalty and kindness.”
Jane took this as her dismissal. She curtsied to the gentlemen (her gentlemen) and left the room, closing the door behind her.
When she saw Mrs. Hudson a few hours later, that lady went so far as to embrace her.
“You’re a treasure, Jane.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I am grateful for my place here.”
Mrs. Hudson chuckled and left it at that.
Jane sat on her bed that night, braiding her hair, and looking at the tops of the trees through the attic window. The little room contained nothing but her bed, a table to hold her wash basin, and a shelf for her books (most of them gifts from Mr. Holmes or Dr. Watson). It was unheated except for a vent cut into the chimney stack that allowed some of the heat from the coal grates below to escape into her room. It also allowed her to hear quite well everything that happened in Dr. Watson’s (well really, the gentlemen’s) bedroom even though her own room was not directly above it. She could hear sounds, anyway, though not exactly what was being said. She supposed that, if she were to press her ear to the piece of stove pipe coming through the chimney, she would be able to hear more clearly, but that seemed to her to be a shocking invasion of the gentlemen’s privacy.
Soon the sounds coming from the vent turned to the familiar noises of the gentlemen (her gentlemen) engaged in... relations. These sounds had dismayed her at first, years ago, when the noises of bed sports were connected in her mind only with the sordid acts of the cheap bawdy house where her mother had worked. But when those other, awful sounds (sounds like the crack of a fist on flesh, sounds like cries of pain, sounds like mocking laughter, sounds like weeping and scolding and vicious words) did not follow, she had become easier in her mind. The sounds the gentlemen (her gentlemen) made were of a very different kind – sounds of laughter over a shared joke, sounds of comfort, sounds of praise and affection. They were her lullaby on some nights and her inspiration on others, for they were the sounds that filled her ears on the nights when she pulled her nightgown up and slipped a hand down between her legs.
Jane knew right from wrong. It was the men who had frequented the bawdy house, the men who had treated the women there like animals, that should be sent to the prison treadmills. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson did nothing wrong in loving each other, and she would happily keep this secret for her gentlemen.