What if Dickens got Rosa Bud quite wrong, and her feelings towards Mr Jasper were much more complex than at first they appeared? Here is how the story could have been. John Jasper/Rosa Bud, will veer into AU territory later on and SUITABLE FOR ADULTS ONLY!

Chapter 1

The summer had been long and tedious and I was pleased to think that soon Edwin would be going back to Cambridge to complete his engineering studies.

Our days were always the same. I would read in the garden or sew in the parlour, then, after lunch with Miss Twinkleton, Edwin would call. We would take a turn about the Cathedral Close, perhaps sit by the great oak doors and hear the choir rehearse, perhaps accept Mrs Crisparkle's offer to stand us afternoon tea.

He would try to tease me and I would tire of it. We would carp at each other until the time came for me to go back into the Nun's House and practise at the piano.

This was what life held for me. Silly quarrels with Edwin – except in the future they would take place in much hotter climes, and I would have to…have to…

I did not want to marry. But what choice did I have?

I welcomed the passing of August, its parched air mellowing into golden September. A time when the Nuns' House would revive from its long, overheated swoon, the corners echoing again with laughter and singing. A time when Edwin would be gone and I could play at being free, having no obligations, no testamentary duties.

First, however, there was the odious necessity of taking supper with his uncle.

Edwin doted on his 'Uncle Jack' but I knew him only as the cathedral choirmaster, a figure whose back I saw at regular intervals when attending Sunday services and Choral Evensong, but no more than that. Edwin had painted him to me as the male equivalent of a mother hen, a fussing, fretting creature who made him eat sensibly and drink moderately and go to bed at a respectable hour when he was down in Cloisterham.

My expectations of this supper, then, were low as Miss Twinkleton and I made our way on a balmy late summer evening to his gatehouse lodge. There would be yet more dull talk of Egypt and engineers, with additional references to choristers. How dry it promised to be.

Edwin met us at the little door set into the archway. He was wearing his good blue suit and an air of barely-concealed excitement.

"What has put such colour in your cheeks, Eddy?" I asked when he took my hand to lead me up the stair.

"It is a great moment in a man's life," he said, "when he can show off his promised bride to those people whose opinion he values the most."

"That person," I said, correcting him, for Edwin had no family to speak of now, both parents being dead with no surviving brothers or sisters.

"Yes, that person," he allowed.

"I am not a waxwork, like one of Madam Tussaud's creations, to be poked and prodded and gawped at."

"I did not say you were, Pussy! Ah, here we are."

For we had reached the top of the staircase.

"Be sweet," he whispered to me, pushing open the door.

Mr Jasper's back was to us as we stepped into the room. He was pouring wine into glasses over by a large credenza. As soon as the door was shut, he turned to greet us.

"Miss Bud," he said.

I put out my hand and he did something no man had done to me before – he put my fingertips to his lips and kissed them, quite as if I were a grown lady. It was at once flattering and unsettling, and I hardly knew how to respond.

What did the grown ladies in the romances do?

"Mr…Jasper," I said, trying to recollect myself. "How do you do?"

"Very well," he said, his eyes upon me all the while as if the room were empty of all others. "Your presence here tonight honours me."

I tried to think of something modest and gracious to say, but I could not. Instead I watched dumbly as he made polite remarks to Mrs Twinkleton, and Edwin handed us the wine glasses.

He was good enough to play for us while we sipped at our drinks – somewhat stronger than I was accustomed to. He filled the room with wonderful melody, first some Haydn then Chopin, who was my favourite.

"Oh, Chopin!" I could not help exclaiming when he struck the first notes of a particularly precious nocturne. He smiled over the piano, then, when the piece was finished, asked me about my musical tastes and interests.

I had never been able to speak of this with anyone before. Edwin is such a philistine, and the Nuns' House girls only like music to dance to, so I suppose I made quite an ass of myself, rhapsodising on while Miss Twinkleton and Edwin exchanged comical glances.

"Your tastes tend to the Romantic," remarked Jasper as we were seated for dinner, which made Edwin snort.

"I wouldn't vouch for that," he said. "All my efforts to be romantic meet with the sternest rebuff from our Pussy."

"Don't be so embarrassing, Eddy," I hissed. "Or I won't speak to you for the rest of dinner."

"Now, now, Rosa," quacked Miss Twinkleton. "Let us remember our manners in our host's house."

"On the subject of music," said Jasper, skating over the awkwardness with efficient smoothness, "Edwin suggests that you might be ready for more advanced lessons than those you have been taking…with Miss Critchell? Is it?"

"Yes. Miss Critchell." She came to the Nuns' House three times a week to hear us play, but everyone knew she was as deaf as a post. Everyone except her, it seemed.

"Does she suit you? Or would you agree with Edwin that your abilities may benefit from a higher level of tuition now?"

"Eddy knows nothing about music," I said, casting him a daggers glance, not pleased that he had been discussing me with his uncle. "He would play a drum out of tune."

"Pussy!" remonstrated Eddy, yet Jasper refused to be diverted, leaning towards me as he awaited my answer.

"I'm not offering my services to Edwin," he persisted softly. "I'm offering them to you."

"You are? You offer your services?"

"As music master, I do."

"I'm not terribly good," I said with a slight stammer, rather taken aback at the notion that I should be worthy of lessons from Cloisterham's foremost musician. "You will probably find me rather hopeless. I try to make my fingers do as they should, but they are so provokingly difficult to control…"

"Well, that's easily remedied," he said with a smile that made something within me constrict. "I am particularly skilled with errant fingers."

"I…I'm sure you are."

"Pussy practises an awful lot," contributed Edwin. "Religiously, I'd say."

I refrained from saying that piano rehearsal was simply my excuse to cut short our afternoon expeditions.

"Then that's settled. What do you say, Miss Twinkleton? Twice a week, voice and piano? Can I count on your putting your music room at my disposal?"

Miss Twinkleton fluttered and squawked and heaved her bosom until arrangements were in place – Mondays and Thursdays, after lunch, for an hour.

This should have been cause for mild celebration, but I felt oppressed by the knowledge that I would be spending two hours a week closeted with this man of sombre mien.

Even when the conversation turned to the perennial insomnia-fodder of Egypt and Edwin's prospects, Jasper cast a shadow over the table somehow. He made me think of the silly ghost stories the girls sometimes told each other late at night in the dormitory – about blighted souls and that kind of thing.

I would catch him at odd moments, looking at me.

Why are you looking at me like that? Look away.

There was something provocative and overly intimate in his scrutiny that caused the soft hairs to prickle on the nape of my neck. With determination, I avoided his gaze for the rest of the dinner, our eyes meeting only at the moment of parting.

Edwin walked us back to the Nuns' House, eager to know my impressions of Uncle Jack.

"He is a man," I replied, and I would yield no further opinion, simply reiterating this phrase until he was quite mad with frustration.

"Yes, he is a man, Miss Pert, and you are a minx! I don't envy you, Miss Twinkleton, the task of transforming our Pussy into a young lady fit for society, truly I don't."

"I don't need to be fit for society, just the 'gyptians," I retorted, blowing him an ironical kiss before we retired into our domicile.

Edwin left the next day to spend some weeks with friends in London before returning to Cambridge. Our parting was on reasonably amicable terms, with fewer skirmishes than usual. All the same, when he left, I was suddenly aware of a lift in my heart and my spirits – in my very ribcage – which eased my breath.

"Do you not miss him terribly?" asked Edith, as we walked together in the garden on the first day of lessons.

"Not really."

"But…" She gaped at me, a goldfish opening and shutting her mouth. "He is so awfully dashing. All the girls are quite in love with him."

"All the girls are silly featherbrains, then. When you've grown up with a fellow, you don't notice these things. Even if he is your affianced husband. I suppose the day will come when I regard him differently."

I paused, plucking a petal from a late-blooming rhododendron.

"I suppose," I repeated, frowning.

It perturbed me, when I dared to think about it, that my heart had fallen prey to none of those delicious stirrings described in the romance novels. Edwin was a brother to me, a person I cared for and would do most anything to protect but…a lover?

I had never felt more than aesthetic appreciation for any man or boy. When the nuns' girls (as we were known) let their eyes rove around cathedral services in search of a fine figure, I could not participate in the giggles. However fine a figure a man had, he could not be more to me than an acquaintance, a passer-by.

My life was meant for Edwin. I was bound to him, and such love as I was capable of giving was intended for him.

When he was away, I could almost love him, I think. His memory, the golden boy with the bright smile, was vivid and charming, yet I was growing more and more used to disappointment with each reunion.

No matter, I thought. My final year at the Nuns' House would pass and all this would end and whatever was meant to happen would happen.

My first music lesson with Mr Jasper took place on that same day I had confided in Edith. After lunch, Miss Tisher came to find me in the dining room, all breathless and a-flutter at having admitted a man into the house.

She went with me to the music room and retired, leaving the door open in lieu of a chaperone, which the scarcity of teachers didn't allow. I think there was some kind of arrangement that sent one of the maids scuttling past at ten minute intervals.

Mr Jasper was seated already at the piano, his head bent over the keys while he assessed the instrument's tuning.

He looked up when I entered the room and smiled that strange smile he had, that seemed to have so many secrets behind it.

"Miss Bud," he said, rising politely and bowing his head before taking his place on the stool once more. "I would like to hear you sing. Come and stand beside me."

A commonplace enough request, so why did it sound like an invitation of the most perilous nature? I dawdled to the piano, on top of which an array of sheet music lay in a fan shape.

"Do you know any of these?" asked Jasper.

"This. Miss Critchell always made me sing it." I picked up My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair and proffered it with little enthusiasm.

"But you don't like it?"

"I like it well enough."

He smirked, shaking his head a little at that. "'Well enough' will have to suffice. Now, let us see what we make of it."

He took to the keyboard and played the familiar introduction. I sang the song through, without faltering, though my breath, as ever, rarely lasted long enough to get me to the end of each line. Jasper was a considerably better pianist than Miss Critchell, and his failure to stop for a moment before the more difficult chords confused me at first.

I ended the song and looked away, fearing that his verdict might be harsh.

"There is work to be done, it is clear," he said, and I blushed flame-red. That certainly wasn't the courtly compliment I was used to when I sang at the Crisparkles' Alternate Musical Wednesdays. Although I had expected it, the criticism stung. "But that is what I am here for. I fear you have fallen into bad habits with your Miss Critchell. Did she let you stand like that, all hunched over?"

I had forgotten my posture, but this was more due to my anxious dread of Jasper than anything Miss Critchell had done.

"No, indeed, I…I am a little nervous, that is all."

"Of me?"

I neither replied nor looked at him, but shrugged.

"No, Miss Bud, look at me and answer. Are you nervous of me?"

I dragged my gaze unwillingly to his, shrinking beneath his severe brow.

"A little," I admitted, mutinously.

He smiled and the shadows lifted, just for that moment.

"Well, that will never do," he said in a placatory tone. "Shall we make a solemn covenant here and now, Miss Bud? That you will accept that whatever I say to you is in your best interests and intended solely to assist your improvement?"

"Is it?" I was still in a minor sulk.

"Miss Bud, I won't be spoken to as you speak to Edwin, let us be clear on that from the outset. Banish all petulance from your manner and we will get along famously, I am sure. Now, stand straight, put your shoulders back and let's try some scales."

He worked me much harder than Miss Critchell ever had, and I rued the day Edwin had ever asked for this favour. I wanted to sing some gay airs for the drawing room, but Jasper permitted nothing but scales and breathing exercises, right until the very last minute of the allotted time.

"Your breathing is a matter of some concern," he said, his hands lifting from the piano at last. "I can't imagine how any of you young ladies breathe at all, laced up so tightly."

Laced up so tightly. He almost whispered the words, his eyes fixed on my waist. The atmosphere had become charged again, just the way it was at that supper party.

"Like the bodice blue. In the song," I said, scarcely knowing what words fell from my lips. I felt the need for a diversion, and my mention of the song seemed to provide it.

"Yes, yes, the bodice blue," he said, snatching up the score again. "Let's sing this again and see what improvement has been made."

This time he approved of my posture and I tried my hardest to control my breath, though I'm sure my efforts weren't up to his high standards.

"Better," he said. "Still not perfect, but Rome wasn't built in a day. A little more expression next time. Perhaps if we changed 'Lubin' to 'Edwin'…"

His sidelong glance was sly. He wanted to gauge my reaction to that thought.

Alas, I scarce can go or creep now Edwin is away.

No. The names could not be changed. I could both go and creep with impunity, and I had the piercing sensation that Jasper understood this, that he saw behind my outward appearance and read my heart.

The arrival of Miss Tisher at the door covered my confusion and it was a great relief to me to see the back of Mr Jasper, even if it was only for a few days before the piano class.

My mind was much occupied with the singing lesson for the rest of that day. I tried to unravel the events, to understand what Mr Jasper's curious manner might mean. Of course, he was simply doing Edwin a favour. Because Edwin wanted an accomplished wife who could entertain his colleagues at supper parties. There was no more to it than that – how could there be?

All the same, I wished some of the other girls might be his pupils, then we could compare notes on him. But they knew him only from a distance, as the choirmaster at cathedral services.

The piano lesson was even worse. He found fault with my technique, with my fingering, with my pedal effects, with my accuracy, with my expression, with everything! I spent the entire hour fighting off fit after fit of pique, replaying the same horrid, tedious exercises over and over while he sat beside me shaking his head and holding up his hand to stop me again, the metronome ticking like a tyrant.

And he was too close to me. Occasionally, when my left hand strayed down towards the end of the keyboard, I had to almost lean against him, and feel the fabric of his tailcoat brush my sleeve. Our knees were no more than an inch apart. A curious heat prickled at my skin and I was uncomfortably conscious of his…what could I call it? His masculinity. That was it. Yet nothing of this nature or magnitude had ever disturbed me with Eddy, even when we embraced.

It was utterly unwelcome and not to be borne.

"I have resolved to cancel my music lessons," I declared to Edith, flinging myself on to the bed beside her.

"Rosy! You cannot! What would dear Edwin think?"

"Dear Edwin can go hang! No, I don't mean that," I said, feeling a pang of guilt at Edith's horror. "But he can tell his Uncle Jack to do so. Awful, horrid man."

"Is he a very hard taskmaster?"

"He is like granite. So critical and sniping and mean and gloomy. I hereby banish him from my days." I waved my hand so widely that I upset her comb and brush, knocking them off the nightstand.

"Oh dear, but Kitty Mason thinks that Miss Twinkleton admires him very ardently. She saw her stroking his inner hatband when she thought nobody could see. She will never consent to ending his visits."

"Ugh, Edith, do you mean to ruin my appetite? Miss Twinkleton and Jasper? Perhaps we should make a match."

Our conversation descended into giggles and my immediate resolve to end the lessons was forgotten for the moment.

That night, we sat up late, telling ghostly tales again by the light of a single candle, the craze that had swept the school before the summer having not abated a jot in the intervening months.

Kitty Mason had a great talent for chilling the bones, and it was she who extemporised before a small but enthralled audience.

"In the cathedral crypt," said she, "there is a vault, and this vault belongs to the Droods."

Everyone turned to me, their faces raptly aghast.

"It is true," I said carelessly. "Eddy once showed it to me."

"Each Christmas Eve," she continued, "as the good folk of Cloisterham hang up their stockings and prepare for the feast to come, down in the Drood vault, there is a ghostly shriek and a clanking of bones. As the hour comes close to midnight, the great barred gates creak open and footsteps make their way across the stone floor."

"Whose are the footsteps?" begged Edith, sucking on her thumb the way she used to when she came here as a very little girl.

"Nobody knows. But Mr Durdles the stonemason thinks that they belong to Captain Drood, who would be your father-in-law, Rosy, if he were still alive. He climbs the stair to the choir, so slowly, and he takes his place for midnight mass."

"Stuff and nonsense!" I hooted. "A ghost in the choir."

"Yes, and his brother-in-law Mr Jasper knows all about it."

"Who has been speaking with you about Mr Jasper?" I gave Edith a furious look.

"Only the spirits," said Kitty mysteriously, then she grinned. "The spirits and everyone else. Everyone knows Miss Twinkleton finds him sooo very fascinating. Don't you think it's the most exquisite joke?"

"Not really," I said, tight-lipped. "I think it's extremely stupid. And I'm going to sleep. Goodnight."

I slept uneasily. In my dreams, I found myself in the cathedral crypt, in a darkness that pressed against me at all sides. Mysterious echoing sounds filled my ears and I crept along, sobbing and terrified, unable to find the foot of the staircase that led out of this fearful place. I knew I would be entombed here, walled up and buried alive, if I couldn't reach that staircase soon, but it had gone and only solid wall met my exploring palms.

I tried to scream for help, but my voice was gone, and then arms enfolded me, strong and protective, and I prayed that this might be a saviour.

But he spoke, "Miss Bud," and my fear grew into panic.

"No, no, leave me, no."

"You are a woman now."

"Never, never, never will I be, never, never."

I was still gasping "never" when I woke up.

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