Belle - Lesley Pearse [102]
Martha felt indebted to her associate in the hospital in Paris. She had been honest enough to admit Belle had been ill used, and the price she asked for reflected that. But she had said too that she thought Belle could be brought round, and she had that special quality which made great courtesans.
It had been a gamble depositing a large sum of money in a bank with no certainty the girl would ever arrive here, and even if she did, the associate in Paris might have been totally wrong in her assessment.
But the moment the Frenchman arrived here with Belle, Martha knew she’d found her little golden goose. She wasn’t just pretty, she was beautiful, with a perfect body, and her English voice would set many a man’s pulse racing even before he saw her other assets. At fifty dollars a time, more than double what she asked for the other girls, she would recoup what she’d paid out for her in just weeks.
Many people claimed there was aphrodisiac in the very air of New Orleans, and maybe that was partially true, for this young English girl had opened out like a flower to the whole idea of sex and seduction since she’d been here. Maybe it was Etienne who had healed her wounds on the way here, perhaps created the first sexual stirring in her, and being made to watch the other girls with their clients and listening to their ribald tales had stirred her up still more. But it was Serge of course who had achieved her ripening into womanhood. Martha had seen the expression on the girl’s face when she returned home. Serge had definitely taken her to a place she was going to want to return to.
Now that Belle was one of her girls, Martha had got Esme in to serve drinks in her place. Esme was in her thirties, a mother of three now and no longer inclined to sell herself, but she was a very good maid, intuitive, discreet and excellent at putting the right girl with the right man. She didn’t take any nonsense from the girls either. If they had their way they’d spend all night in the parlour drinking, dancing and flirting, but one look from Esme and they high-tailed it off up those stairs.
Esme didn’t have to recommend Belle to the fair-haired young man. He gazed at her with his mouth hanging open and Belle moved towards him as though she’d done this a thousand times before.
‘I’m Belle,’ she said with that delightful, wide-mouthed smile she had. ‘Would you like a drink?’
It was Esme who informed the young man that the fee would be fifty dollars, and Martha smiled when he didn’t even look shocked and took out his pocket book to pay then and there. Esme shook her head. ‘Not here, give it to Belle when you get upstairs, she passes it to the maid.’
Belle was still sipping the brandy Martha had given her for Dutch courage, but the young man, who said he was called Jack Masters and was from Tennessee, gulped his down in one, then took Belle’s hand and walked with her to the stairs.
Martha slunk back into the shadows as they walked up the stairs. She didn’t want to see Belle’s pretty face tight with fear. She could still recall her own first time, it was in a cat house in Atlanta and the man she’d got was no pussy cat like the one Belle had landed. He was such a brute she felt she’d been torn in two.
*
‘Well, Jack, if you’ll just take your pants off, I can wash you,’ Belle said, trying hard to sound as if she’d said that a hundred times before. He’d given her the money as they got into the room, and she’d opened the door again and handed it to Cissie who was waiting outside. As she poured the water from the jug into the basin on the washstand, her hand was shaking so hard she thought she might drop it.
‘You sure are lovely,’ he said as he unbuttoned his trousers. ‘Why, I can’t believe I’ve found an angel like you.’
‘That’s very kind of you, sir,’ Belle said, suppressing a giggle. ‘Is that because you haven’t been to a sporting house before?’
His pants were on the floor, along with his underpants. He